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Africa |NYT Now

Lockdown Begins in Sierra Leone to Battle Ebola

By ADAM NOSSITERSEPT. 19, 2014

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Sierra Leone’s Aggressive Attack on Ebola

Sierra Leone’s Aggressive Attack on Ebola

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FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — The most ambitious and aggressive government campaign against the Ebola epidemic gripping parts of West Africa began on Friday when Sierra Leone ordered everyone in the country to remain indoors for three days, suspending commerce, emptying the streets and halting this beleaguered nation in its tracks in an attempt stop the disease from spreading.

Calling the struggle against Ebola a matter of life or death, the government mustered police officers, soldiers and nearly 30,000 volunteers to go house to house, hoping to educate the country about the dangers of Ebola and identify people who might pass the disease to those around them.

“Some of the things we are asking you to do are difficult, but life is better than these difficulties,” President Ernest Bai Koroma said in an extraordinary radio address on Thursday night explaining the national lockdown.

From the start, the limits of the government campaign were evident. The warnings, mobilization and exhortations quickly clashed with the reality that cases here are surging and the infrastructure to deal with them hardly exists.

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Kroo Bay

Sierra Leone

River

Freetown

GUINEA

SIERRA

LEONE

SIERRA LEONE

Freetown

Atlantic

Ocean

LIBERIA

2 Miles

There is no large-scale treatment center for Ebola patients in the capital, Freetown, so many patients have to be placed in a holding center until they can be transported to a facility hours away — that is, if an ambulance can be found to pick them up and if those packed facilities have room.

The countrywide lockdown showed the desperation among West African governments — particularly in the three hardest-hit countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — as they grapple with an epidemic that has already killed more than 2,600 people and shows no signs of slowing down.

While governments in the region have already cordoned off large swaths of territory in hopes of containing the outbreak, none have attempted anything on the scale of what is being tried here. The government says it wants to visit every residence in this country of about 6 million, with the aim of instructing people in how to stop the disease from being transmitted and to find out who is harboring sick people, with potentially deadly consequences.

“We have been sending lifesaving messages through radio, TV and print, but it’s not enough,” said Roeland Monasch, a representative for Unicef, which supported the government effort, providing money, advice and information materials. “We need to take information to where people are.”

In the streets of the capital on Friday, one woman lay curled in a fetal position, eyes shut, precariously balanced on cardboard sheets next to an open gutter in front of locked storefronts. From a wary distance, the anti-Ebola volunteers said she had high fever. Hours of calls had produced no ambulance.

A small crowd, including the police, soldiers brandishing guns, presidential advisers and spectators taking cellphone pictures of the immobile woman, milled about. A medical worker said two more bodies in the vicinity needed attention. But still there was no ambulance.

Photo

Kroo Bay, a densely populated area of Freetown, Sierra Leone, on Friday. The neighborhood, a perennial home of cholera outbreaks, sits in a sea of muddy lanes and open sewers in which pigs forage.

“They are not responding; they say they have lots of cases now,” said a volunteer, Alhassan Kamara.

Finally, a rickety ambulance pulled up, more than five hours after the initial calls, the volunteers said. But the loosely outfitted attendants refused to pick up the sick woman: they had no chlorine spray and said it was not their job. A loud anti-Ebola jingle played on a car radio. It took a second ambulance, and the president of a moped club who quickly suited up in protective gear, to get the sick woman bundled off to uncertain care.

On nearby streets, other volunteers were going house to house to warn people of the disease’s dangers. Normally clogged streets in the capital were empty, stores were shut down tight, and pedestrians were rare on the main thoroughfares.

The senior United Nations envoy appointed to work on the Ebola crisis, Dr. David Nabarro, said he was struck by the yawning gap between the spread of the disease and the ability to fight it. The world needed to increase the efforts on the ground many times over, he said.

That would include “the capacity to treat between 9,000 and 10,000 people within the countries at any time,” he said. “To get there, we need to get extra people and cash into the countries, obviously, but also we need fantastic organization and logistics that are second to none.”

Dr. Dan Lucey, an American who volunteered in an Ebola holding center at a Freetown hospital, described the situation as horrific. “There were not enough beds, space,” he said. “When you first see this, you say this is totally intolerable. It can’t be this bad,” he said after returning home. “It was an incredible, searing experience not like anything I’ve ever seen.”

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Graphic: What You Need to Know About the Ebola Outbreak

Without treatment units in the capital, he said, patients who tested positive for Ebola had to be driven at least four hours away. Those who tested negative could be exposed to Ebola while they waited. When Dr. Lucey volunteered, there was just one other doctor present. Patients were housed together in open wards with a plastic curtain between beds, awaiting their test results. At the foot of each bed were three buckets — one for urine, one for stool, one for vomit.

“There were body fluids everywhere,” he said. Fuel for the ambulances could be hard to come by. “It’s beyond belief until you see it day after day,” he said.

Dr. Oliver Johnson, a British physician currently working at the hospital with King’s Health Partners, said Friday that the 18-bed unit had received 10 patients during the first day of the lockdown and now had four physicians. He said two other isolation units had opened in the Freetown area in the past several days. “We’re starting to see more beds, more supplies. More staff are coming to work,” he said.

Sierra Leonean health workers, who he said have worked bravely, are now being offered hazard pay. “Things are improving,” he said, but “the real question is whether we can get ahead of the curve. We’ve been seeing more new patients than we’ve been able to build new beds.”

The United States is planning to build as many as 17 Ebola treatment centers in Liberia, with about 1,700 treatment beds, while the United Nations is planning an expanded mission in the region, based in Accra, Ghana, according to Anthony Banbury, the United Nation’s Ebola operation crisis manager. It is intended to be more nimble than the United Nations’ notoriously bureaucratic operations, bringing in as many as 500 trucks and jeeps from other missions in Africa, possibly paying teams in one country to speed up safe burials, buying fuel for monitoring teams in another country, or offering helicopters to transport health workers where they are needed.

But even with the promises of help, international health officials are worried by what they describe as a rapid growth of cases here in Sierra Leone’s capital — a dense urban environment where containment is difficult and the ability to respond is limited.

Photo

Volunteers in Freetown prepared to go house-to-house to warn people about Ebola’s dangers.

“The situation in Freetown is very worrisome as cases increase,” said Michael Goldfarb, a spokesman for Doctors Without Borders. “Without an immediate, massive, and effective response, there could be an explosion of cases as has been witnessed in Monrovia,” he added, referring to the capital of Liberia.

Whether Sierra Leone’s lockdown will constitute an effective response is open to question. Despite the mobilization, the volunteers hardly appeared to be thick on the ground. In some neighborhoods, residents said they were yet to see any of the green-vested young men and women who had volunteered.

In other neighborhoods, the volunteers — many of them students, all working for no pay — complained that there was no response to their knocks at most houses. If they arrived without supplies like soap or chlorine, residents were not interested in speaking with them, the volunteers said.

Where there was a response, it was often followed by cursory admonitions to residents to wash their hands, report on neighbors suspected of illness and wear long-sleeve shirts at the market.

At one house, several volunteers talked loudly at once about hand washing, leaving the residents visibly dazed. At another, they were amazed to discover residents who were supposed to be under quarantine because of their suspected exposure to Ebola, but were actually unguarded and free to roam about. At still another, one gave out questionable information about the Ebola virus — seeming to contradict some basic precautions.

Well into the morning, the house-to-house visits had yet to begin in Kroo Bay, a densely populated neighborhood of iron-roof shanties where roughly 14,000 people live, despite officials saying they would start at dawn. The police cruised into Kroo Bay on a pickup truck, yelling at residents to go indoors and warning of imprisonment. People simply stared at the officers and continued lingering as the police drove off.

“The policeman is doing his thing, and I am doing my thing,” said Kerfala Koroma, 22, a building contractor. “We can’t even afford something to eat on a normal day. How can we get something now?”

Sheri Fink contributed reporting from New York, and Somini Sengupta from the United Nations.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Lockdown Begins in Sierra Leone to Battle Ebola. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Africa |NYT Now

What You Need to Know About the Ebola Outbreak

UPDATED SEPT. 19, 2014

Related Coverage »

By Joe Burgess, Denise Grady, Josh Keller, Patrick J. Lyons, Heather Murphy and Sergio Peçanha.

- © 2014 The New York Times Company

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Technology |NYT Now

Ex-Employees Say Home Depot Left Data Vulnerable

By JULIE CRESWELL and NICOLE PERLROTHSEPT. 19, 2014

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The data breach at Home Depot compromised the credit cards of 56 million of its customers. Above, a store in Seminole, Fla.

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The risks were clear to computer experts inside Home Depot: The home improvement chain, they warned for years, might be easy prey for hackers.

But despite alarms as far back as 2008, Home Depot was slow to raise its defenses, according to former employees. On Thursday, the company confirmed what many had feared: The biggest data breach in retailing history had compromised 56 million of its customers’ credit cards. The data has popped up on black markets and, by one estimate, could be used to make $3 billion in illegal purchases.

Yet long before the attack came to light this month, Home Depot’s handling of its computer security was a record of missteps, the former employees said. Interviews with former members of the company’s cybersecurity team — who spoke on the condition they not be named, because they still work in the industry — suggest the company was slow to respond to early threats and only belatedly took action.

In recent years, Home Depot relied on outdated software to protect its network and scanned systems that handled customer information irregularly, those people said. Some members of its security team left as managers dismissed their concerns. Others wondered how Home Depot met industry standards for protecting customer data. One went so far as to warn friends to use cash, rather than credit cards, at the company’s stores.

Then, in 2012, Home Depot hired a computer engineer to help oversee security at its 2,200 stores. But this year, as hacks struck other retailers, that engineer was sentenced to four years in prison for deliberately disabling computers at the company where he previously worked.

Company officials said the malware used against Home Depot had not been seen before and would have been difficult to detect. Home Depot said on Thursday that it had patched any holes and that it is now safe for customers to shop there.

Any card used there between April and Sept. 2 might be vulnerable to being used fraudulently. Stephen Holmes, a Home Depot spokesman, said the company improved its security this year by encrypting register systems and switching to a new smart-chip-based payment standard in all stores.

“Our guiding principle is to do what’s right by our customers,” Mr. Holmes said. The company maintains “robust security systems,” he said.

Thefts like the one that hit Home Depot — and an ever-growing list of merchants including Albertsons, UPS, Goodwill Industries and Neiman Marcus — are the “new normal,” according to security experts. These people say retailers have not only been complacent about security, they have also been reluctant to share information with one another.

Government officials estimate that as many as 1,000 retailers have been infiltrated by variations of the malware that first struck another big retailer, Target, late last year, and then Home Depot this year. They say many companies do not even know they have been breached.

“This is happening to so many companies now, it is getting hard to keep track,” said Paul Kocher, the founder and chief scientist at the Cryptography Research division of Rambus.

Still, security experts were flabbergasted that Home Depot, one of the world’s largest retailers, was caught so flat-footed after the breach at Target, which resulted in the theft of data on more than 40 million cards before the holiday season.

After the Target theft, Home Depot’s chief executive, Frank Blake, assembled a team to determine how to protect the company’s network from a similar attack, said one person briefed on the project. In January, Home Depot brought experts in from Voltage Security, a data security company in California, these people said. By April, the company started introducing in some of its stores enhanced encryption that scrambled payment information the moment a card was swiped.

But criminals were already deep in Home Depot’s systems. By the time the company learned on Sept. 2 from banks and law enforcement that it had been breached, hackers had been stealing millions of customers’ card information, unnoticed for months. The rollout of the company’s new encryption was not completed until last week.

The retail industry is rushing to respond by forming threat-sharing associations — Home Depot was a founding member of one such group created earlier this year — and adopting new encryption and payment system they hope will thwart hackers.

But getting those efforts up and running could take months.

Several people who have worked in Home Depot’s security group in recent years said managers failed to take such threats as seriously as they should have. They said managers relied on outdated Symantec antivirus software from 2007 and did not continuously monitor the network for unusual behavior, such as a strange server talking to its checkout registers.

Also, the company performed vulnerability scans irregularly on the dozen or so computer systems inside its stores and often scanned only a small number of stores. Credit card industry security rules require large retailers like Home Depot to conduct such scans at least once a quarter, using technologies approved by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, which develops technical requirements for its members’ data security programs. The P.C.I. Council requires that approved, third-party quality security assessors perform routine tests to ensure that merchants are compliant.

And yet, two former employees said, while Home Depot data centers in Austin, Tex., and Atlanta were scanned, more than a dozen systems handling customer information were not assessed and were off limits to much of the security staff. A spokeswoman for the P.C.I. Council in Wakefield, Mass., declined to comment on Home Depot specifically.

“Scanning is the easiest part of compliance,” said Avivah Litan, a cybersecurity analyst at Gartner, a research firm. “There are a lot of services that do this. They hardly cost any money. And they can be run cheaply from the cloud.”

Home Depot said the industry standards included an exception from scanning store systems that are separated from larger corporate networks, and it said the company had complied with P.C.I. standards since 2009.

In 2012, Home Depot hired Ricky Joe Mitchell, a security engineer, who was swiftly promoted under Jeff Mitchell, a senior director of information technology security, to a job in which he oversaw security systems at Home Depot’s stores. (The men are not related.)

But Ricky Joe Mitchell did not last long at Home Depot. Before joining the company, he was fired by EnerVest Operating, an oil and gas company, and, before he left, he disabled EnerVest’s computers for a month. He was sentenced to four years in federal prison in April.

Several former Home Depot employees said they were not surprised the company had been hacked. They said that over the years, when they sought new software and training, managers came back with the same response: “We sell hammers.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Ex-Employees Say Home Depot Left Data Vulnerable. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe | News Analysis |NYT Now

A Kingdom Still Whole, but Far From United

By STEVEN ERLANGERSEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

Supporters of the “no” campaign to keep Scotland a part of Britain celebrated the results of a referendum on Friday in Glasgow.

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EDINBURGH — Scotland chose decisively against independence on Thursday, but it was not a vote for the status quo in Britain.

The debate over regional and national autonomy that was set off by the Scots has just begun, and it promises a constitutional shake-up in the United Kingdom, which remains intact but by no means fixed or unchallenged.

While the outcome of the vote was met with tremendous relief from Downing Street and Buckingham Palace to Brussels and Washington, Britain was also awakening to the realization on Friday that it had agreed to grant the Scots considerable new powers to run their own affairs. Prime Minister David Cameron now faces a broader debate over the centralization of power in London, uncertainty over Britain’s place in Europe, intense budget pressures, and fissures within his own Conservative Party as he heads toward a general election campaign in the spring.

Nearly 45 percent of Scots voted on Thursday to abandon the United Kingdom forever, but when the ballots from all 32 voting districts were tallied early Friday, the “no” campaign had won 55.3 percent of the vote, ensuring a more powerful Scotland within Britain.

Photo

Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, who led the fight for independence.

The victory of the “Better Together” camp was ensured late in the campaign when all three main political leaders from Westminster — Mr. Cameron, the Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and the Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg — jointly promised “extensive new powers” to the Scottish Parliament over taxing, spending and welfare, while also pledging to continue the budget allowance Scotland gets, a generous allowance per capita compared with what the rest of Britain receives.

Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, who led the independence fight, called for reconciliation on Friday and then, visibly dejected, announced that he would step down in November. But he made it clear that Scotland would hold the party leaders to their last-minute promises, which Parliament must turn into law, even if the three parties have not quite agreed on the details.

Mr. Cameron was immediately faced with criticism from his own Conservative Party about the blithe manner of the promising and the possible expense. More interesting, perhaps, many legislators said that if Scotland received still more power over its finances, it was time for England to gain more, too. Some even suggested a separate English parliament, like the ones in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

One of the great anomalies of the British system, as it has developed, is that England is subject to the laws of Parliament in which Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish legislators vote. But Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliaments that rule, without any English say-so, on many important regional matters.

Mr. Cameron on Friday vowed to fix that anomaly. “We now have a chance — a great opportunity — to change the way the British people are governed,” he said, “and change it for the better.” He gave no specifics, but said: “Just as Scotland will vote separately in the Scottish Parliament on their issues of tax, spending and welfare, so too England, as well as Wales and Northern Ireland, should be able to vote on these issues.”

Photo

Prime Minister David Cameron in London.

And all that, he asserted, “must take place in tandem with, and at the same pace as, the settlement for Scotland,” with draft legislation supposedly ready by January, which is considered unlikely, given that it must be negotiated with all three main parties. But few expect such important legislation to be enacted before the general election in May.

Mr. Cameron also has an eye on the general election, his own restive party, the rise of the English nationalist United Kingdom Independence Party to his right and, to his left, the uninspiring performance of his opponent Mr. Miliband in arguing for continued union in Scotland.

Mr. Cameron clearly sees another advantage to an English parliament. Given his party’s relative strength in England, it would tighten the Conservatives’ grip on power, even with left-wing Scotland, with 41 Labour members of Parliament, remaining in the United Kingdom.

The vote in Scotland also has implications for Britain’s membership in the European Union. Scotland is adamantly pro-European, and should Mr. Cameron remain prime minister after the May elections, he would have a better chance of winning a 2017 referendum he promised on British membership in the European Union with Scotland voting on it.

Mujtaba Rahman, European director for the Eurasia Group, a political and economic consulting firm, said that “a ‘no’ vote does not mean no change.”

Continue reading the main story

Results by Region

Percentage Point Difference

-15

-10

-5

0

5

10

15%

Voted no

Voted yes

Scotland

Aberdeen

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Source: Scottish Independence Referendum

The promises of decentralization “made by London to Scotland to secure the ‘no’ victory will lead to claims for similar powers from Wales and Northern Ireland,” he said, “forcing constitutional changes to how England is governed, either through a new national parliament or strengthened federal entities.”

Alistair Moffat, a Scottish historian, said: “What lies ahead is a federal Britain.” Peter Hain, a Labour legislator who has served as secretary of state for both Wales and Northern Ireland, said that “the genie is out of the bottle” on constitutional change. “We need to recognize the reality that the United Kingdom should have a federal political structure with a constitutional arrangement which defines the demarcation of powers between Westminster and the rest of the United Kingdom,” he told Reuters.

But it would be an oddly unbalanced federalism, given that England represents 85 percent of the population, as the consulting firm Oxford Analytica pointed out on Friday.

It is not clear that the English want an extra layer of government, and generally they have preferred it be run from Westminster, resisting regional councils and elected mayors. That attitude might be changing, but it is also possible that the government will come up with less radical ideas, such as simply providing more money to the local authorities to deal with broader issues or creating special England-only committees in Parliament to examine laws that affect only England, and not the “Union,” as the United Kingdom is called.

The larger question, of course, is what does the “Union” mean in an age of decentralization and incipient federalism?

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|1:33

Europe Reacts to Scotland’s Vote

Europe Reacts to Scotland’s Vote Leaders from Britain, Scotland, Spain and the European Commission spoke after Scotland rejected independence from Britain in a referendum. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditAndrew Milligan/Press Association, via Associated Press

Mr. Cameron has always had problems articulating what “British values” are, beyond decency and fairness. Even Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister and a Scot whose exhortations to reject the referendum played a role in its outcome, has called for a “statement of national purpose.”

Jason Cowley, writing of “A Shattered Union” in the New Statesman, sees deeper centrifugal forces at work “cleaving the United Kingdom.” He cited “the end of empire, deindustrialization, the decline of cross-border working-class solidarity, the weakening of Protestantism and of the trade unions, as well as a general anti-politics, ‘stuff them’ attitude.”

What can save the United Kingdom from becoming the United Nothing, as one Scot put it, may be exactly what Scotland has secured: maximum regional powers. Mr. Salmond, “whose political mission from the outset was to break the Union,” writes Mr. Cowley, “might end up creating the conditions in which it could be remade and thus saved.”

Others were less optimistic. Matthew Parris, a former Conservative legislator, wrote in The Times of London that “the Union is dead,” killed off by decentralization.

“To survive, the Union had to be an affair of the heart, and the heartbeat started faltering decades ago, at devolution,” he said. But “the pulse failed” when Mr. Brown “carelessly, disgracefully promised ‘nothing less than a modern form of home rule’ for Scotland, and the three panicking Westminster party leaders, whose nerves had failed, backed him.”

More autonomy for Scotland is practically independence, Mr. Parris said, and “must lead to home rule for England.” And that, he said, not only implies an English parliament but an English government, too. A federal Britain may be the result, he concluded, “but the Union is lost.”

A version of this news analysis appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Kingdom Still Whole, but Far From United. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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U.S. |NYT Now

Democrats Pin Senate Hopes on a Kansan

By JONATHAN MARTINSEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

Senator Pat Roberts, left, a Republican, and Greg Orman, the independent challenging him.

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Correction Appended

TOPEKA, Kan. — The Senate race in Kansas may suddenly be the most crucial contest in the country. Republicans are scrambling to protect a longtime incumbent. Bob Dole is back on the campaign trail. The state’s Democrats have no candidate and are trying to say as little about that as possible. And a 45-year-old investor from suburban Kansas City may hold the key to control of the Senate in January.

At the beginning of the year, no one thought that Kansas — which has sent only Republicans to the Senate since 1938 — would be critical in determining the balance of the Senate. But a Kansas Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that allowed the Democratic nominee to withdraw his name from the ballot made that prospect real.

Democrats are celebrating the ruling. Their candidate may be off the ballot, but his departure benefits the investor, Greg Orman, who is running as an independent, and hurts the longtime Republican incumbent, Senator Pat Roberts, who had already been tripped up in his expected waltz to re-election.

A major factor in Mr. Roberts’s troubles has been the unexpected rise of Mr. Orman, who has been coy about his intentions if he should be elected, refusing to say if he would caucus with Democrats or Republicans. But his election has the potential of keeping the Senate out of Republican hands if the chamber is narrowly divided after the elections.

Even before the ruling on Thursday, Mr. Roberts, 78, who was elected to the House in 1980 and is seeking his fourth term in the Senate, had been trailing in the polls. With the Democratic candidate, Chad Taylor, not included in surveys, Mr. Roberts’s deficit is even larger.

The role of Mr. Dole, the former senator from Kansas, in the race illustrates the high stakes. The 91-year-old native of Russell, Kan., has grown increasingly nervous about Mr. Roberts’s prospects. He had pleaded with Republican “super PACs” to shore up the Roberts campaign. He also has been talking strategy with Scott Reed, his onetime presidential campaign manager who is now the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s top political strategist.

Mr. Dole also offered a number of ideas about the race, like bringing Mitt Romney out to campaign for Mr. Roberts.

Mr. Roberts’s campaign, however, had another suggestion for a surrogate: Mr. Dole himself. As a result, he was to tape a television commercial for Mr. Roberts on Friday, and is joining the senator for a rally on Monday night in Dodge City, Kan., the Old West town that Mr. Roberts lists as his official residence but where he does not have a home of his own.

“I think it’s going to be quite a close race,” Mr. Dole said.

Mr. Orman, a former McKinsey consultant who started his own venture capital fund and has financed his own campaign in part, may find his wealth becoming an issue, now that he is the Republicans’ sole focus. Republicans are already racing to scour his investments. But the new campaign manager that the national Republican Party installed when they took control of the Roberts campaign this month seemed stressed about whether six weeks would even offer enough time for them to research Mr. Orman’s many holdings.

Mr. Roberts’s campaign is already seeking to make an issue of Mr. Orman’s business relationship with Rajat Gupta, a former Goldman Sachs executive. Mr. Gupta is now in federal prison after being convicted of insider trading, but he and Mr. Orman are both still invested in a wealth management firm.

“I don’t think having dealings with somebody who is in prison is going to play well in Kansas,” said Corry Bliss, a Roberts aide.

Mr. Orman also made some of his backers cringe this week when he told reporters that the shared investment was “very modest” because it was under $50,000. (The median income in Kansas is just over $51,000.) Asked if he would withdraw his money from the firm, Exemplar Wealth Management, he said: “No answer.” An aide later clarified that Mr. Orman would not get rid of his stake. On the issues, Mr. Orman has offered a series of noncommittal answers on topics like the Keystone XL Pipeline, same-sex marriage and the minimum wage. Republicans are trying to gain traction on the public stands that he has taken: He supports a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants and tells voters that the Affordable Care Act will not be repealed.

As Mr. Orman has gained ground in polls, outside groups have reluctantly emerged to help. Next week, Freedom Partners, a super PAC with ties to Wichita-based Koch Industries, is starting a major advertising assault against Mr. Orman that will link him to national Democrats. The group is spending about $500,000 in the first two weeks in a state with relatively inexpensive media markets, said James Davis, a spokesman for the group.

A Republican strategist representing another group called the Now or Never PAC said Friday that it had gathered enough financial commitments for commercials to go on the air in the coming weeks. And a group of Republicans close to the state’s other senator, Jerry Moran, said Friday it was trying to raise money for ads from the Visionary Leaders Fund

National Democrats have gone to great lengths to stay out of the race. They do not want to make it easier for Republicans to label Mr. Orman as the de facto Democratic nominee in a conservative-leaning state, even though he briefly sought the party’s nomination to take on Mr. Roberts in 2008.

Senior Kansas Democrats, including the former two-term governor John Carlin, played a role in persuading their nominee, Mr. Taylor, to quit so it would be easier to defeat Mr. Roberts.

Their message to Mr. Taylor, who had raised little money, was that he could have a bright future in the party if he did not play the spoiler in the race. “I reviewed with him some of the reality he was facing,” said Mr. Carlin, who noted that he received an introductory call from Mr. Orman shortly after Mr. Taylor dropped out.

Mr. Taylor himself has not said why he decided to drop out of the race just before the deadline to withdraw, and he avoided reporters at the state court hearings.

On Friday, in a sign of how unpredictable the race has become, Kris Kobach — the Republican secretary of state who sought to keep Mr. Taylor on the ballot until the court overruled him — said he would instruct counties to start mailing absentee ballots overseas without the name of a Democratic candidate. But Mr. Kobach said they would include a disclaimer stating that a new ballot would be sent if Democrats selected a replacement.

Democrats here have shown no appetite to replace Mr. Taylor. In fact, state party officials have already been in contact with Mr. Orman’s team.

“There are a lot of voters — Republicans, unaffiliateds and Democrats — who are going to be inclined to support somebody who is not part of the establishment,” said Paul Davis, the Democratic nominee for governor, who is in a tight race against Gov. Sam Brownback. But Mr. Davis hastened to add that he had no plans to endorse Mr. Orman.

Would he vote or Mr. Orman? “Well, we’ll see,” he said with a smile.

So far, the well-financed national Democratic super PACs have been cagey about their intentions. Mr. Orman, in an interview, declined an opportunity to say that he did not want aid from such groups, calling such questions “hypotheticals.”

Mr. Orman, who said he would release more information about his assets this week, pledged to keep writing checks for his campaign but would not say if he had set any limit on his spending.

He said he had not been in touch with the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, but had received a “very supportive” phone call from Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine. Mr. King and Bernie Sanders from Vermont are the only independents in the Senate, and both caucus with the Democrats.

On Thursday night, there was no hand-shaking or back-slapping as Mr. Orman strolled through the tailgate crowds before a Kansas State University football game in Manhattan, Kan., talking only to those who recognized him.

One of them, Scott Millette, 54, of Clay Center, Kan., called Mr. Roberts a “Washington insider” and said he was frustrated with Republicans. But in a pointed tone, he also demanded to know which caucus Mr. Orman would join.

Mr. Orman would not budge.

Correction: September 20, 2014

An earlier version of this article described incorrectly Exemplar Wealth Management, in which Mr. Orman and Mr. Gupta are both invested. It is a wealth management firm, not a wealth management fund.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Democrats Pin Senate Hopes on a Kansan. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Politics

Lacking a House, a Senator Is Renewing His Ties in Kansas

By JONATHAN MARTINFEB. 7, 2014

Inside

Photo

Pat Roberts, a three-term Republican senator from Kansas, lists on his voter registration a home in Dodge City owned by two donors, but lives in a home in Alexandria, Va. Facing a Tea Party challenger, he has begun appealing to conservatives.

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DODGE CITY, Kan. — It is hard to find anyone who has seen Senator Pat Roberts here at the redbrick house on a golf course that his voter registration lists as his home. Across town at the Inn Pancake House on Wyatt Earp Boulevard, breakfast regulars say the Republican senator is a virtual stranger.

“He calls it home,” said Jerald Miller, a retiree. “But I’ve been here since ’77, and I’ve only seen him twice.”

The 77-year-old senator went to Congress in 1981 and became a fixture: a member of the elite Alfalfa Club and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which made him a regular on the Sunday talk shows. His wife became a real estate broker in Alexandria, Va., the suburb where the couple live, boasting of her “extensive knowledge” of the area.

But such emblems of Washington status have turned hazardous in a Republican establishment threatened by the Tea Party and unnerved by the defeat of incumbents like Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, who was viewed as a creature of the capital.

Photo

Mr. Roberts is registered to vote at this house in Dodge City, Kan.

Mr. Roberts is now desperate to re-establish ties to Kansas and to adjust his politics to fit the rise of the right in the state. But his efforts underscore the awkward reality of Republicans who, after coming of age in an era of comity and esteem for long-term service, are trying to remake themselves to be warriors for a Tea Party age.

In an interview, the three-term senator acknowledged that he did not have a home of his own in Kansas. The house on a country club golf course that he lists as his voting address belongs to two longtime supporters and donors — C. Duane and Phyllis Ross — and he says he stays with them when he is in the area. He established his voting address there the day before his challenger in the August primary, Milton Wolf, announced his candidacy last fall, arguing that Mr. Roberts was out of touch with his High Plains roots.

“I have full access to the recliner,” the senator joked. Turning serious, he added, “Nobody knows the state better than I do.”

That assertion is disputed by Tea Party activists energized by Mr. Wolf’s candidacy.

“In four and one-half going on five years of existence have we been contacted by Senator Roberts or any of his staff? Not once,” said Chuck Henderson, a Tea Party activist in Manhattan, Kan., who mocked the notion of the senator’s “official” residence here.

Mr. Roberts’s race highlights the divisions within the Republican Party that are playing out in primaries across the country at a time when anti-Washington animus is running high and moderate voices have been displaced by lawmakers with conservative positions on abortion, taxes and education.

Mr. Roberts has suddenly begun aligning himself with the most conservative elements of the Senate, after a career in the mainstream conservative tradition of fellow Kansans like Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum.

He opposed a major spending project at his beloved alma mater, Kansas State University, that he had sought for a decade, because it was tied to a larger appropriations measure. And he called for the resignation of the health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, the daughter-in-law of his former boss, Representative Keith Sebelius, over the troubled rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

“It isn’t personal,” Mr. Roberts said of demanding that Ms. Sebelius quit. “Was it tough? Sure, it was tough.”

When Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, took to the Senate floor last fall for 21 hours to protest the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Roberts joined him in the early morning.

He also opposed a United Nations treaty banning discrimination against people with disabilities after being personally lobbied to support it by his predecessor, Ms. Kassebaum, and by Mr. Dole, who uses a wheelchair. (Mr. Roberts said he did not trust the United Nations.)

“I have to say I’m disappointed in Pat,” said Ms. Kassebaum, referring to both the treaty vote and his larger reluctance to stand up to his party’s right wing. “You’re not sent there just to go whichever way the polls tell us.”

Mr. Dole, who supports Mr. Roberts, acknowledged that his old friend’s vote had irritated him “a little bit.” “My view is we need to be a party of inclusion, and that includes moderates as well as conservatives,” Mr. Dole said.

Mr. Roberts’s aides candidly acknowledge that the moves are an effort to ensure that he will not suffer the same fate as Mr. Lugar, who was criticized for staying in hotels when he returned home and listed on his voter registration an Indianapolis address at which he did not reside.

Mr. Roberts moved his address from a rental property he owned in Dodge City but had long since leased to tenants, and got a new driver’s license giving the golf course home as his address.

Photo

Mr. Roberts, a Kansas Republican, owns a home in Alexandria, Va.

He began paying the Rosses $300 a month to allow him to stay overnight with them occasionally. “We’re not going to get Lugared,” said David Kensinger, an adviser to Mr. Roberts.

Mr. Ross said in a telephone interview that he could not remember how many times the senator had stayed at the family’s home since October. “I would say several,” he said. Asked when the last time was, he said he could not remember, and the senator’s staff also declined to provide dates, but said he had stayed there “a few” times.

Job security has rarely been an issue for Mr. Roberts, who has tended to his state’s agricultural needs and delivered projects. He won with 60 percent of the vote in 2008, before the rise of the Tea Party, with its anti-establishment ethos, suspicion of long-term Washington tenure and emphasis on ideological purity.

“I think career politicians are changed by Washington,” said Mr. Wolf, Mr. Roberts’s opponent, who is a radiologist and a second cousin of President Obama on the president’s maternal side.

Kansas has not had a Democratic United States senator since 1939, but the Republican Party here no longer embraces the consensus-minded centrist-style politics of its most famous son, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The national Tea Party-versus-establishment battle has become particularly vivid in Kansas, where conservatives, including Gov. Sam Brownback, have ousted their party’s old guard from power in the State Capitol after decades in which a coalition of center-right Republicans and Democrats had effective control.

“Pat’s very cognizant of what’s happened to the party,” said Mr. Brownback, who served alongside Mr. Roberts in the Senate until being elected governor in 2010.

Given the changing political climate, Mr. Brownback says that Mr. Roberts is doing precisely what he needs to do to win another term. “Being active, being aggressive, being conservative,” the governor said. “He’s got to get through a Republican primary, and people are pretty fired up about what’s going on at the federal level.”

Nowhere is mistrust of Washington more evident than in the Capitol. There are two statues of Eisenhower in the building, but conversations with the new vanguard of conservatives here seem to reflect the Capitol’s gripping mural of a zealous-looking John Brown more than the even-tempered Eisenhower.

“I believe that to really turn the country around there will have to be some political martyrs out there,” said State Representative Marty Read, a rancher and auctioneer who is one of the few state legislators backing Mr. Wolf.

Still, Mr. Wolf’s obstacles are formidable. He has only $179,000 in the bank, compared with Mr. Roberts’s $2.2 million, but his aides are hoping to win over deep-pocketed outside groups such as the Club for Growth by demonstrating viability before the primary.

On policy, though, Mr. Wolf is already having an impact. The latest reminder came this week, when Mr. Roberts opposed the five-year, nearly $1 trillion farm bill, which was prized by leaders of the Kansas farm lobby but opposed by Tea Party activists. Mr. Roberts, who had written an earlier version of the measure, said the final legislation included too many subsidies.

In the interview, Mr. Roberts conceded that “everything’s changed” about politics since he began working as a staff member. He arrived in Washington in 1967, and was first elected in 1980, in an era when finding a new house and school for the children in the capital area was as much a part of coming to Congress as learning how to cast a vote, and when he was rarely questioned back home.

Now, connectedness to the home state is more important than ever in an election climate with Congress’s approval ratings at record lows and conservative activists seeking purity, not pork-barrel spending. The new political reality helps explain his extraordinary efforts to establish voting residency and be seen back in the state — in the last year, he has visited 72 of the state’s 105 counties, several of them more than once.

Sitting in his Senate office, across from a painting of a covered wagon and from photographs and totems from Kansas, Mr. Roberts said his loyalty to the state where his ancestors settled in the 1800s was beyond question. “I’ve been to every county in Kansas more than anybody else,” he said, pausing for a moment before noting that only Mr. Dole “might quarrel with that.”

“Senators have a tendency to get involved in their committees and important works,” Mr. Roberts said, recalling Mr. Lugar. “You get involved in that, and you’re not out there touring 105 counties like I am. We get out.”

Correction: February 11, 2014

A picture caption on Saturday with an article about efforts by Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, to re-establish ties to his home state in light of efforts by the Tea Party to threaten establishment Republican candidates misidentified the Virginia community where Mr. Roberts lives with his wife in a home owned by the couple. As the article correctly noted, it is Alexandria, not Arlington.

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on February 8, 2014, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Lacking a House, a Senator Is Renewing His Ties in Kansas. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Politics

National G.O.P. Moves to Take Over Campaign of a Kansas Senator

By JONATHAN MARTINSEPT. 4, 2014

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Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas addressed a town hall meeting in Troy, Kan., on Aug. 11.

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WASHINGTON — National Republicans on Thursday moved to take control of the campaign of Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas by sending a longtime party strategist to the state to advise him, a day after his hopes for re-election and those of his party for taking control of the Senate were threatened by the attempted withdrawal of the Democrat in the race.

Also on Thursday, the Kansas secretary of state, Kris Kobach, a Republican, ruled that the Democratic nominee, Chad Taylor, could not withdraw his name from the ballot. Democratic officials said Mr. Taylor would file a legal challenge to the ruling.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is sending Chris LaCivita, who has served as a political troubleshooter in past Republican campaigns, to counsel Mr. Roberts and help oversee his campaign. The committee will also seek to hire a local lawyer in any legal challenge against Mr. Taylor, who had tried to drop off the ballot on the last day candidates were allowed to do so.

Mr. LaCivita is expected to be in Kansas by this weekend.

Photo

Greg Orman, center, who is running for Mr. Roberts's seat as an independent, in Topeka, Kan., on Wednesday. Mr. Orman's consultants are Democrats, but he has been embraced by a group of disaffected moderate Republicans in the state.

Mr. Taylor’s attempt to drop out of the race elevated Greg Orman, a well-funded independent candidate whose television ads have been on the Kansas airwaves since July. With a Libertarian, Randall Batson, who may take votes from the right, also on the ballot, Mr. Roberts could be in jeopardy after having been thought to be a relatively safe incumbent.

Further, Republicans’ expectations nationally that they would have to defend just two seats, in Kentucky and Georgia, in a year that finds them targeting as many as a dozen Democratic-controlled seats, have been scuttled. With many of the most competitive Senate races still effectively tied two months before the election, surprises in places like Kansas could prove crucial in determining whether Republicans take the six seats they need to win a Senate majority.

Republicans have had a lock on Kansas’ two Senate seats since 1939, and Mr. Orman has notably refused to commit to caucusing with the Democrats if he wins.

But after a congressional career of more than three decades in which he has never received less than 60 percent of the vote, Mr. Roberts now finds himself in what is shaping up to be the race of his life. Many senior Republicans, who privately hoped that the 78-year-old senator would retire, say he partly has himself to blame.

Mr. Roberts won just 48 percent of the vote in his primary last month, holding off a Tea Party Republican in part because there were two other minor candidates on the ballot, each of whom took more than 5 percent. In that race, Mr. Roberts was battered over revelations in The New York Times that he had no home of his own in Kansas and stayed in the spare room of a donor’s house when he visited Dodge City, the town he lists as his residence.

Mr. Roberts’s campaign manager resurrected the issue immediately after the primary last month when he said the senator was heading “back home for two days or three to rest.” By “home,” the manager, Leroy Towns, meant Mr. Roberts’s home in Alexandria, Va.

More troubling to Republicans, and stunning to Mr. Orman’s backers, is that Mr. Roberts has not aired any television commercials in the month since his Aug. 5 primary win. In that same time period, Mr. Orman’s ads have consistently aired. National Republicans have complained for months about Mr. Roberts’s spending decisions, the quality of his TV ads and the campaign’s overall readiness to confront the serious political threat facing the senator, who first came to Washington as a staff member in the late 1960s.

It was not until Mr. Taylor moved, at the nudging of some Democrats, to take himself off the ballot late Wednesday that Republican officials were able to fully seize the campaign. Republicans, in making the case that Mr. Taylor, a local prosecutor, could not drop out this late, had noted that Kansas law states that a candidate who withdraws must be “incapable of fulfilling the duties of office if elected.”

Mr. Taylor said in a statement on Thursday that the secretary of state’s office had told him the day before that his letter requesting that his name be removed from the ballot “was sufficient” for him to withdraw from the race. He also made it clear that he was ending his campaign, even if his name was still on the ballot.

Mr. Roberts’s campaign on Wednesday called the move “a corrupt bargain,” and Democratic sources said that Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, had been in touch with Mr. Taylor. But Republicans’ central focus will be on hammering Mr. Orman — “making him a Democrat,” as one Republican strategist put it.

“Like many Kansans, Greg’s tried both parties and has been disappointed in both,” said Sam Edelen, Mr. Orman’s spokesman. “That’s why he’s running as an independent.”

Mr. Orman, a 45-year-old former energy entrepreneur who became wealthy selling his business to a utility, has criticized both parties. His consultants are Democrats, but he has been embraced by a group of disaffected moderate Republicans in Kansas who have been locked in a political feud with Gov. Sam Brownback, also a Republican.

Kansas politics have been roiled in recent years. The rise of the Tea Party and the election of President Obama have prompted Republicans to embrace a purer brand of conservatism and purge what had long been a robust moderate wing from its ranks. Mr. Roberts has sought to adapt to this new era, voting against spending bills that included projects for the state that he had sought, but both public and private polling indicated in the month since his primary that he was vulnerable to Mr. Orman.

Now, Mr. LaCivita, a Marine veteran, is being sent in to rescue Mr. Roberts, himself a former Marine officer.

Correction: September 4, 2014

An earlier version of this article misstated the year Republicans began their lock on the two Senate seats in Kansas. It is 1939, not 1932.

A version of this article appears in print on September 5, 2014, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: National G.O.P. Moves to Take Over Campaign of a Kansas Senator. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

In Domestic Violence Cases, N.F.L. Has a History of Lenience

By BILL PENNINGTON and STEVE EDERSEPT. 19, 2014

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On April 10, 2007, after more than 50 National Football League players had been arrested in the previous football season, Commissioner Roger Goodell was widely hailed for instituting a newly stringent personal conduct policy. Mr. Goodell threatened to banish players for off-the-field transgressions and installed himself as the judge and jury presiding over every case.

Mr. Goodell insisted that he would mete out discipline without waiting for the judicial system.

“It is my job — not law enforcement’s job — to protect the National Football League,” he said at the time.

But in his role as the N.F.L.’s hard-bitten sheriff, Mr. Goodell appears to have had a major blind spot: domestic violence cases. Players charged with domestic violence routinely received considerably lighter punishments than players accused of other offenses, like drug use or drunken driving. Often, they were not punished at all. On Friday, seven years after he implemented the personal conduct policy, Mr. Goodell acknowledged publicly that it had failed and would be overhauled.

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On Friday, seven years after he implemented the personal conduct policy, Roger Goodell acknowledged publicly that it had failed and would be overhauled.

“We should have had the personal conduct policy reviewed more frequently, to make the changes necessary to deal with the issues that have changed,” he said at a news conference in which he announced that outside experts would help the league devise a new system for handling domestic violence cases.

An examination of dozens of arrests of N.F.L. players since Mr. Goodell established his personal conduct policy in 2007 — and the fines and penalties doled out by the league — shows that suspensions of two to four games, and sometimes more, were far more likely for players arrested on drunken driving, marijuana possession or weapon charges. A vast majority of players charged with domestic violence crimes, if they were disciplined by the league at all, received one-game suspensions even after pleading guilty to lesser related charges or entering pretrial intervention programs.

The disparity in punishments within the league is illustrated in numerous cases. On Nov. 25, 2011, for example, Green Bay Packers linebacker Erik Walden was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his live-in girlfriend. The charge was reduced to disorderly conduct and then dismissed after Walden agreed to perform 50 hours of community service and receive counseling.

The N.F.L. suspended Walden for one game.

Less than two months earlier, the police seized two and a half pounds of marijuana sent to the home of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Jerome Simpson. The league suspended Simpson for three games.

“I don’t think the N.F.L. did anything more than give lip service to the notion that they were taking domestic abuse seriously,” said Ann DeLaney, an advocate for victims of domestic violence and the former executive director of the Julian Center in Indianapolis, a victim support group.

Referring to the Ray Rice case, Ms. DeLaney continued, “That’s what they did this time until it was caught on video.”

Mr. Rice, then a Baltimore Ravens running back, was suspended for only two games after being accused of assaulting his fiancée, Janay Palmer, in February; Ms. Palmer is now married to Mr. Rice. After a firestorm of criticism that the punishment was inadequate, Mr. Goodell increased the league’s minimum suspension for a first-time domestic violence offense to six games. After a video surfaced of Mr. Rice knocking out Ms. Palmer in a hotel elevator, Mr. Goodell suspended Mr. Rice indefinitely.

Some of the cases drew criticism at the time, but the recent high-profile episodes have led to a firestorm of protest from inside and outside football.

Tyrone Thomas, a Washington lawyer who advises on sports cases, said the N.F.L. had always had the power to take a tougher tack in instances in which there were accusations of domestic violence, but had chosen not to. Mr. Thomas said that the N.F.L. had treated domestic violence as a back-burner concern, and that punishing players caught doping or driving under the influence had been a higher priority.

“There certainly could have been a harsher interpretation of certain standards,” Mr. Thomas said.

In multiple cases since 2007, the N.F.L.’s response to domestic violence arrests appeared arbitrary.

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Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L.

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L. N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for his role in poor decision-making surrounding domestic violence cases and promised a revamped personal conduct policy to address future cases. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

Within the first year of the personal conduct policy, the contrast in the handling of different cases was on display when three members of the Pittsburgh Steelers — running back Najeh Davenport, linebacker James Harrison and wide receiver Cedrick Wilson — were accused in domestic violence cases, according to news reports at the time.

Mr. Davenport, who was accused during the season, was never suspended and was acquitted after a trial that took place after the season. Mr. Harrison, a star and an important player during the Steelers’ run to the Super Bowl after the 2008 season, also was not suspended. But Mr. Wilson, a lesser-known player, was dropped from the team within hours of his arrest, and he never played in the N.F.L. again.

During the last seven years, when a domestic abuse arrest involved a player who was not a starter or a major contributor to the team, the player was sometimes released by his team. In those cases, the league would not have had to consider a suspension.

Mr. Harrison’s agent, William Parise, said the league had made the right call with Mr. Harrison. “There was never anything there,” Mr. Parise said. “He did not strike her or do anything like that. He didn’t press charges. She didn’t press charges. And the league dropped the whole thing.”

In one of the higher-profile cases, Brandon Marshall, a wide receiver with the Denver Broncos at the time, was initially suspended for three games over events that included his being arrested on charges of assaulting his girlfriend. But his suspension was later reduced to one game.

In 2010, Tony McDaniel, a defensive lineman for the Miami Dolphins, was suspended for one game for violating the league’s personal conduct policy after he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct after a domestic dispute with his live-in girlfriend, according to The Sun-Sentinel newspaper in South Florida. He was sentenced to probation and ordered to attend counseling.

In another case in 2008, Michael Boley, a linebacker with the Atlanta Falcons at the time, was suspended by the league for a game after he was charged with battery. His wife at the time had told the police that he “became physical with her.” The case did not go to trial.

His lawyer, Randall Kessler of Atlanta, said it was troubling that Mr. Boley had been punished by the N.F.L.

“I was not happy that he was suspended based on an allegation, but I’m glad it ended there,” Mr. Kessler said.

Later, the police investigated Mr. Boley on child abuse allegations, which were raised amid a child-custody dispute. The outcome of that investigation is unclear.

Besides the Rice case, the N.F.L. has also been harshly criticized for its handling of three other recent abuse cases — those of Adrian Peterson, a star running back for the Minnesota Vikings, who has been accused of injuring one of his children; Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy, who was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend; and San Francisco 49ers defensive end Ray McDonald, who was arrested last month on suspicion of domestic violence.

Mr. Peterson was kept of out one game and then reinstated before an outcry led to his being suspended indefinitely. Mr. Hardy played in one game, but is being kept out while still being paid. Mr. McDonald has continued to play for the team, which has said it is waiting for his case to be resolved judicially.

Nita Chaudhary, a founder of UltraViolet, a women’s rights advocacy group, remained critical of the N.F.L. on Friday despite Goodell’s pledge to revamp the league’s personal conduct policy and penalties.

“This press circus did nothing to change Goodell’s long history of inaction on and blatant mishandling of domestic violence in the N.F.L.,” Ms. Chaudhary said in a statement. “We call on all of the N.F.L.’s sponsors to take a stand against domestic violence by withdrawing their support for the N.F.L. until Goodell is out of office.”

Elisa Choi contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In N.F.L. Get-Tough Policy, Blind Spot for Abuse. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Back in Public, Vowing to Do More

Roger Goodell Says N.F.L. Will Overhaul Personal Conduct Policy

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 19, 2014

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Commissioner Roger Goodell ended more than a week of silence on Friday when addressed the domestic abuse crisis engulfing the N.F.L.

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After more than a week out of view with a national debate raging over domestic violence and the future of the N.F.L., Commissioner Roger Goodell said Friday that he would form a committee to lay the groundwork for overhauling the league’s personal conduct policy.

In a hastily announced news conference in a Midtown ballroom teeming with television cameras, Goodell said the policy, which he has wielded ad hoc and by fiat, failed because it was opaque and inconsistently applied.

Goodell said he hoped to unveil a new personal conduct policy by the Super Bowl in February, and he said he would consult various experts on creating a transparent system to penalize players for their off-field behavior. He offered little in the way of specifics but said he was open to anything, including working with the N.F.L. Players Association and reviewing his role in determining violations.

“There will be changes to our personal conduct policy,” he said. “I know this will happen because we will make it happen.”

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Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L.

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L. N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for his role in poor decision-making surrounding domestic violence cases and promised a revamped personal conduct policy to address future cases. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

He added, “We will get our house in order first.”

Goodell, who at times Friday was both apologetic and defensive, has been at the center of a firestorm that ignited Sept. 8, when video footage was released showing Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancée in an elevator. The Ravens promptly released him, and Goodell suspended him indefinitely. But the video raised fresh questions about why Goodell initially suspended Rice in July for only two games.

The uproar escalated when the Minnesota Vikings deactivated, reactivated and again deactivated Adrian Peterson after he was accused of beating his 4-year-old son.

The Carolina Panthers took a similar step when they deactivated Greg Hardy, who has been convicted of assaulting and threatening his girlfriend but was not suspended by Goodell.

After the Rice video emerged, Goodell gave two brief interviews, then went out of view, even avoiding marquee games in Maryland and California, where the 49ers opened a new stadium. Goodell’s silence seemed to embolden critics who said he mishandled Rice’s case and did not understand the gravity of domestic violence and child abuse.

Arriving 17 minutes late to the podium, Goodell began by reiterating that his initial response to the Rice case was wrong. “I am not satisfied with the way we handled it,” he said. “I made a mistake. I am not satisfied with the process we went through. I am not satisfied with the conclusion.”

Despite a growing number of calls from women’s groups, advocates for victims of domestic violence and even former players, Goodell said that he had not considered resigning.

“I have not,” he said, adding later that the league’s owners supported him. “I am focused on doing my job, and doing it to the best of my abilities. I understand when people are critical of your performance, but we have a lot of work to do. That’s my focus.”

Hours after Goodell finished speaking, ESPN published a lengthy article citing multiple anonymous sources that said the Ravens had pushed for Rice to be treated leniently and that Goodell agreed to their request.

In a statement, the Ravens said, “The ESPN.com ‘Outside the Lines’ article contains numerous errors, inaccuracies, false assumptions and, perhaps, misunderstandings.” The team added it would fully address the article after returning from Cleveland, where it is set to face the Browns on Sunday.

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Goodell said he had not considered resigning despite calls for him to do so by women’s groups, advocates for victims of domestic violence and former players.

At the news conference, Goodell did not deviate from comments he made after the scandal broke nearly two weeks ago. Goodell repeated that he had not seen the video of Rice punching Janay Palmer, who is now Rice’s wife, and he was confident that no one at the N.F.L. had seen it either, despite news reports to the contrary. Goodell said he suspended Rice indefinitely last week because the video was “inconsistent” with what Rice had told him about the episode in a meeting before the original suspension.

Goodell did not answer a question by a reporter from TMZ, the website that first published the video, on why the N.F.L. could not get the video from the Atlantic City hotel and casino where the episode occurred. “We got it with one phone call,” the reporter said. “You have a whole legal department.”

Goodell deflected other questions about the ins and outs of his admitted fumbling of the Rice investigation and said more answers would be provided by Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director who was hired by the league to uncover what happened. The mushrooming crisis — the biggest of Goodell’s eight years as commissioner — took an even more bizarre turn when a man at the news conference who apparently is a regular on Howard Stern’s show was grabbed by a security officer as he approached the podium and was pulled into an exit to the side of the stage. While being hauled off, the man grabbed a large blue curtain behind the podium and screamed that he did not want to be taken into an elevator.

On Thursday night, Goodell sent a letter to teams announcing part of the league’s initiative was to begin supporting both the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and to mandate education and training for all players and staff on preventing abuse. The letter was the league’s follow-up to his recent promise to increase the league’s commitment to fight both domestic and sexual violence.

That has not alleviated the pressure on the league. Procter & Gamble joined the list of sponsors distancing themselves from the N.F.L., pulling its Crest toothpaste brand out of a campaign held in conjunction with the league’s breast cancer awareness month. It is a major blow to the league’s biggest effort on behalf of female fans, when players wear pink shoes, arm bands or other equipment during games in October.

“Crest believes Breast Cancer Awareness is a critically important program to support women and their health, and, as planned, is making a $100,000 donation to the American Cancer Society for breast cancer awareness and will participate in media and retailer activities to help drive attention to the cause,” the company said in a statement. “The brand has decided to cancel on-field activation with N.F.L. teams.”

This follows unusually critical public statements from sponsors, including Anheuser-Busch, McDonald’s and Visa, regarding the league’s handling of Rice’s suspension and the other cases.

Goodell said at the news conference that he did not believe the league was close to losing a sponsor.

The criticism grew while Goodell stayed silent, his letter to the teams Thursday being his first large-scale communication in nine days. In it, he promised the league would be committed to battling domestic and sexual violence on a large scale.

He said in the letter that calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline had increased 84 percent during the week of Sept. 8, the week the Rice video became public, but that the hotline did not have enough staff to answer all the calls. He said the league would provide financial support so the hotline could hire 25 more people. He also promised money and promotional support to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, including its Loveisrespect project, a text-messaging hotline for young adults dealing with dating abuse.

The league also said educational programs on preventing domestic abuse and sexual violence would begin within the next 30 days for all 32 teams. There are also plans for a public awareness campaign, although the recent spate of cases involving players seems to have accomplished that.

Lynn Zinser contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Resurfacing With Vow to Do More. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Ravens’ Rice Draws 2-Game Suspension From Goodell

By KEN BELSONJULY 24, 2014

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Ravens running back Ray Rice practiced at training camp on Thursday, but offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak will have to plan an offense without him for two games.

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With training camps opening across the N.F.L., Commissioner Roger Goodell has begun handing out suspensions to players for various instances of unacceptable behavior in the off-season. Running back Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens drew the first punishment, receiving a two-game ban Thursday in connection with an incident in which he was accused of assaulting a woman who was then his fiancée and is now his wife.

The penalty imposed on Rice, which Goodell accompanied with a letter to him that was made public by the league, was another example of the immense power Goodell wields in such matters. But it immediately attracted considerable criticism, with everyone from commentators to players to women’s advocates to writers on social media noting that other players in the N.F.L. had been suspended for more than two games for actions that were hardly as threatening as what Rice was accused of doing.

However, Rice’s case is not the only difficult one Goodell is addressing. Also in line to be potentially penalized is Jim Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, who was arrested in March on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and who later had his driver’s license suspended for a year. Goodell’s treatment of Irsay will be closely watched by players, who want to see how the commissioner handles a case involving an owner, who, in effect, is one of his bosses.

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Commissioner Roger Goodell is expected to impose several penalties for off-season misbehavior.

Still, on Thursday, all of the attention was focused on the Rice case. The two-game suspension that Goodell imposed, for violating the league’s personal-conduct policy, stems from Rice’s arrest after an altercation last February with Janay Palmer in an elevator in Atlantic City. A video of the incident, in which Palmer appears to be unconscious, subsequently surfaced, and Rice ended up being charged in March with felony assault.

But Rice has since entered a pretrial intervention program and will not serve any jail time, and he and Palmer are now married.

Goodell, who also levied financial penalties against Rice on Thursday exceeding $500,000, met with the player last month as he considered what steps to take, and he referred to that encounter in the letter that the league released.

“As you acknowledged during our meeting, your conduct was unquestionably inconsistent with league polices and the standard of behavior required of everyone who is part of the N.F.L.,” Goodell said in the letter. “The league is an entity that depends on integrity and in the confidence of the public, and we simply cannot tolerate conduct that endangers others or reflects negatively on our game. This is particularly true with respect to domestic violence and other forms of violence against women.”

Still, many of those who wondered why Rice did not get more than a two-game suspension noted that under the league’s collective bargaining agreement, players who test positive for the first time for a performance-enhancing drugs are suspended for four games, or twice what Rice received. That penalty increases to eight games for a second offense and a full-year suspension for a third.

Although the drug issue is a serious one, it does not elicit the fears and concerns that the Rice incident did, with its overriding image of violence against women. And that made many people upset that Rice received a lighter penalty than someone who might have taken a banned substance, perhaps even unintentionally.

Even a first-year player in the N.F.L., with barely any practices under his belt, weighed in.

“No one should put his hands on a woman,” said the player, Calvin Pryor, the first-round draft pick of the Jets, according to Yahoo Sports. "That’s the way I was raised.”

According to a person in the N.F.L. with knowledge of Goodell’s deliberations in the Rice case, Goodell took his cue from the legal developments in the matter. Rice will not go to jail, and the initial felony charge was reduced to what amounted to counseling. Rice and his wife also appeared contrite, speaking publicly together.

“I believe that you are sincere in your desire to learn from this matter and move forward toward a healthy relationship and successful career,” Goodell said in his letter.

Goodell’s punishment will not keep Rice from participating in the Ravens’ training camp and from playing in preseason games. After Goodell acted on Thursday, Rice issued a statement in which he said his goal was “to earn back the trust of the people, especially the children, I let down because of this incident.”

“I am a role model, and I take that responsibility seriously,” he added. “My actions going forward will reveal that.”

Rice’s coach, John Harbaugh, said: “There are consequences when you make a mistake like that. I stand behind Ray. He’s a heck of a guy. He’s done everything right since.”

Goodell’s judgment will remain in the spotlight. He may also suspend linebacker Aldon Smith of the San Francisco 49ers, who was arrested in April on charges of making a bomb threat at an airport in Los Angeles. The charges were later dropped. Smith also pleaded no contest to three felony weapons charges and two misdemeanor counts of driving under the influence. This month, a judge in California sentenced Smith to community service but no jail time.

Josh Gordon of the Cleveland Browns could face a yearlong suspension after reportedly failing a drug test for the third time. Greg Hardy of the Carolina Panthers was arrested in May on domestic violence charges and could also be suspended.

Then there is Irsay. Last year, team officials from Denver and Detroit were suspended after being caught driving while intoxicated. Owners have been fined in recent years, but Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. of the 49ers was the last one to be suspended. That was in 1998, after he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of concealing an extortion plot.

Whatever Goodell decides in these cases, comparisons are certain to be made and questions raised.

“When you have a disciplinary policy where the commissioner controls everything,” said Robert A. Boland, who teaches sports law at New York University and was previously an N.F.L. agent, “there will always be some inequities.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 25, 2014, on page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: Ravens’ Rice Draws Two-Game Ban From Goodell Over Assault Case. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Suspended for Abuse, Then Patted on the Back

Ray Rice's Suspension Is Followed by Praise

JULY 24, 2014

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Ray Rice after the Baltimore Ravens' training camp practice on Wednesday.

Sports of The Times

By MICHAEL POWELL

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The Baltimore Ravens really are blessed.

Let’s say Ray Rice, the team’s Pro Bowl running back, had tested positive for steroids. Under league rules, he would have faced a minimum four-game suspension. A punishment that severe might have gotten in the way of this fine team of men and their playoff drive.

Instead Rice drove his hand into his then-fiancée’s head, knocking her cold last February in an elevator at an Atlantic City casino. In the National Football League, domestic battery apparently counts as half-a-roid, good for a two-game suspension.

After the N.F.L. handed down its suspension and a fine exceeding $500,000, and after the prosecutors washed their hands of the case (Rice will not be charged with a crime or jailed or fined by the courts, and he will have the record of his arrest expunged), Rice got to hear his putative bosses talk about what a fine, good, upstanding man he is.

Rice married his fiancée, Janay, one day after an Atlantic County grand jury indicted him for assaulting her and causing serious bodily harm.

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Rice, center, released a statement that said, "It is disappointing that I will not be with my teammates for the first two games of the season, but that’s my fault."

Pride of place goes to Ravens Coach John Harbaugh, who took the suspension in manly stride. “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I stand behind Ray. He’s a heck of a guy. He’s done everything right since.”

Then Harbaugh mumbled something about consequences of actions.

Thanks, big guy.

Ozzie Newsome, the team’s general manager, was all about deep feelings for the man who has averaged more than 1,000 yards rushing during his Ravens career. “We also respect the efforts Ray has made to become the best partner and father he can be,” Newsome said. “That night was not typical of the Ray Rice we know and respect.”

Here comes Commissioner Roger Goodell. The tousle-haired commissioner is a football lifer, having spent his career inside the N.F.L., which is another way of saying he knows from psychotic behavior. He has dealt with large men and their brandished pistols, their assault rifles, their beat-downs, their accidental shootings and their many and varied misbehaviors. A few years ago, he dealt with Ben Roethlisberger, the star quarterback and toast of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who was accused of what sounded a bit like rape in a bar. Goodell suspended him four entire games.

Vacations are hard to come by for Goodell. Last season the commissioner had a real headache. Aaron Hernandez, the New England Patriots’ Pro Bowl tight end, stood accused of shooting bullets into the chest, stomach and head of three people, all of whom are dead. The Patriots quickly released Hernandez for, among other malefactions, conduct detrimental to the N.F.L. Technically, Hernandez remains a free agent, but that’s a word drained of some meaning, as he’s being held in jail without bail.

On and on it goes.

Goodell, in a letter to Rice that was released by the league, tried to clamber onto the closest approximation of high ground. “The league is an entity that depends on integrity and in the confidence of the public, and we simply cannot tolerate conduct that endangers others or reflects negatively on our game,” he wrote. “This is particularly true with respect to domestic violence.”

Then, big softy that he is, the commissioner went misty-eyed.

“I believe that you are sincere in your desire to learn from this matter,” he wrote to Rice, “and move forward toward a healthy relationship and successful career.”

Then there’s Rice himself, who also released a statement that said: “It is disappointing that I will not be with my teammates for the first two games of the season, but that’s my fault. As I said earlier, I failed in many ways. But, Janay and I have learned from this.”

Janay’s lessons would appear to be somewhat different, and perhaps go to strategy. As in: Don’t get on an elevator with her 5-foot-8, 206-pound husband when he is angry.

What’s fascinating about domestic abuse is the delicacy with which men treat any mention of it. The original Atlantic City police report is a triumph of the passive voice. It notes that Janay Rice stepped onto the elevator with Rice and was “rendered unconscious.” One minute she’s in the elevator, the next — shazam! — she’s out.

Rice can be seen on tape putting his hands under the arms of his unconscious wife and dragging her from the elevator. He gets her four-fifths out before her feet get stuck in the door.

He gives her a puzzled look until what appears to be a hotel security guard walks over. A few seconds later, Janay stirs and sits dazed in the elevator door. Rice walks away, shaking his head.

It’s a pain when a woman’s face gets in the way of your fist.

When the prosecutor dropped charges earlier this year, Rice’s lawyer was thankful, sort of. “We were concerned,” he said, “that Mr. Rice would be treated more harshly because of his celebrity status. We are thankful he was not.”

There’s always something to be thankful for in this world. And here’s another: Rice can participate in training camp and all preseason games. He should be fresh and toned when he returns in mid-September.

Email: powellm@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on July 25, 2014, on page B12 of the New York edition with the headline: Suspended for Abuse, Then Patted on the Back. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

N.F.L. Domestic Violence Policy Toughened in Wake of Ray Rice Case

By KEN BELSONAUG. 28, 2014

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N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged in a letter to team owners that he made a mistake imposing only a two-game ban on the Ravens’ Ray Rice.

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In a rare mea culpa, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday that he had mishandled the Ray Rice case, in which the Baltimore Ravens running back was suspended for two games after being accused of assaulting his fiancée.

The suspension was announced late last month to an instant and furious uproar from women’s groups, organizations supporting victims of domestic violence and league players who felt the penalty was too light and inconsistent with punishments for other offenses.

“My disciplinary decision led the public to question our sincerity, our commitment and whether we understood the toll that domestic violence inflicts on so many families,” Goodell said in a letter to team owners. “I take responsibility both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn’t get it right. Simply put, we have to do better. And we will.”

Goodell said that effective immediately any N.F.L. employee — not only a player — who is found to have engaged in assault, battery, domestic violence or sexual assault that involved physical force will be suspended without pay for six games for a first offense. Second-time offenders will be banished from the league for at least one year.

Goodell said that second-time offenders could petition to be reinstated after one year, but that “there will be no presumption or assurance that the petition will be granted.”

The about-face by Goodell, the most powerful executive in American sports, was stunning in its earnestness and clarity. The commissioner wrote frequently in the first person and admitted that he had lost sight of not only the seriousness of domestic violence, but also the league’s role as a leader in the sports world. Coming a month after the suspension of Rice, Goodell’s decision appeared considered, not rushed.

But it is also one of the few times during his eight-year tenure that Goodell has publicly admitted to making such a mistake. Since becoming commissioner in 2006, he has grappled with one crisis after another, from players using guns to spying by teams to bullying and the use of homophobic and racist language by players. He has rarely backpedaled on his decisions even in the face of withering criticism.

Perhaps most significantly, Goodell has equivocated on the issue of concussions and their impact on the health of players. For years, Goodell and the league dismissed mounting evidence about the dangers of repeated head hits, including in front of members of Congress.

The league has since changed rules and pledged tens of millions of dollars to study the impact of concussions, but the commissioner has never acknowledged the league’s past role in trying to sidestep the issue.

That evasion may cost the league dearly. Frustration over the league’s stance is one reason nearly 5,000 retired players sued the N.F.L. and Riddell, a helmet manufacturer, for hiding from them the dangers of concussions. A federal judge has preliminarily approved a landmark 65-year settlement that would award millions of dollars to players with severe neurological disorders, and spend tens of millions more to monitor other players.

Unlike concussions, which have an impact on the game and the finances of the N.F.L., the league’s stance on domestic violence is not purely a financial issue. While the league has spent years courting female fans by, among other things, having its players wear pink cleats to raise awareness of breast cancer, Goodell also announced his new policy a week before the start of the regular season and ahead of a three-day weekend, when many people are on vacation.

Goodell initially defended the decision to suspend Rice for two games. He said he spoke directly to Rice and noted that he avoided a trial by entering a counseling program. “He is a young man that really understands the mistake he made and he is out and about and determined to make a positive difference,” Goodell said at the beginning of August.

But as blowback continued, he apparently recognized the issue was larger than just Rice. In his 2,000-word letter and memo, Goodell said that his decision was based as much on the obligation of the league to be held to a higher standard than other sports leagues and institutions.

“Much of the criticism stemmed from a fundamental recognition that the N.F.L. is a leader, that we do stand for important values, and that we can project those values in ways that have a positive impact beyond professional football,” he wrote.

Groups that criticized Goodell for being insensitive to the issue of domestic abuse applauded him for reversing course.

“This decision by N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell to change the league’s policy on how it disciplines players who beat their wives and girlfriends is a big win, not just for women, but for all N.F.L. players, staff and fans,” said Becky Bond, the political director of Credo, a women’s rights group.

The N.F.L. Players Association, which has often been at loggerheads with the commissioner over his penalties for players, did not publicly endorse Goodell’s tougher stance. In a statement, the union said only that it was informed of the N.F.L.’s decision and that “if we believe that players’ due process rights are infringed upon during the course of discipline, we will assert and defend our members’ rights.”

While other leagues employ an independent arbitrator to hear player appeals, the N.F.L. is essentially the judge and jury in disciplinary cases not covered by the collective bargaining agreement. This has led many commentators to compare Rice’s suspension over accusations that he assaulted his fiancée in an elevator to the four-game suspensions for players who violated the league’s drug policy.

On Wednesday, the league upheld its one-year suspension of Cleveland Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon for violating its substance-abuse policy. Afterward, Gordon criticized the league for not exercising “better discretion and judgment in my case.”

Still, Gordon’s penalty was based on guidelines agreed on between the league and the players union, not the commissioner. Goodell’s decision to more severely penalize those who commit domestic violence, on the other hand, has set a precedent.

“This is very rare,” said Marc Ganis, a consultant to several teams. “Goodell’s admission of having erred on something this important to society is very rare and speaks volumes about the confidence the N.F.L. has to admit its mistake.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 29, 2014, on page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: Goodell Admits He Was Wrong in Rice Case. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

A Punch Is Seen, and a Player Is Out

Ray Rice Cut by Ravens and Suspended by N.F.L.

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 8, 2014

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Ray Rice at a news conference with his wife, Janay, on May 23. Rice was initially suspended for two games by the N.F.L. before the Ravens terminated his contract on Monday.

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The National Football League’s handling of a domestic violence case is under renewed scrutiny after a graphic video emerged Monday, leading to the termination of the Baltimore Ravens star running back Ray Rice’s contract and his suspension from the league.

The video shows Rice punching his fiancée, who is now his wife, in the face, leaving her motionless on the floor of a hotel elevator in Atlantic City in February. He then dragged her unconscious body from the elevator.

Rice was charged with felony assault in March, but his wife, Janay Palmer, declined to testify. The charges were dropped and court-supervised counseling was ordered. Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, disciplined Rice in July with a two-game suspension, a penalty that was widely criticized as too lenient.

Previously published video of the altercation was taken from a camera outside the elevator and showed only the moments after Rice hit Palmer. But the emergence of the new video, published by the website TMZ, raised questions about what the N.F.L. knew, and when. A league spokesman said “no one in our office has seen it until today,” but he did not respond to inquiries about whether any of the league’s investigators who do not work in the office had previously seen the video.

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Surveillance video obtained by TMZ (warning: graphic).

“What makes the N.F.L. look especially bad in this case is the sense that the only reason they suspended Ray Rice indefinitely was to save face, rather than to actually address or punish the problem at hand,” said S. Adam Brasel, a professor of marketing at Boston College. “Do people think the N.F.L. would have done the same if they got the footage internally rather than having the whole world see it on TMZ?”

The league enjoys unmatched popularity, with soaring TV ratings and billions of dollars in revenue. But it has been tarnished by several embarrassing issues in recent years, including homophobic and racist bullying.

Late last month, after an uproar over his handling of the Rice case, Goodell admitted that he had mishandled the case and announced new, tougher standards for players and league employees who are found to have committed domestic violence.

After saying for weeks that he had acted appropriately by suspending Rice for two games, Goodell said that in the future, any N.F.L. employee, including nonplayers, would be suspended for six games for a first offense of domestic violence and a minimum of a year for a second offense.

In a letter to team owners, he said he took responsibility “both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn’t get it right.”

He did not, however, revisit Rice’s suspension — until the video was posted Monday.

The Ravens had not previously disciplined Rice in any public way, and after the episode, the team said on Twitter: “Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.” The post was deleted Monday afternoon.

Rice, with his wife at his side, apologized publicly in May. The Ravens’ coach, John Harbaugh, said he stood by Rice, his star running back, and Ravens fans gave Rice a loud ovation during a preseason game.

However, Harbaugh said Monday that the new video, which he said he was seeing for the first time, made things different.

“It changed things, of course,” Harbaugh said.

He added, “When someone you care about does wrong, and is faced with the consequences of doing wrong, and rightfully so, it is tough, it is hurtful.”

Goodell, who has wide discretion to penalize players for violating the league’s personal conduct policy, was condemned for giving Rice what many considered a light suspension, especially compared with harsher penalties for players who take performance-enhancing drugs. The N.F.L. received hundreds of phone calls in protest, and petitions with tens of thousands of signatures were collected.

The new video led to calls Monday from advocates for victims of domestic violence for Goodell to penalize Rice retroactively. Hours later, the Ravens announced Rice’s release on their Twitter account. Soon after, the league said it had indefinitely suspended Rice.

“Commissioner Roger Goodell has announced that based on the new video evidence that became available today, he has imposed an indefinite suspension on Ray Rice,” the N.F.L. said in a statement. Rice will have to apply to be reinstated.

Advocates applauded the actions taken Monday. “The Ravens have sent a strong message against domestic violence,” said Judy Harris Kluger, executive director for Sanctuary for Families, a nonprofit agency in New York that helps victims of domestic violence. “It was impossible to ignore or explain away.”

Over the next three years, Rice, the Ravens’ second career leading rusher and a three-time Pro Bowl player, was to receive $9.5 million in salary, $9 million in signing bonuses and an additional $5.2 million in performance bonuses, according to the website Spotrac.com. Contracts often include terms that allow teams to terminate a deal with a player if he acts in a way that is detrimental to the team.

The N.F.L. Players Association did not return calls for comment.

The league may have to overhaul the way it investigates player malfeasance, sports lawyers said Monday. A spokesman for the N.F.L. said in July that Goodell took his cue in the investigation in part from law enforcement officials who had access to more information than the league.

But Goodell has also said that the N.F.L. should be held to a higher standard.

“The N.F.L. is going to have to review its due diligence in this case,” said Mark Conrad, who teaches sports law at Fordham University. “Some have said the league should treat it as a criminal matter, but it’s a very public league, and if they want to keep their many constituents happy, they are going to have to find a new way of doing it.”

Rutgers University, where Rice played, also distanced itself from him on Monday, removing a video on the team’s website.

The university’s athletic director, Julie Hermann, called the TMZ.com video “very disturbing” and said it “serves to reinforce the ongoing need to educate and bring awareness to the issue of domestic violence.”

Zach Schonbrun contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 9, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: After Punch Is Seen, Rice Is Out. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football | Analysis |NYT Now

In League Ruled by Fiat, Response Seen as Flailing

Roger Goodell’s Change of Ray Rice Ban Doesn’t Quiet Criticism

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 15, 2014

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Commissioner Roger Goodell this month. During his eight-year tenure, he has regularly exercised his power to suspend players under the league’s personal conduct policy.

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The decision by N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell to increase Ray Rice’s suspension from two games to an indefinite ban has done little to quell the criticism that has surrounded the league this past week in its handling of domestic violence cases.

Adding to the uproar is the inconsistent approach of various N.F.L. teams to the issue, dealing with their own cases of accusations of domestic violence in ways that can be seen as ad hoc, opportunistic or even cynical. The teams may be struggling to make sense of Goodell’s actions in punishing Rice — and questions including what the league knew of the former Baltimore Raven’s case and when — and as such may not be certain what steps they should be taking.

In California, for instance, the 49ers have let lineman Ray McDonald, who was arrested in late August on suspicions of domestic violence and released on bail, to continue playing despite growing calls — from figures including the state’s lieutenant governor — to bench him.

In Minnesota on Friday, the Vikings deactivated their star running back, Adrian Peterson, after he was indicted on charges of abusing his 4-year-old son. The Vikings, who were routed by the New England Patriots at home Sunday, said on Monday that Peterson would rejoin the team for the next game.

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The Vikings said Monday that running back Adrian Peterson would rejoin the team for its next game.

And in North Carolina, the Panthers let defensive end Greg Hardy, who was found guilty of assaulting his girlfriend but has not been suspended by the league, play in their season opener. But the Panthers then deactivated him for Sunday’s game against Detroit. Hardy continues to practice with the team, which has not said whether he will suit up this weekend.

To complicate matters, Rice is expected to appeal his indefinite suspension, pushing the N.F.L.’s messy handling of his case back into the forefront. The N.F.L. Players Association has until 11:59 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday to respond to the league’s decision.

The scattershot approach is partly a result of Goodell’s self-professed goal of cleaning up the league’s rough-and-tumble image. During his eight-year tenure, he has regularly — and, to his critics, single-handedly and capriciously — exercised his power to suspend players under the league’s personal conduct policy. But the disparities among his rulings have sown confusion and resentment among players and fans who feel the league has not acted consistently or fairly. And the league has not provided the teams with a clear set of guidelines.

“The N.F.L. is absolutely its own worst enemy,” said David Gregory, the executive director of the Center for Labor and Employment Law at the St. John’s University School of Law. “If you’re going to have a commissioner’s office, you need to step up. This guy thought he could bluster his way through.”

Goodell’s penalties have run the gamut. When the league was criticized for not doing enough to prevent concussions, Goodell suspended players for helmet-to-helmet hits. Players have been suspended for varying numbers of games over gun violations and charges of drunken driving.

Players and coaches on the New Orleans Saints who were involved in a bounty system that rewarded players for hurting opponents were suspended for anywhere from three to 16 games. After an uproar, Goodell’s predecessor, Paul Tagliabue, was brought in to investigate. In a slap at Goodell, he vacated the player suspensions.

Goodell has defended his roles as judge, jury and executioner. By virtue of its being the largest and most powerful league, the N.F.L. is a bellwether, so players who act inappropriately must accept the consequences, he said.

“People expect a lot from the N.F.L.,” Goodell said on national television last week. “We accept that. We embrace that. That’s our opportunity to make a difference not just in the N.F.L., but in society in general.”

In August, after the league initially suspended Rice for two games, Goodell toughened the league’s policy in cases of domestic violence, enacting a minimum six-game ban for first-time offenders and a minimum one-year ban for second-time offenders. Then the public release on Sept. 8 of a video showing Rice knocking out his fiancée in an elevator at an Atlantic City casino in February prompted the Ravens to cut Rice and Goodell to impose the indefinite suspension.

Goodell’s playing catch-up in the wake of the Rice scandal has prompted activists, politicians and fans to urge him to step down. On Monday, he sent a memo to team executives to announce that four women had been appointed to “help lead and shape the N.F.L.’s policies and programs relating to domestic violence and sexual assault.” They will develop and enact policies for the league and help Goodell in disciplinary matters.

Even if Goodell were not trying to turn N.F.L. players into role models, he and the league he governs would still be viewed under a harsh light. With $10 billion in annual revenue and huge television ratings, the N.F.L. is far and away the most powerful and most popular league. With success comes scrutiny.

“The N.F.L. is at the top of the mountain, the tip of the spear, and everyone looks to see what they do,” said Scott Andresen, who teaches sports law at Northwestern University. “The N.F.L. has a special place in America right now, and they always have the eyeballs on them.”

In the coming days and weeks, those eyeballs may turn to Rice and his potential appeal. Rice could argue that the league cannot suspend him twice for the same infraction, or that the league and the Ravens, who terminated Rice’s multiyear contract, had penalized him twice.

Goodell said he had suspended Rice indefinitely after he saw the video that was released a week ago. If it is discovered that Goodell had indeed seen the video before he suspended Rice, then Rice could argue that Goodell had responded to public pressure, not new evidence. The league could theoretically counter that Rice’s longer suspension was justified because the newly released video had tarnished the league’s image.

Ultimately, if he hopes to avoid a similar situation, Goodell must codify what infractions warrant what kinds of suspensions, legal experts said. That is likely to require that Goodell cede ground and share power with the union, something he may be loath to do.

But if the two sides were to establish a schedule of transparent penalties for infractions, Goodell could share the responsibility — and the blame.

“Now’s the time to scale down your sheriff role and find some deputies in the union,” said Michael LeRoy, who teaches collective bargaining and sports labor law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “I think we’re learning that there is swift justice in social media for commissioners, too.”

A version of this news analysis appears in print on September 16, 2014, on page B13 of the New York edition with the headline: In League Ruled by Fiat, Response Seen as Flailing. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Assault Charges Add to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil

Cardinals’ Jonathan Dwyer Arrested as Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy Leave Teams

By PAT BORZI and STEVE EDERSEPT. 17, 2014

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Arizona’s Jonathan Dwyer was arrested Wednesday in a case the authorities said involved two July episodes at his home.

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EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — Jonathan Dwyer of the Arizona Cardinals was arrested in a domestic violence investigation Wednesday as the N.F.L. continued to find itself under siege for its handling of such cases.

Before Dwyer’s arrest, the Minnesota Vikings reversed course, placing Adrian Peterson, a star running back facing child abuse charges, on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list. The Carolina Panthers did the same with Greg Hardy, a defensive end appealing a domestic violence case.

The Phoenix police, in a statement, said detectives arrested Dwyer, a running back, in Tempe on charges of aggravated assault in a domestic violence case stemming from two separate episodes at his home in southeast Phoenix in late July.

Dwyer, who was deactivated by the Cardinals on Wednesday night, denied that any physical assaults took place, the police said. They said he was being booked at the Maricopa County Jail on a count of aggravated assault causing a fracture, a count of aggravated assault involving a minor, two counts of criminal damage and a count of preventing the use of a phone in an emergency.

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The Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson signed autographs last month in Kansas City.

The victims were said to be a 27-year-old woman and an 18-month-old child. The police said the woman left the state with the child after the episodes. Police then received the complaint in the case on Sept. 11.

The Cardinals said they learned of the allegations Wednesday when notified by the police. “We will continue to closely monitor this as it develops and evaluate additional information as it becomes available,” the team’s statement said.

An N.F.L. spokesman said Dwyer’s case would be reviewed under the N.F.L.’s personal conduct policy.

Earlier Wednesday, mounting pressure from sponsors and the public forced the Vikings to bar Peterson from practices and games while he deals with his arrest in Texas on charges that he beat his 4-year-old son.

The decision, announced in an email at 12:47 a.m. Central time, came 38 hours after the Vikings said Peterson would rejoin the team. His reinstatement drew criticism from fans, women’s groups and sponsors, who said the team was insensitive to domestic violence and child abuse.

“We made a mistake, and we needed to get this right,” Zygi Wilf, a Vikings co-owner, said at a news conference Wednesday. “It’s important to listen to our fans, the community and our sponsors.”

After consulting with Peterson, the N.F.L. and Peterson’s agent, Peterson was placed on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list, where he will remain until his legal situation is resolved. Peterson will receive his full $11.75 million base salary but cannot take part in team activities.

Wilf’s brother Mark, a co-owner and the team president, denied that the league pressured the Vikings to make the move.

“This is our decision 100 percent,” he said. “We were aiming to get it right, and we feel we got it right.”

Nike said Wednesday it had suspended its contract with Peterson and made his jerseys unavailable online.

“Nike in no way condones child abuse or domestic violence of any kind and has shared our concerns with the N.F.L.,” the company said in a statement.

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Greg Hardy, a Carolina Panthers defensive end, was found guilty of assaulting his girlfriend — a verdict that he is appealing.

The Panthers’ Hardy agreed to go on the same exempt list Wednesday as he appeals his domestic violence conviction. He was found guilty in July of assaulting and threatening to kill his girlfriend. His trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 17. Hardy played in Week 1, was deactivated last Sunday and had continued to practice with the team. He will also receive his full $13.12 million base salary.

“It’s been handled as well as we could,” Panthers Coach Ron Rivera said at a news conference Wednesday.

Peterson is accused of injuring his son while disciplining him with a tree branch, commonly known as a switch, last May in Spring, Tex. Peterson turned himself in to Montgomery County authorities early Saturday morning and was inactive Sunday for Minnesota’s 30-7 loss to New England. Free on $15,000 bail, he is scheduled to make his first court appearance Oct. 8.

In response to Peterson’s reinstatement Monday, fans who ran a Vikings online message board shut it down. And the Radisson hotel chain, based in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, suspended its Vikings sponsorship. Marilyn Carlson Nelson, the former chairman of Carlson Inc., which owns Radisson, was a co-chairwoman of the bid committee that landed the 2018 Super Bowl for Minneapolis.

The backlash accelerated Tuesday. Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat who helped the Vikings receive public financing for their new stadium, and Senator Al Franken, also a Democrat, criticized the decision. Dayton called Peterson’s actions “a public embarrassment” and demanded the team suspend him.

Fran Tarkenton, a Hall of Fame quarterback who led the Vikings to three Super Bowls, told Fox News that he was embarrassed by the team’s original decision to let Peterson play.

Castrol Motor Oil terminated a sponsorship contract with Peterson. A spokesman for U.S. Bank, whose president, Richard Davis, a co-chairman of the Super Bowl bid committee with Carlson Nelson, said the company was monitoring the situation closely. An appearance by Vikings players at a Minneapolis orphanage was canceled.

Mark Wilf declined to address whether the team underestimated the backlash from the decision to reinstate Peterson. “I don’t want to Monday morning quarterback what it was,” he said.

A Radisson spokesman, Benjamin Gardeen, said in an email Wednesday that the company’s sponsorship remained suspended. On Monday, the Radisson logo appeared on a banner behind Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman as he discussed Peterson’s reinstatement. A different banner at Wednesday’s news conference had no such logos.

Vikings cornerback Captain Munnerlyn, one of the few players willing to comment Wednesday, said the club’s reversal surprised him. Munnerlyn said Peterson did nothing wrong, and his own mother disciplined him the same way.

“I don’t think it’s fair at all,” Munnerlyn said. “I think he should be able to play. He hasn’t been convicted of anything. All these allegations, or this and that, pictures out, but he hasn’t been convicted of nothing.”

The Vikings’ handling of the situation inflamed a national debate about domestic violence in the N.F.L. Last week, a graphic video showing Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancée led Commissioner Roger Goodell to indefinitely suspend the former Baltimore Ravens running back.

Late Tuesday, Rice appealed that penalty, arguing that he should not have been suspended twice for the same episode. In July, Goodell said Rice would have to sit out the first two games of the regular season.

Steve Eder reported from New York, and Ken Belson contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Arrest Adds to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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N.Y. / Region |NYT Now

‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Ebbs, but Still Hangs Over Brooklyn Lives

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEINSEPT. 19, 2014

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Play Video|7:17

Omnipresence: I’ll Be Watching You

Omnipresence: I’ll Be Watching You In the projects of Brownsville, Brooklyn, the New York Police Department’s new strategy, Omnipresence, is what it says. Despite promises of change, to some it feels like stop and frisk by another name. Video Credit By Stephen Farrell on Publish Date September 19, 2014.

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In the housing projects of eastern Brooklyn, some young men no longer clasp hands when greeting each other, they say, fearful that their grasp might be mistaken for a drug deal and invite a search by the police. Friends heading to the bodega sometimes split up, worried that walking in a group will attract police attention.

They are subtle yet telling changes, lasting effects of years of police stops of young men, mostly in black and Latino neighborhoods. Often the stops were without legal justification, a federal court found last year.

Today, “stop-and-frisk” as New York City knew it is over, undone by a torrent of public outrage and political pressure, and by legal challenges that culminated in the ruling that the Police Department’s drastically increased use of the street stops of black and Hispanic men over the preceding decade was unconstitutional.

The police remain a visible presence in the borough’s Brownsville neighborhood, where the vast and violent expanse of public housing had made the neighborhood a proving ground for the department’s use of the tactics as a way to curb gun violence. As part of a new strategy called Omnipresence, the officers now stand on street corners like sentries, only rarely confronting young men and patting them down for weapons. But the residents of Brownsville, conditioned by the years of the stop-and-frisk tactics, still view these officers warily.

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Police officers in a Brownsville project.

In dozens of interviews over the summer, people in Brownsville described how stop-and-frisk’s legacy was still felt in the altered rhythms of daily life, like the walk to the bodega.

Some people head indoors earlier, they say, because darkness brings not only the increased threat of violence, but also a lower threshold for being stopped by the police. Some people are hesitant to visit friends or relatives in neighboring projects, where they risk being stopped on suspicion of trespass.

And instead of enthusiastic handshakes, a bump of the fists or the elbows is a more common greeting among the young men. Elsewhere that might have seemed the influence of professional athletes; in Brownsville, it took hold as an adaptation to a consuming police presence.

“No open palm anymore; we just do elbows,” Pharaoh Pearson, a 38-year-old club promoter, said recently as he and two friends sat in the courtyard of the Tilden Houses in Brownsville.

“That’s an automatic search because they say we were doing hand-to-hand transactions,” said one of Mr. Pearson’s friends, Ernest Payne, a construction worker and milk deliveryman.

Photo

Tijay Lewis, 15, holding his brother, Harlem, 4.

Under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the number of street stops soared as they became a cornerstone of his administration’s antigun efforts, each encounter documented by an officer on a form known as a 250. The stops rarely turned up evidence of criminality but became a fact of life for young black and Hispanic men in high-crime neighborhoods, and public housing projects in particular.

By the time Bill de Blasio took office as mayor this year, less than five months after a federal judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled against the city’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics, the practice was declining precipitously. Mayor de Blasio heralded the change as an important step toward improving police-community relations after years of increasingly aggressive policing under Mr. Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly.

But there are limits to how quickly campaign pledges and court rulings can change how people feel about the police, particularly in neighborhoods where high levels of crime make the police a perpetual and often aggressive presence.

While Brownsville is safer than it was in the early 1990s, when the local police precinct, the 73rd, recorded more than 70 homicides in some years, it is still a dangerous place. This year, as of Sept. 7, the 73rd Precinct had recorded 13 homicides, including at least four in the projects, and more than 400 shootings, stabbings and other felony assaults.

So even as the confrontational, often intrusive stop-and-frisk encounters have significantly declined, police officers today remain ever-present in the projects of Brownsville. The new strategy for policing the projects is taking shape night by night.

Continue reading the main story

Interactive Graphic

‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Is All but Gone From New York

Mapping and charting the decline of a controversial police practice.

OPEN Interactive Graphic

Officers stand at posts, often along the perimeter of the towers of the Tilden Houses or at the edge of low-rise brick buildings of the neighboring Brownsville Houses. For the most part, they seem to hang back. To add to their visibility, officers park their cars on the sidewalk and turn on the flashing roof lights. At night, the blue beams illuminate the brick of the projects for hours on end, projecting both a sense of emergency and control.

Residents of the projects study the officers with a mix of wariness and curiosity, as they and the police both try to discern the rules of engagement in a post-stop-and-frisk era. “They’ll be here all night,” said a 20-year-old man who watched the officer pacing near the flashing blue lights. The man, who declined to give his name, acknowledged, “They don’t stop people as much as they used to, a few months ago.”

But if the number of police stops has declined, stops and summonses for matters like congregating outside a building entrance remain a core part of policing the projects. Enforcement of minor offenses has been a hallmark of Mr. de Blasio’s police commissioner, William J. Bratton, since his days as chief of the transit police and his first tour, under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, as police commissioner.

And it is a strategy he has shown little sign of abandoning, even after Eric Garner died in July after a struggle with police officers on Staten Island who were trying to arrest him for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.

In Brownsville, the frustration flowing from such enforcement is not hard to find.

Photo

From left, Shawn Pitts, Ernest Johnson, Pharaoh Pearson and Ernest Payne.

Dan Richardson, 48, said that on a sweltering morning this summer, he stopped into a restaurant for a cup of ice water and continued down busy Rockaway Avenue. A police car pulled alongside him. An officer asked what was in the cup, evidently suspecting liquor.

“When I told them it was water, he got out of the car and reached his hand out for the cup and put it up to his nose,” recalled Mr. Richardson, who lives in neighboring East New York but grew up in Brownsville and is back often. The officer, realizing it was water, tried to give back the cup, but Mr. Richardson replied, “I don’t want the water after you done put your nose in it and sniffed it.” So the officer threw the cup on the ground, Mr. Richardson said.

Car stops and searches, which are not reflected in the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk totals, are also a source of friction, some people in the neighborhood say.

“They pull up on you and knock on your window, pull you over, and they ask to search your car,” said Lamel Battle, a 28-year-old construction worker. He said he was most recently pulled over two months earlier in an encounter in which officers searched the trunk of his car, finding nothing.

“They ask you how your day is going — one guy will try to talk to you for a minute, try to calm you down, while they’re searching your car,” said Mr. Battle, who won a $50,000 settlement from the city after a lawsuit stemming from a 2007 disorderly-conduct arrest. “It’s regular.”

Photo

A police officer watching local residents after an arrest during a patrol in the Albany Houses project in Brooklyn. Replacing the blanket use of stop-and-frisk tactics, the police have adopted a strategy they call Omnipresence, keeping officers visible in high-crime areas.

Today, teenagers and young men in Brownsville live in the shadow of years of police encounters — as they were heading to the store, or sitting on courtyard benches, or walking to church — that accustomed them to having to prove their innocence to police again and again.

“Sometimes I’ll let them check me so they don’t think I have anything to hide,” Tijay Lewis, 15, said of what happens when officers stop him for a frisk. “I tell them I don’t have any guns on me. They say, ‘That’s for me to find out.’ ”

Tijay said he had been stopped 10 times since turning 13.

“I’m black so I get stopped a lot of times,” he said as he stood with his father, David, 36, and his 4-year-old brother, Harlem, in the courtyard of the Tilden Houses.

But Tijay observed that it had been months since he was last stopped. “It feels a little bit different,” he said of the atmosphere of the Tilden Houses.

When Tijay is outside, his father tries to keep a close watch. If he loses Tijay in the crowd of teenagers, Mr. Lewis will send him inside to change the color of his shirt. He wants his son easier to spot should trouble break out.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Friskings Ebb, but Still Hang Over Brooklyn Lives. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Judge Rejects New York’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg after a news conference Monday. He said the city did not get “a fair trial” in the stop-and-frisk case.

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

Published: August 12, 2013

A federal judge ruled on Monday that the stop-and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department violated the constitutional rights of minorities in the city, repudiating a major element in the Bloomberg administration’s crime-fighting legacy.

The use of police stops has been widely cited by city officials as a linchpin of New York’s success story in seeing murders and major crimes fall to historic lows. The police say the practice has saved the lives of thousands of young black and Hispanic men by removing thousands of guns from the streets.

But the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, found that the Police Department resorted to a “policy of indirect racial profiling” as it increased the number of stops in minority communities. That has led to officers’ routinely stopping “blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white.”

The judge called for a federal monitor to oversee broad reforms, including the use of body-worn cameras for some patrol officers, though she was “not ordering an end to the practice of stop-and-frisk.”

In her 195-page decision, Judge Scheindlin concluded that the stops, which soared in number over the last decade as crime continued to decline, demonstrated a widespread disregard for the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, as well as the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg angrily accused the judge of deliberately denying the city “a fair trial” and said the city would file an appeal.

Striking a defiant tone, Mr. Bloomberg said, “You’re not going to see any change in tactics overnight.” He said he hoped the appeal process would allow the current stop-and-frisk practices to continue through the end of his administration because “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a lot of people dying.”

The judge found that for much of the last decade, patrol officers had stopped innocent people without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. But her criticism went beyond the conduct of police officers.

“I also conclude that the city’s highest officials have turned a blind eye to the evidence that officers are conducting stops in a racially discriminatory manner,” she wrote, citing statements that Mr. Bloomberg and the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, have made in defending the policy.

Judge Scheindlin ordered a number of remedies, including a pilot program in which officers in at least five precincts across the city will wear cameras on their bodies to record street encounters. She also ordered a “joint remedial process” — in essence, a series of community meetings — to solicit public comments on how to reform the department’s tactics.

The judge named Peter L. Zimroth, a partner in Arnold & Porter L.L.P., and a former corporation counsel and prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, to monitor the Police Department’s compliance with the United States Constitution. The installation of a monitor will leave the department under a degree of judicial control that is certain to shape the policing strategies under the next mayor.

Judge Scheindlin’s decision grapples with the legacy of Terry v. Ohio, a 1968 ruling by the Supreme Court, which held that stopping and frisking was constitutionally permissible under certain conditions. But she said that changes to the way the New York Police Department employed the practice were needed to ensure that the street stops were carried out in a manner that “protects the rights and liberties of all New Yorkers, while still providing much needed police protection.”

The judge found that the New York police were too quick to deem suspicious behavior that was perfectly innocent, in effect watering down the legal standard required for a stop.

“Blacks are likely targeted for stops based on a lesser degree of objectively founded suspicion than whites,” she wrote.

She noted that officers routinely stopped people partly on the basis of “furtive movements,” a category that officers have testified might encompass any of the following: being fidgety, changing directions, walking in a certain way, grabbing at a pocket or looking over one’s shoulder.

“If officers believe that the behavior described above constitutes furtive movement that justifies a stop, then it is no surprise that stops so rarely produce evidence of criminal activity,” Judge Scheindlin wrote.

She found that in their zeal to identify concealed weapons, officers sometimes stopped people on the grounds that the officer observed a bulge in the person’s pocket; often it turned out that the bulge was caused not by a gun but by a wallet.

“The outline of a commonly carried object such as a wallet or cellphone does not justify a stop or frisk, nor does feeling such an object during a frisk justify a search,” she ruled.

She emphasized what she called the “human toll of unconstitutional stops,” noting that some of the plaintiffs testified that their encounters with the police left them feeling that they did not belong in certain areas of the city. She characterized each stop as “a demeaning and humiliating experience.”

“No one should live in fear of being stopped whenever he leaves his home to go about the activities of daily life,” she wrote.

One of the plaintiffs in the case, Lalit Clarkson, 31, a union organizer, said after the ruling that “the stop-and-frisk policy criminalizes a whole race and community of people, just for going to work, going to get some food, going on a train to go downtown.”

The decision, he said, represents the legal system’s validation of what the black community has known for a long time: that the stop-and-frisk tactics rely on racial profiling.

“What we know, in our community, to be the truth, has never before gone through a massive legal process” and been “shown, point by point, step by step” to be true, he said.

The judge’s ruling, in Floyd v. City of New York, a 2008 class-action lawsuit that represents the broadest legal challenge to the department’s practices, follows a two-month nonjury trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan earlier this year. Her decision cites testimony of about a dozen black or biracial men and one woman who described being stopped, as well as the conclusions of statistical experts who studied police paperwork describing some 4.43 million stops between 2004 and the middle of 2012.

But the stops were not the end of the problem, Judge Scheindlin found. After officers stopped people, they often conducted frisks for weapons, or searched the subjects’ pockets for contraband, like drugs, without any legal grounds for doing so. Also, she found that during police stops, blacks and Hispanics “were more likely to be subjected to the use of force than whites, despite the fact that whites are more likely to be found with weapons or contraband.”

About 83 percent of the stops between 2004 and 2012 involved blacks and Hispanics, even though those two demographics make up just slightly more than 50 percent of the city’s residents. Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Kelly have explained that disparity by saying it mirrored the disproportionate percentage of crimes committed by young minority men. But Judge Scheindlin dismissed the Police Department’s rationale.

“This might be a valid comparison if the people stopped were criminals,” she wrote, explaining that there was significant evidence that the people being stopped were not criminals. “To the contrary, nearly 90 percent of the people stopped are released without the officer finding any basis for a summons or arrest.”

Rather, Judge Scheindlin found, the stops overwhelmingly involved minority men because police commanders had come to see them as “the right people” to stop.

“It is impermissible to subject all members of a racially defined group to heightened police enforcement because some members of that group are criminals,” she wrote.

Mr. Bloomberg pledged that lawyers for the city, in appealing to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, would argue that the judge was biased against the police. As evidence, he cited the fact that the judge, who has overseen numerous stop-and-frisk cases over the last decade, had encouraged the plaintiffs to steer the Floyd case into her courtroom by marking it as related to an earlier case she had overseen.

The mayor said the judge did “not understand how policing works” and had misinterpreted what the Constitution allowed.

New York Police Release Data Showing Rise in Number of Stops on Streets

By AL BAKER

Published: May 12, 2012

Police officers stopped people on New York City’s streets more than 200,000 times during the first three months of 2012, putting the Bloomberg administration on course to shatter a record set last year for the highest annual tally of street stops.

Data on the 203,500 street stops from January through March — up from 183,326 during the same quarter a year earlier — was sent to the City Council from 1 Police Plaza late on Friday under a legal requirement spawned by public outrage over the 1999 fatal police shooting in the Bronx of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black street peddler.

On Saturday, the department disclosed the information to reporters and credited the controversial topic known as “Stop, Question, Frisk” as one of several policies of engagement whose effectiveness was vindicated by a decline in homicides in New York.

So far this year, 129 people have been murdered in New York through Friday, the 132nd day of the year, a number that put the city on track for a new low in annual homicides. The 471 murders logged by the Police Department in 2009 was the lowest annual tally for any previous 12-month period since reliable numbers were kept in the early 1960s.

Still, the new street-stop numbers got a fresh round of criticism after a week that saw civil libertarians and prospective mayoral candidates debating the crime-suppression value of such stops and blaming the tactics for tearing at the fabric of city life, particularly in minority neighborhoods, during a period of historically low violence.

On Wednesday, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a study of last year’s stop data, arguing that far too many innocent people were suffering under the policy. The study said that while young black and Hispanic men made up 4.7 percent of the city’s population, those between the ages of 14 and 24 accounted for 41.6 percent of stops in 2011.

On Saturday, the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, said the “dramatic increase” in stops underscored her calls for reform.

“While the N.Y.P.D. should continue to have the ability to stop and frisk people where there is a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, I remain convinced that with better monitoring, supervision and accountability we can avoid the corrosive impact of a poorly targeted program,” Ms. Quinn said in a statement. “We cannot continue to stop, question and frisk nearly 700,000 New Yorkers in this way without doing harm to the relationship between police officers and the people they are protecting, particularly in communities of color.”

And the city’s public advocate, Bill de Blasio, said that while the rise in stops seemed a product of a numbers-driven police culture, he proposed more routine use of the department’s own auditing of those statistics to track the outcomes for each stop-and-frisk episode, like whether someone is then arrested.

“The record number of unwarranted stops is widening the rift between police and the communities whose cooperation we need to fight crime,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement. “Make no mistake — this is the result of City Hall aggressively pushing precinct commanders to use stop and frisk beyond what is necessary and effective. It’s time to bring these numbers back to earth.”

Both Ms. Quinn and Mr. de Blasio are expected to run for mayor.

Peppered with questions at a news conference on Friday, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said that critics of the street-stop tactics “never have an answer” about how to tackle the disproportionate levels of crime in certain city neighborhoods. The department, by contrast, is always looking for answers to “slow down” crime.

“I would submit that our strategies are saving lives,” Mr. Kelly said.

He added: “You look at the numbers in this city; you look at the lives that we’re saving, and I would submit to you that the majority of those lives are minorities, and most of them are young men who are being killed for senseless reasons. We are saving those lives, and, quite frankly, we’re saving them at a much greater degree and extent than other cities are.”

Last year, there were 685,724 stop-and-frisk encounters, the highest total in the 10 years the department has reported the data. The annual total has gradually increased, from a low of 97,296 in 2002, according to departmental statistics.

So far, the numbers through March translate into an average of about 2,200 stops per day. The police said that 5 percent of the stops led to arrests and 5 percent led to summonses, slightly lower figures than in the first quarter of last year.

“If the trend continues we are headed toward a projected 730,000 or more stop-and-frisks this year, and we’re looking at well over 650,000 stops of New Yorkers who are so innocent that, in an era of zero tolerance, they walk away without even a summons,” Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the civil liberties group, said. “And the lion’s share of those impacted by the out-of-control policy are black and Latino men.”

According to the police, the numbers so far this year show that 54 percent of the people stopped were black, 33 percent were Hispanic, 9 percent were white and 3 percent were Asian. Males made up 93 percent of those stopped, the same as through last March.

Though a large percentage of the stops involve blacks and Hispanics, Mr. Kelly said that 96 percent of all shooting victims in the city were black or Hispanic last year, as were more than 90 percent of murder victims.

In the new street-stop data, a curious detail emerged: Officers confiscated 260 guns in the stops through March, up from the 199 that had been seized in the same period a year ago. This came as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Friday in a radio show appearance that a measure of the program’s success would be few guns retrieved by officers since the idea is not to catch people with them but “to prevent people from carrying” them.

Asked about this, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said: “Sometimes it’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time. But the mayor’s right. Anecdotally, we’re hearing that gunmen are carrying less often because of the greater risk associated with stops.”

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‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Is All but Gone From New York

By MIKE BOSTOCK and FORD FESSENDEN SEPT. 19, 2014 Related Article

First Half 2012

337,410 Stops

Each red dot represents a stop reported by the police. Darker dots represent multiple stops.

Last Half 2013

33,699 Stops

The widespread practice of stopping residents for what was deemed “suspicious” behavior, often called “stop-and-frisk,” was the defining tactic of the New York Police Department for a decade, pursued in the face of intensifying protests and dwindling crime, defended against civil-rights challenges, even declared indispensable to the continued safety of the streets.

It has now all but vanished.

Stops by Week

January 2012

Stops peak with more than 16,000 per week.

August 2013

A judge rules rules the tactic as employed is unconstitutional.

Late 2013

Stops drop by more than 90% to fewer than 2,000 per week.

It faded out at the end of the mayoral administration that promoted it so enthusiastically and the beginning of the administration that rode a wave of anger over it to a landslide victory. But as tensions with police rise anew, the grass-roots groups that opposed it are left wondering what the victory means.

Stops by Race

* As of 2010.

The stop-and-frisk tactic was employed exhaustively, but not evenly. The police said they targeted high-crime areas, and in much of New York, the practice was little known. But in poor and minority neighborhoods, it became a part of everyday life. No longer.

A Steep Drop in Areas Once Targeted

Stops in Central Brooklyn

First Half 2012 Last Half 2013 Each dot shows one stop. White Black Hispanic Asian Other

Central Brooklyn’s housing projects were a key focus of the strategy. In Precinct 77, police were making 75 to 100 stops a day in January 2012. It’s now down to a relative few.

Stops in Harlem

First Half 2012 Last Half 2013

In Harlem, reported stops are down 96 percent, and minor drug charges are down 26 percent.

Stops in West Bronx

First Half 2012 Last Half 2013

In the West Bronx, City Councilman Fernando Cabrera says he is getting fewer complaints about the police. But defense lawyers say the police continue to be confrontational.

Stops in Staten Island

First Half 2012 Last Half 2013

Precinct 120 on Staten Island, where a man was killed in a confrontation with the police, recorded the smallest drop in stops, about 70 percent, and now ranks highest in the city.

Has It Really Ended?

Many who live and work in the neighborhoods say they see scant evidence of change, and some say the police are simply not reporting some or all of their stops. The police did not respond to requests for comment.

But something is clearly different: Misdemeanor drug and weapon charges, the most common arrests to result from a stop, are down considerably. Advocates say misdemeanor marijuana charges, which require that the drug is in plain sight, are a bellwether, because the police ordered thousands to empty pockets, and arrested them.

Misdemeanor Arrests by Year

Most other categories of crime that the police say are connected to “proactive” policing are down as well, while misdemeanors that don’t fit that category are not.

Yet the community groups are not celebrating the end of the policy they maligned so vigorously. “The engagment of police with New Yorkers still allows such a high level of discretion that we can see the same tactics, they’re just not called stop-and-frisk,” said Sharon Stapel, executive director of of the New York City Anti-Violence Project.

What Happens Without Stop-and-Frisk?

“No question about it, violent crime will go up,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in August 2013. But in fact, violent crime is down across the city in 2014. Although a connection between stops and crime has not been conclusively demonstrated, here is what has happened in four neighborhoods where stop rates were once very high.

Stops by Year*

Violent Crimes by Year†

* Estimated stops for 2014 based on data from the first six months of the year.

† Estimated change in violent crimes for 2014 based on data through Aug. 10 compared to same period in 2013.

Sources: New York City Police Department; American Civil Liberties Union; Unified Court System of the City of New York; U.S. Census Bureau

- © 2014 The New York Times Company

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Art & Design |NYT Now

The Climax in a Tale of Green and Gritty

The High Line Opens Its Third and Final Phase

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Opening on Sunday, the High Line’s final phase, from 30th Street to 34th Street, blends eastward views of rising developments with Hudson River sunsets.

Critic’s Notebook

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

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If the newest, last stretch of the High Line doesn’t make you fall in love with New York all over again, I really don’t know what to say. Phase 3 of the elevated park, which opens on Sunday, is a heartbreaker, swinging west on 30th Street from 10th Avenue toward the Hudson River, straight into drop-dead sunset views. It spills into a feral grove of big-tooth aspen trees on 34th Street.

It’s hard to believe now that some New Yorkers once thought renovating the decrepit elevated rail line was a lousy idea. Not since Central Park opened in 1857 has a park reshaped New Yorkers’ thinking about public space and the city more profoundly. Like Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim museum in Spain, it has spread a dream, albeit largely a pipe dream, around the world: how one exceptional design — in this case, a work of landscape architecture — might miraculously alter a whole neighborhood, even a whole city’s fortunes.

Yes, at roughly $35 million, Phase 3, like the rest of the High Line, cost more per acre than probably any park in human history. With most city parks struggling to make ends meet, that kind of money is an inevitable source of resentment, notwithstanding that the High Line was, in significant measure, constructed and is almost exclusively maintained with private funds.

Photo

Urban choreography: A westward view from the third and final leg of the High Line, which opens to the public Sunday.

And, yes, nowhere is the city’s widening economic divide clearer to see than along this stretch of Manhattan’s West Side. The new phase loops around Hudson Yards, a 26-acre site becoming a multibillion-dollar architectural petting zoo, with super-tall office and apartment towers, at least one of them to rise higher than the Empire State Building.

But this third phase completes a kind of narrative, which the two earlier phases started, about 21st-century New York as a greener, sleeker metropolis, riven by wealth, with an anxious eye in the rearview mirror. It is a Rorschach test, signifying different things — about urban renewal, industry, gentrification, the environment — to different people. Occupying an in-between sort of space between buildings, neighborhoods, street and sky, the park makes a convenient receptacle for meaning. Neither an authentic ruin nor entirely built from scratch, a sign of runaway capital but also common ground, it is a modern landmark capitalizing on the romance of a bygone New York — the “real,” gritty city — a park born of the very forces that swept that city away.

Photo

A convenient receptacle for historical meaning: An eastward view of the colossi rising on Manhattan’s West Side, from a strip of the High Line that runs westward along West 30th Street.

Those new towers will make this section of the High Line very different from the earlier ones. The first two phases thread, at Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” elevation, through the meatpacking district and Chelsea; it’s the secret garden everybody knows. When Hudson Yards is finished, the development’s raised plaza, built atop the West Side rail depot, will be flush with the 30-foot height of the park, its skyscrapers forming a canyon of glass. The chaos and cranes will be catnip to kids; parents may weep to see another swath of industrial New York yield to luxury condominiums.

James Corner Field Operations designed the High Line with Diller Scofidio & Renfro. Mr. Corner calls the city around the park its “borrowed landscape.” The inimitability of those surroundings, and the park’s site-specific detailing, are major reasons the so-called High Line effect has been, like the Bilbao one, fool’s gold for so many other cities that have wanted to follow in New York’s footsteps.

Photo

The last stretch of the High Line, from 30th Street to 34th Street, will be completed and open to the public on Sunday.

Already choked by five million visitors a year, it’s a park custom-made for tourists — and for congenitally distracted New Yorkers who can’t take a walk without a destination, or sit on a bench and just stare at the sky. On the High Line you go someplace, or pretend to.

“You come up here and start looking,” is how the architect Ricardo Scofidio puts it. Toward that end, the park is choreographed to a fare-thee-well, as a varied sequence of paths, vistas, overlooks, plantings — episodes linked by an architecture of reclaimed hardwood benches, rusted rails and concrete planks.

Photo

The High Line already has five million visitors a year.

The designers avoided pressure to top themselves with the third section, and went the other way. A simple shift in orientation of the planks, where two benches crisscross, suffices to signal the High Line’s turn from north-south to east-west. The turn opens onto a wide plaza, the park’s new crossroad, with stairs connecting to Hudson Yards and what will be Hudson Park and Boulevard beyond.

A few benches have morphed into love seats, picnic tables and a seesaw. Elizabeth Diller, another of the architects, describes them as examples of tweaking the park’s “genetic code.” Beyond, a bridge over 11th Avenue supports a catwalk, flanked by low benches: a spot to see and be seen, which has always been the High Line’s raison d’être for millions of exhibitionists. From there, a section of rail bed is excavated, its girders and beams coated with silicone so children can climb them safely and crawl into nooks outfitted with periscopes. Then the path narrows, funneling into the northernmost section of Phase 3, the one skirting the Hudson River.

With more limited construction funds, the strategy in this part of the park was bare bones: Rusty tracks are filled in with bonded gravel to make a level path; timber dunnage is stacked to make a bleacher from which people can peer out at the water and over the rail yards; and nature is left to its own devices, giving visitors a glimpse of how the High Line looked before its makeover.

Less is more. I mentioned falling in love with New York all over again. The city opens up here, over the din of traffic and a helipad on 12th Avenue. Stripped bare, this section of viaduct, with its self-seeded landscape, looks scruffy, stubborn and wild. Evening primrose and Queen Anne’s lace stir in the breeze; trains creak in and out of the yard. Time suddenly reverses, and the sleek, soigné High Line evaporates.

“Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, no one will ever die,” Nabokov once wrote.

There, with the Hudson on one side and the skyline on the other, 360 degrees of New York unfold, suspended and infinite.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Climax in a Tale of Green and Gritty. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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U.S. |NYT Now

In Death, Florida Family Reveals a Spiral of Domestic Abuse

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and FRANCES ROBLESSEPT. 19, 2014

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The police said Don Spirit, right, killed his daughter, Sarah; her children; and himself.

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BELL, Fla. — Sarah L. Spirit was 22 years old and eight months pregnant with her fourth child when she called the police in desperation: Her father was violent, she was afraid of him, and she had nowhere to go.

“He pushed me against the refrigerator really hard then closed his hands really hard on my face and caused me pain,” she wrote in the summer of 2008, when she went to a Gilchrist County Court to seek a domestic violence injunction against her father, Don C. Spirit. “I am very scared of him. I know what he is capable of.”

Ms. Spirit wrote that her father threatened to make her life “hell” if she called the authorities. She did go to the police. Although she did not follow up on her request for a restraining order, online court records show he was later sentenced to six months in jail on a battery charge that arose that same week.

On Thursday, the police said Mr. Spirit killed his daughter, now 28; her six children; and then himself, making the case the seventh domestic-related multiple homicide in Florida this year. The victims include Kaleb Kuhlmann, 11; Kylie Kuhlmann, 9; Johnathon Kuhlmann, 8; Destiny Stewart, 5; Brandon Stewart, 4; and Alanna Stewart, who was born in June.

The Spirits lived together in a cycle of extreme poverty, drug addiction and domestic violence in Bell, a tiny town west of Gainesville where peanuts are grown and dairy cows roam the fields.

The Spirit family’s story shows how a downward spiral of drug use, debt and repeated arrests can sometimes result in extreme violence, despite interventions by the authorities. Repeated interactions with the Florida Department of Children and Families did not save the children, even though court records show social workers sent the parole authorities to the Spirit home just a month ago. It is also a reminder that amid the recent focus on domestic violence, it is not just spouses and boyfriends who can be assailants.

The agency would not say why the children were still in the home, despite court records showing that it knew that Ms. Spirit and her boyfriend, James Stewart, had smoked synthetic marijuana in front of their children while both were on probation. The agency said Friday that a Critical Incident Rapid Response Team would assess the agency’s “interactions and interventions” with the family before the killings.

A close friend of Ms. Spirit, who lives in Bell and spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared reprisals in her tight-knit community, said Ms. Spirit had a good heart but was always struggling to support her family and keep it together. “Her life was a mess,” the friend said. “She had no job. She couldn’t work with all them kids. Every time I turned around, something bad was happening to her.”

Ms. Spirit was 15 when her father, an ex-convict, accidentally shot and killed her brother Kyle during a hunting trip. Mr. Spirit was not supposed to be in possession of a firearm, and for that he was sentenced to three years in prison, records show.

At 17, Ms. Spirit was pregnant with her first child. By the time her father was released from prison, Ms. Spirit had two more children and was taking care of a little brother as well, her parents’ divorce records show.

In the years that followed, Ms. Spirit was in and out of court. She was arrested on charges of theft, battery and illegal drug use, and sought child support payments from the fathers of her children. One of those arrests was after a fight with an 18-year-old girl.

Ms. Spirit was also convicted of grand theft this year, after she stole $400 from the wallet of an acquaintance she visited in 2013.

She had been living in a dilapidated shack on the property of her boyfriend’s family. The boyfriend, Mr. Stewart, also ran afoul of the law. He was arrested on charges of battery and dealing in stolen property and is in jail.

Ms. Spirit lived hand to mouth on government assistance, her friend said. The children were often dirty and unfed, and at one point they were removed from her custody.

A couple of weeks ago, Ms. Spirit knocked on her friend’s front door, asking for diapers for the newborn and food for the other children. With her brother Joshua and both the fathers of her children behind bars, Ms. Spirit, who had epilepsy, was so down on her luck that she felt she had no choice but to return to live with her father, the friend said.

Their relationship was clearly strained. Court records show Mr. Spirit took his daughter to court three years ago, accusing her of collecting support payments for one of her children, Johnathon, even though he had been living with Mr. Spirit. Mr. Spirit said the money belonged to him.

A judge ordered Ms. Spirit to pay her father $6,578 in back payments. She was supposed to be paying him $100 a month.

Residents said Mr. Spirit disliked his grandchildren and called them names in public, The Gainesville Sun reported.

“You see how small this town is; we all knew he didn’t like those kids,” the newspaper quoted Kim Berry, a Bell resident, as saying. “We’re shocked it came to this.”

The investigators said they knew of no motives.

“As far as I know, there was no motive related to anybody,” Lt. Jeff Manning of the Gilchrist County Sheriff’s Department said at a news conference Friday morning. “I don’t know how you get clear signs that something like this could happen.”

He choked up and paused. “It’s a difficult scene to try to fathom why somebody did what they did,” he said.

What is known about Mr. Spirit indicates a troubled life that deteriorated even further after the death of his son Kyle. “I may not have lived the best life,” he said in 2001 after killing his son on the hunting trip, The St. Petersburg Times reported then.

Mr. Spirit’s divorce records show that when he was released from prison, he planned to take custody of his surviving son, Joshua. He argued with his former wife over possessions such as a Jet Ski and a camper, and in letters to her, he clearly saw himself as the better parent.

The relationship had not always been so fractious. His former wife, Christine Jeffers, had urged the court to be lenient on him in the shooting death of Kyle, saying that Mr. Spirit had not recovered from his death.

“The loss of our son has really taken a toll on him, and he blames himself every day,” she wrote in a letter to the judge, according to The Gainesville Sun.

“He has punished himself more than the court system ever could punish him.” she wrote. “Since our son’s death, my husband has been severely depressed. The doctors have not found a medication yet to help him. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t catch him crying.”

But court records show that even before his son’s death, Mr. Spirit had a criminal record. In cases dating back to 1990, he had been convicted of drug possession, battery and “depriving a child of food and shelter.”

Bill Shaffer, a neighbor, said Mr. Spirit had a strange quality. Mr. Shaffer said he once gave Mr. Spirit a ride, but his neighbor scarcely said a word and never even said thank you.

Police would not reveal any details about the crime scene. Other family members were unavailable for comment.

Robert Rankin, superintendent of Gilchrist County schools, said there were no indications of any problems with Ms. Spirit’s children. Three attended Bell Elementary School, one in second grade, one in third and one in fifth.

Mr. Shaffer said Bell, population 453, is a “nice, quiet” agricultural community, the kind of place where if someone’s house burns down, people set up a donation box right away to help. There are few jobs, though. Most of the good ones involve hauling rocks, sand and logs.

Mr. Spirit was often seen in the neighborhood riding his bicycle.

Another neighbor, Mark Hall, said he knew the Spirits only through his own fifth-grade son. Kaleb, he said, had gotten into fights in school, and Mr. Hall said he was concerned that he was bullying his son.

“My son tried to befriend him, but I had to tell him to stop being friends with him,” Mr. Hall said. “I didn’t want him to get dragged into that lifestyle.”

Bell, he said, is “very country. People know your good news and your bad news.”

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting from St. Petersburg, Fla.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: In Death, Florida Family Reveals a Sad Spiral of Domestic Violence. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Books |NYT Now

The Wolf Sits Down Within the Flock

William Deresiewicz Tours the Colleges of ‘Excellent Sheep’

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLERSEPT. 19, 2014

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William Deresiewicz addressing Columbia students on Wednesday.

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Many colleges assign common reading to their incoming freshmen, in the hopes that a book like “The Kite Runner” or “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” will inspire uplifting campuswide conversation about ethics, values, justice and the good life.

And then there is William Deresiewicz’s “Excellent Sheep.”

Even before its publication in August, Mr. Deresiewicz’s book — subtitled “The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life” — became unofficial required reading at selective schools and beyond, as students took to social media to debate his depiction of them as careerist zombies trapped “in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they are doing but no idea why they are doing it.”

The viral stampede started with an excerpt that appeared in The New Republic, headlined “Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League” and illustrated with a photograph of Harvard’s “Veritas” flag in flames. It drew more than two million hits online, according to the magazine, and prompted a raft of rebuttals charging Mr. Deresiewicz, a Columbia Ph.D. who was denied tenure at Yale in 2008 and subsequently left academia, with sour grapes, hypocrisy, overstatement, unoriginality and woolly minded romanticism.

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Now, the sheep are back from their summer pastures, and Mr. Deresiewicz is facing them in person, on a campus tour focused mainly on the Ivy League. And while the herd isn’t totally docile, he is discovering that it is more eager to engage than to trample.

“It’s almost like there’s a kind of emotional state that needs to be passed through,” Mr. Deresiewicz said by telephone this week between appearances at Brown and Columbia, to be followed by stops at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, among others. “These events generally start with adversarial questioning. But things open up once the students see that I’m human and well intentioned, and that I don’t just see them as horrible sheep or entitled little” brats.

Those epithets — especially the second one, which appeared in saltier form both in the book and the excerpt — have been a particular flash point. After Mr. Deresiewicz’s talk at Brown, the student newspaper ran an editorial declaring, “We are not excellent sheep” (though the editorial suggested that students at Harvard, where nearly a third of graduates take jobs in finance or consulting, really might be).

On Wednesday night at Columbia, where Mr. Deresiewicz addressed a crowd of nearly 200 students from the selective Undergraduate Scholars Program, the insults were fresh on some students’ minds. Before the talk, Julia Muhsen, 17, a freshman from Chicago, pointed to the printed program, where a text beginning “You got to Columbia by jumping through a long series of hoops” appeared over a photograph showing a herd of blank-eyed sheep.

“The way it’s phrased makes me feel bad about being here,” she said. “Should I not have tried so hard? It turns it into a guilt trip.”

Jonathan Nachman, a junior from Long Island, said that his father had forwarded him the article the day before, asking if he should demand a tuition refund. Was his father joking?

“I hope so,” Mr. Nachman said.

Mr. Deresiewicz, 50, began with the elephant in the room. “Probably you’ve all read or are familiar with the assault I’ve perpetrated on the Ivy League,” he said, “so I’m not going to dwell on that.”

From there, he started right into a talk that dispensed with the rhetorical flag burning in favor of passionate argument for a traditional liberal arts education. There were references to Kafka, Freud, Dostoyevsky and Zadie Smith, and to research showing that — “believe it or not,” Mr. Deresiewicz said — employers actually valued liberal arts graduates’ “intellectual cross-training.”

Mostly, he read straight from the book, whose exhortations are largely addressed directly to “you,” the student.

“Try to figure out what you want, not what your parents want,” he said, summing things up. “In the book, I say college is about building a soul. But that’s just another way of saying ‘becoming an adult.’ ”

When the floor was opened for questions, the crowd was initially, well, sheepish. Mr. Deresiewicz called on a young man who seemed on the verge of raising his hand. “This is how they do it in Lit Hum,” he said, referring to Columbia’s famous first-year required humanities course.

There were questions about whether Columbia was better or worse than other campuses, the value of taking time off, why Mr. Deresiewicz was “putting the burden on students.”

Some of Mr. Deresiewicz’s answers showed his more combative side. He mocked a Columbia program he had just heard about, which awards leadership honors at graduation by a point system. When a student asked if the kind of contemplative liberal arts education he extolled hadn’t always been the preserve of the elite, he took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves to “take a big swing.”

A common rebuttal, he said, is that such an ideal is a relic of “19th-century prep-school-boy aristocratic privilege,” or of the follow-your-bliss 1960s. But the liberal arts curriculum, he said, has a much more complicated and more democratic history.

After the event, several dozen students crowded around to thank him and ask more questions. Didn’t his defense of the great books reinforce the privilege of white men? Did he really have any proof that students at less prestigious universities were — “and I quote you exactly,” a young woman said with irritation — “more interesting, more curious, more open”? Were prospects for getting a real education in the Ivy League so hopeless?

“I’m not telling you to transfer,” Mr. Deresiewicz reassured one student.

As the room cleared, Tony Qian, a sophomore, said the New Republic excerpt had made some friends angry, but called its exaggerations “necessary.”

“Everything about being at a place like this tells you you’re playing the A game,” he said. “You need an incendiary person to keep you questioning yourself.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Wolf Sits Down Within the Flock. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Arts

Fall Arts Preview - Times 100

SEPT. 4, 2014

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The Times 100

- How to wade through the crush of culture coming your way this season? Here’s a guide to 100 events that have us especially excited, in order of appearance:

- 1.Ernest Cole’s photographs of life under apartheid.

- 2.Postmodern dance meets 1960s vogueing at Crossing the Line.

- 3.Robert Plant aims for alchemy on a new album.

- 4. Philip Glass and Steve Reich in a rare onstage reunion.

- 5.Ira Glass in a dance collaboration?

- 6.Tavi Gevinson and Michael Cera, young and confused on Broadway.

- 7.Black metal and ambient pop at Basilica Soundscape.

- 8.Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader get dramatic.

- 9.Teenage patients keep each other smiling in a new series on Fox.

- 10.The Replacements reunite in Queens.

- 11.Jason Bateman, Tina Fey and Adam Driver sit shiva with Jane Fonda.

- 12.Téa Leoni as secretary of state on CBS.

- 13.Will “The Good Wife” run for state’s attorney?

- 14. Classics from the Classical Age at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

- 15.James Levine conducts “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

- 16.Gotham City before Batman.

- 17.The frontman of the Strokes goes in a different direction.

- 18.Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga sing the standards.

- 19.Coltrane live in ’66, fearless and fearsome.

- 20.The Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan steps out.

- 21.Anthony Anderson is “Black-ish.”

- 22. Anna Netrebko sleepwalks into “Macbeth.”

- 23.Viola Davis joins Shonda Rhimes Night on ABC.

- 24. Meet “The Boxtrolls.”

- 25.Celebrating Henry Threadgill.

- 26.René Pape roars solo on the Met stage.

- 27.“Become Ocean,” the CD.

- 28.Blake Shelton is “Bringing Back the Sunshine.”

- 29.Kyle Abraham reflects on civil rights struggles, past and present.

- 30.Politicians (try) to say they’re sorry on stage.

- 31.Alan Gilbert closes out a Carl Nielsen cycle.

- 32.Simon Rattle opens the Carnegie Hall season with four concerts.

- 33.“Broadchurch” gets an American accent.

- 34.“Genius” flutist Claire Chase begins an ambitious 22-year project.

- 35.A rare solo by Eiko.

- 36.“Gone Girl” gives up its secrets.

- 37.A MoMA retrospective for the multifarious Robert Gober.

- 38.A stand-up sitcom that’s not “Louie.”

- 39.“Homeland” after Brody.

- 40.“The Curious Incident” comes to the stage.

- 41.Peter Sellars fills the Park Avenue Armory with “St. Matthew Passion.”

- 42.A premiere by Jodi Melnick at BAM’s Next Wave Festival.

- 43.Trisha Brown and Mark Morris at “Fall For Dance.”

- 44.Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick await their next review.

- 45. Drum, kid, drum.

- 46.James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain break up three times.

- 47.The music of South Africa, with films by William Kentridge.

- 48.More Matisse cut-outs than you’ve ever seen in one place.

- 49.Growing up to be Billy Porter.

- 50.Dominic West and Ruth Wilson in a Showtime drama.

- 51.Another feeding frenzy on “The Walking Dead.”

- 52.Maximum Goya in Boston.

- 53.“Jane the Virgin,” from telenovela to the CW.

- 54.Cecilia Bartoli sings — in Russian.

- 55.Mary Lambert’s debut album.

- 56.A sitcom proposal: “Marry Me.”

- 57.A master puppeteer takes on Stravinsky.

- 58. “On the Town” in New York City.

- 59.Michael Keaton, from Batman to “Birdman.”

- 60.Farewell to Wendy Whelan at New York City Ballet.

- 61.Trailing controversy, “The Death of Klinghoffer” arrives at the Met.

- 62.Braque, Gris, Picasso and more.

- 63.Will this be the last ride for the Allman Brothers at the Beacon?

- 64.A bratty new album from Charli.

- 65.Jonathan Lethem gets the musical treatment.

- 66. Chelsea Manning, set to music at BAM.

- 67.The Pulitzer Prize-winning “Disgraced” on Broadway.

- 68.The sculptor Judith Scott has her day at the Brooklyn Museum.

- 69.Sting, shipbuilding, a Broadway debut.

- 70.Joyce DiDonato provides “Perspectives.”

- 71.Taylor Swift goes pop.

- 72.The last (?) of Lil Wayne.

- 73.Another try for “Side Show.”

- 74.Is Chris Ofili still a “Sensation”?

- 75.Choreographer Troy Schumacher acts on “Impulse.”

- 76.My son the guru? Sarah Ruhl wonders.

- 77.Tig Notaro and Bill Cosby take the mike.

- 78.Holly Hunter and Bill Pullman enlist in a Vietnam-era drama.

- 79.Christopher Nolan goes “Interstellar” in his follow-up to “Dark Knight Rises.”

- 80.Young Jean Lee at the Public.

- 81.A screen portrayal of Stephen Hawking’s extraordinary life.

- 82.A MoMA show says to hell with originality.

- 83.The return of Valerie Cherish.

- 84.What was Bunny Mellon keeping in those closets?

- 85.Artists inspired by “Ebony” and “Jet” magazines.

- 86.Blood and wrestling: Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in “Foxcatcher.”

- 87.Hugh Jackman goes down to “The River.”

- 88.“Seeds” from TV on the Radio.

- 89.Glenn Close and John Lithgow take on Albee.

- 90.Katniss. Peeta. And Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his last roles.

- 91.An artist who likes blurring the boundaries.

- 92.The Ailey troupe pays tribute to Odetta.

- 93.Reese Witherspoon in a Nick Hornby adaptation of “Wild.”

- 94.Paul Thomas Anderson takes Joaquin Phoenix into the 1970s.

- 95.Bradley Cooper brings “The Elephant Man” to Broadway.

- 96.The Cooper Hewitt reopens with a show selected by Maira Kalman.

- 97.An “Annie” for the 21st century.

- 98.Angelina Jolie directs the story of a survivor among survivors.

- 99.No one is alone, not even Meryl Streep, in “Into the Woods.”

- 100.What’s next for U2?

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF FALL ARTS

Produced by Alastair Coote, Chase Davis, Alicia DeSantis

IMAGE CREDITS: 1. Ernest Cole Family Trust/Hasselblad Foundation; 2. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 3. Nonesuch; 4. Betania Sikora; 6. Michael Brosilow; 7. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 9. Annette Brown/Fox; 10. Katie Stratton/Getty Images; 11. Warner Bros. Pictures; 12. Craig Blankenhorn/CBS via Associated Press; 13. Jeff Neumann/CBS; 14. Bruce White/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 15. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times; 16. Jessica Miglio/Fox; 18. Jamie Mccarthy/Getty Images; 21. Adam Taylor/ABC; 22. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; 23. Nicole Rivelli/ABC; 24. Focus Features; 25. Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times; 26. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; 28. Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times; 31. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 33. Ed Araquel/Fox; 34. Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times; 35. William Johnston; 36. Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox, via Associated Press; 37. Robert Gober/K. Ignatiadis, via Matthew Marks Gallery; 38. Ray Mickshaw/Fox, via Associated Press; 39. Joe Alblas/Showtime; 40. Manuel Harlan; 41. TT News Agency/Reuters; 42. Ruby Washington/The New York Times; 43. Paula Lobo for The New York Times; 44. Getty Images; 45. Daniel McFadden/Sony Pictures Classics; 46. Weinstein Company; 48. Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 50. Steven Lippman/Showtime; 51. Gene Page/AMC; 52. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 53. JSquared/CW; 54. Decca; 55. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 56. Colleen Hayes/NBC; 57. Richard Termine; 58. Kevin Sprague; 59. Alison Rosa/Fox Searchlight Pictures; 60. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 61. Richard Hubert Smith; 62. Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 63. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 64. Erin Baiano for The New York Times; 66. Patrick Semansky/Associated Press; 68. Brooklyn Museum; 69. Marco Gualazzini for The New York Times; 70. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 71. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters; 72. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 74. Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures; 75. Erin Baiano; 79. Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures; 80. Richard Termine for The New York Times; 81. Liam Daniel/Focus Features; 82. Thomas Mueller/Estate Sturtevant, Paris; 83. Kevork Djansezian/Reuters; 84. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times; 85. Jeremy Okai Davis/Studio Museum of Harlem; 86. Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures Classics; 87. Neilson Barnard/Getty Images; 90. Murray Close/Lionsgate; 91. Pierre Huyghe/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 92. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 93. Anne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight Pictures; 94. Fernando Ariza/The New York Times; 95. Rob Kim/Getty Images; 96. Angel Franco/The New York Times; 97. Barry Wetcher/Columbia Pictures; 98. David James/Universal Pictures; 99. Peter Mountain/Walt Disney Pictures

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Sunday Book Review |NYT Now

The Enclosure of the American Mind

‘Excellent Sheep,’ by William Deresiewicz

By ANTHONY GRAFTONAUG. 22, 2014

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Last October, the New York Academy of Medicine hosted a “wonder cabinet” — a day of talks and films about medicine, the human body and much more. As I took my seat for one of the sessions, I recognized two young men sitting near me. They were former students, whose senior theses I had supervised years before. It was fun to learn how they were doing, one in law and one in medical school, and to see that they still found time to hear about 18th-century anatomical models and books bound in human skin.

But it was even more fun to remember them as students. During their college days my seminar read a very good — but very long — book about classical antiquity in 19th-century Germany. The two of them came in wearing enormous fake beards, switched on their laptops to play the “Ride of the Valkyries” and rose to recite a satire that began “I am the spirit of German philology.” Their cheerful mockery of me and my assigned text sparked a searching and substantive discussion.

Why tell this story? Because “Excellent Sheep” demands it. William Deresiewicz, a recovering English professor who taught for many years at Yale, has indicted America’s elite universities. With their stately buildings and soaring trees, their star professors and even starrier student bodies, Ivy League schools look like paradises of learning. Deresiewicz describes them as something very different, and very much worse.

The trouble starts at admission. Top universities woo thousands of teenagers to apply, but seek one defined type: the student who has taken every Advanced Placement class and aced every exam, made varsity in a sport, played an instrument in the state youth orchestra and trekked across Nepal. This demanding system looks meritocratic. In practice, though, it aims directly at the children of the upper middle class, groomed since birth by parents, tutors and teachers to leap every hurdle. (The very rich can gain admission without leaping much of anything, as Deresiewicz also points out.)

Once in college, these young people lead the same Stakhanovite lives, even though they’re no longer competing to get in. They accept endless time-sucking activity and pointless competition as the natural condition of future leaders. Too busy to read or make friends, listen to music or fall in love, they waste the precious years that they should be devoting to building their souls on building their résumés.

The faculty could and should push these gifted obsessives to slow down and ask big questions. But elite universities choose professors for their ability at research. Tenure-track and tenured professors teach as little as they can, and leave what used to be their core task to ill-paid adjuncts and inexperienced graduate students. Even when they enter the classroom, they offer courses so minutely specialized that big questions never come up.

Students do their assigned work, often with great ingenuity and elegance, but without real engagement. At the end of their studies, they funnel like lemmings into the career services office, which directs them to finance and consulting — and doesn’t let them even imagine, much less try out, teaching or the ministry, the military or the arts.

It’s a bleak and soulless scene. But nobody protests. Any doubts are allayed by presidents and deans, who tell students before they arrive and repeat after they graduate that they are the most dazzling, brilliant, gifted young people ever to enter whichever college they attend. And any crises of conscience or conduct are averted by a system that cuts the chosen ones endless slack, penalizes no misconduct and sees to it that all have prizes at the end.

The elite university, for Deresiewicz, is the little world that forms the great one, the training ground where members of the international ruling class learn two vital lessons: that they are superior to all others, and that even if they break rules or fail, they will never suffer. He feels some nostalgia for the harsh all-male elite universities of two or three generations ago, which flunked students without undue remorse and expected their graduates to serve in the military before they started running factories, writing ads or sailing yachts in Bar Harbor, and shows far more respect for liberal arts colleges, with their engaged teachers, than for the Ivies. As he puts it, “If there is anywhere that teaching and the humanities are still accorded pride of place — anywhere that college is still college — it is there.”

Much of his dystopian description rings true. American universities spout endless, sickening self-praise. Professors are chosen for their specialized knowledge and receive no serious instruction in the art of teaching. As each field of study becomes denser with argument and discovery, its practitioners find it harder to offer broad courses. Students have complained for years that career services offices point them in only two or three very practical directions.

Above all, many students suffer from the relentless anxiety, the sense of exhaustion and anomie, that their hyperactivity generates and that Deresiewicz powerfully evokes. No wonder, then, that when he sketched this indictment in an essay in The American Scholar, his text went viral. Many students have contacted him to confirm his diagnosis. Some of my students tell me that they still remember exactly where they were when they read his sharp words. Anyone who cares about American higher education should ponder this book.

But anyone who cares should also know that the coin has another side, one that Deresiewicz rarely inspects. He describes the structures of the university as if they were machines, arranged in assembly lines: “The system churns out an endless procession of more or less uniform human specimens.” Yet universities aren’t total institutions. Professors and students have agency. They use the structures they inhabit in creative ways that are not dreamt of in Deresiewicz’s philosophy, and that are more common and more meaningful than the “exceptions” he allows.

Many students at elite universities amble like sheep through four years of parties and extracurriculars, and then head down the ramp to the hedge funds without stopping to think. But plenty of others find their people, as one of my own former students says: the teachers who still offer open doors and open ears, the friends who stay up all night arguing with them about expressionism or feminism or both, the partners with whom they sail the deep waters of love (which, like sex, survives on campus). They come in as raw freshmen and they leave as young adults, thoughtful and articulate and highly individual. Deresiewicz observes their identical T-shirts but misses their differences of class and resources — just as he elides the differences between universities.

Even the academic side of the university offers richer and deeper experiences than Deresiewicz thinks. Recreating a life or building an argument, analyzing a text or chasing a virus, in the company of an adult who cares about both the subject and the student, need not be a routine exercise. It can be a way to build a soul — the soul of a scholar or scientist, who ignores our smelly little ideologies and fact-free platitudes, and cherishes precision and evidence and honorable admission of error. One reason some graduates of elite universities look unworldly is that those universities still try — admittedly with mixed results — to uphold a distinctive code of values.

When Deresiewicz looks at the universities, he sees Heartbreak House: a crumbling Gothic mansion, inhabited by polite young shadows, limp and exhausted. When I look at them, I see the Grand Budapest Hotel: stately, if fragile, structures, where youth and energy can find love and knowledge and guidance — places that welcome students who make creative fun of their teachers and other authorities, and help them go on having creative fun in later life.

EXCELLENT SHEEP

The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

By William Deresiewicz

245 pp. Free Press. $26.

Anthony Grafton teaches European history at Princeton University.

A version of this review appears in print on August 24, 2014, on page BR20 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: The Enclosure of the American Mind. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Baseball

Clayton Kershaw Keeps Aiming for New Heights

By TYLER KEPNERSEPT. 19, 2014

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Clayton Kershaw is 17-1 in his last 20 starts, his only loss a complete game in which he struck out 11 batters.

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CHICAGO — There has been no doubt, for a while now, that Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball. Dan Haren was aware of this when he joined the Los Angeles Dodgers this spring after more than a decade with other teams. But Haren still had to be reminded of just what he was about to witness.

“You’re not going to believe how much he’s going to dominate,” Josh Beckett, another veteran pitcher, told Haren in spring training. “You have to see it through your eyes.”

As fall approaches, that blank canvas of spring has become a masterpiece, a portrait of pitching brilliance and perhaps the finest work in an annual series from Kershaw. He wobbled on Friday, lasting only five innings against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, but still became the season’s first 20-game winner with a 14-5 victory.

“I’ve always said that wins are a team stat,” said Kershaw, who is 20-3 with a 1.80 earned run average. “Twenty’s always something that’s a benchmark for a starting pitcher, kind of a cool thing. I wasn’t great today and we scored 14 runs. Years happen like that. I don’t take it for granted. It’s obviously awesome, a huge honor.”

Photo

Kershaw is 6 feet 3 but seems taller on the hill, and his aggressive wind-up generates power.

Without his trademark command on Friday, Kershaw often turned his head to the third-base seats, frustrated with himself after missing his location. He needed 106 pitches to wade through the short workday, and he said after the game that he felt exhausted.

But after giving up three runs in the first inning, Kershaw blanked the Cubs despite never retiring the side in order. He found his best curveballs and sliders when he needed them and struck out nine.

“I think he showed you what he’s all about, even during that outing,” Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly said.

Kershaw is still poised to lead the major leagues in E.R.A. for the fourth straight season, something no pitcher has ever done. He is 17-1 in his last 20 starts, his only loss a complete game in which he struck out 11, and he has a strong case to be the National League’s most valuable player.

Mattingly said he had never seen a pitcher on such a run. But as a franchise, the Dodgers have.

Kershaw is a lock to win his third Cy Young Award in four seasons, as Sandy Koufax did in the 1960s. Kershaw’s string of seemingly automatic victories recalls Orel Hershiser’s charmed run in 1988, which included 67 consecutive scoreless innings, counting the postseason, and the Dodgers’ last World Series title.

“My best pitch was my sinking fastball, and my second best pitch, which was still dominant, was my curveball,” said Hershiser, now a TV analyst for the Dodgers. “But I didn’t have a third dominant pitch. I didn’t have a dominant changeup or dominant velocity. My dominance was more in movement and change of speeds between the sinker and the curveball.

“So I think he has a better chance, because of tools, to duplicate dominance over and over again, like a copy machine. What he’s running through at the beginning of the copy machine, on the original document, is better than most people.”

Dodgers catcher A. J. Ellis said Kershaw’s mastery of three pitches at different ranges of velocity made him especially tough to hit. He throws a curveball around 74 miles an hour, a slider around 87 and a fastball around 93.

Milwaukee’s Jonathan Lucroy got a simple scouting report from Kershaw when he caught for him in the All-Star Game: in on right-handed batters, away from left-handed batters. That was it. Kershaw retired the side in order, and Lucroy said it felt like a video game, which was not surprising. As a hitter, Lucroy is 0 for 17 against Kershaw.

“He’s ridiculous,” Lucroy said this week. “He’s one of the few guys I have difficulty seeing. It’s a timing thing — his height, his delivery is so quick, and he throws all his pitches at the same arm speed, from the same arm slot. He doesn’t do anything different coming off of that arm slot. He’s probably the only guy, when he gets me out, I don’t get mad. He’s just so good.”

Kershaw is 6-foot-3 but seems taller on the mound. In the stretch, he reaches high with both arms before delivering the pitch with a slide-step, keeping runners close while seeming to rush the ball to the hitter.

Photo

Kershaw's preparation between starts, and in the off-season, is well known: early to the ballpark, a hard worker in the winter — standard stuff for many of the greats. What makes Kershaw different, perhaps, is that it is all a chore.

From the wind-up, he starts with his glove at face level, turns, lifts the glove above his knee, then yanks it down. He tilts his shoulders, loading his power on his back leg, and then drives himself toward the hitter.

“It is a true power position he gets himself in,” said Rick Honeycutt, the Dodgers’ pitching coach. “I think the biggest thing you would say, from the hitter’s standpoint, is you’re seeing an aggressive delivery coming at you.”

Ellis compared Kershaw’s distinctiveness to that of Madison Bumgarner, the 18-game winner for the San Francisco Giants. Bumgarner throws across his body, with an almost sideways delivery, but like Kershaw he has a style all his own.

“I’ve had guys tell me, ‘I could watch video all day of Clayton, and when I stand in the box it does not do justice to what I’m seeing,’ ” Ellis said. “He is unique.”

When he and Honeycutt prepare for games with Haren or Zack Greinke, Ellis said, it is more of an exchange of ideas. Kershaw is different. He does not like to watch video of himself, Ellis said, and while Kershaw will take tips on how to approach certain hitters, he alone determines his plan of attack.

His preparation between starts, and in the off-season, is well known: early to the ballpark, fastidious with routines, a hard worker in the winter — standard stuff for many greats. What makes Kershaw different, perhaps, is that it is all a chore.

“Some guys love to work out — just love it — just for the sake of working out,” said Stan Conte, the Dodgers’ head trainer. “Clayton works out to be a good pitcher. So he really has to have a lot of discipline to force him through all the workouts he has to do every day.”

Kershaw won the first game of the major league season, his first start since signing a seven-year, $215 million contract extension, a record amount for a pitcher, and he quickly landed on the disabled list with a muscle strain in his upper back, near his shoulder.

Conte was worried, he said, because the injury could cost a pitcher three months. But Kershaw returned on May 6, and by June he was in a groove. In one stretch he fired 41 consecutive scoreless innings and pitched a no-hitter.

Friday’s struggle notwithstanding, the benefit of the time off could be felt in October. Kershaw made four starts last fall, winning the first but then working just 16 innings in the next three. Including the postseason, he logged 259 innings.

Kershaw said his body felt the same now as it did at this point last season. But he has thrown just 1901/3 innings, and until Friday had been strong enough to pitch at least seven innings in each of his last 17 starts. The Dodgers, who lead the N.L. West and clinched a playoff spot when Milwaukee lost Friday night, need him at his best next month.

“He says this, and he believes it: ‘I won’t be happy until the team wins every single one of my starts and we win the World Series,’ ” Ellis said. “We all know that’s impossible.”

Yet the Dodgers have won 22 of Kershaw’s 26 starts, and they will soon have another chance at a championship. Ellis reflected on this and smiled.

“We’re getting closer, though,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Best Pitcher Keeps Aiming for New Heights. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Baseball |NYT Now

Even Among No-Hitters, Clayton Kershaw’s Was a Standout

JUNE 19, 2014

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Clayton Kershaw's no-hitter Wednesday was by one metric the second-best outing ever by a pitcher.

On Baseball

By TYLER KEPNER

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Years from now, Charley Steiner said, when he recalls one of the greatest pitching performances in major league history, he will first remember Clayton Kershaw the hitter. In the bottom of the eighth inning Wednesday night, when he came to bat with an eight-run lead, Kershaw, the ace of the Los Angeles Dodgers, competed with everything he had.

“He grounds routinely to the shortstop, and he’s sprinting every step of the way to the bag,” Steiner, a Dodgers broadcaster, said Thursday. “And I’m thinking, ‘Who on earth could possibly be wired in such a way?’ He’s three outs and one error away from a perfect game, and there is no governor on his engine.”

Kershaw finished off the Colorado Rockies in the ninth, retiring Corey Dickerson with a vicious slider for his 15th strikeout. It was not a perfect game because of a throwing error by shortstop Hanley Ramirez in the seventh. But it was one of a kind: the first time in major league history that a pitcher struck out at least 15 without allowing a hit or a walk.

It was the second no-hitter of the major league season and the second by a Dodger: Josh Beckett stymied the Philadelphia Phillies on the road last month. Kershaw and Beckett are the first teammates to throw complete-game no-hitters in the same season since Burt Hooton and Milt Pappas of the 1972 Chicago Cubs.

But there are no-hitters and there are games for the ages — and Kershaw’s ranks among the greatest singular performances in history. His effort computed to a game score of 102, ranking second only to Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout one-hitter for the Cubs in 1998, which registered 105.

Game score, developed by Bill James, follows this formula: start with 50 points; add 1 point for each out, 2 for each completed inning after the fourth and 1 for each strikeout; subtract 1 point for each walk, 2 for each hit, 2 for each unearned run and 4 for each earned run.

Three games scored 101 — Matt Cain’s perfect game in 2012, Nolan Ryan’s no-hitter in 1991 and Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965. Six scored 100 — Randy Johnson’s perfect game in 2004; no-hitters by Ryan in 1973 and Warren Spahn in 1960; and shutouts by Brandon Morrow (2010), Curt Schilling (2002) and Ryan (1972).

The metric does not quantify degree of difficulty or circumstance. Thus, baseball’s two postseason no-hitters — Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series and Roy Halladay’s no-hitter in the 2010 playoffs — score only a 94, ranking below 133 regular-season efforts and two others in the postseason, by Roger Clemens and Tim Lincecum.

Kershaw, who won, 8-0, faced a Rockies lineup that was missing the injured Nolan Arenado, Michael Cuddyer and Carlos Gonzalez. Koufax recorded one fewer strikeout in his perfect game than Kershaw did on Wednesday, but he faced three future Hall of Famers — Ernie Banks, Ron Santo and Billy Williams — and the final score was 1-0.

Then again, Koufax was conditioned to throw nine innings. The perfect game was his 23rd complete game of 1965; Kershaw’s no-hitter was the 13th complete game of his seven-year career.

Ranking greatness makes for good debate, but ultimately it is futile. While it was certainly the best game for Kershaw, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, it was not too far from his norm. It was the fifth time this season that Kershaw has struck out at least nine without allowing a walk.

“The thing about Kershaw is that almost every start, he’s capable of doing this,” Steiner said. “So it wasn’t like, ‘Oooh, he’s bringing something special tonight.’ Because every night he pitches, he’s bringing something special.”

A version of this article appears in print on June 20, 2014, on page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: Game Stands Out, Even Among Other No-Hitters. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe | Saturday Profile |NYT Now

Exile in Brooklyn, With an Eye on Georgia

Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s Ex-President, Plots Return From Williamsburg, Brooklyn

By JASON HOROWITZSEPT. 19, 2014

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Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, has made a new home for himself in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “I used to look at this place from Manhattan, it was such a pity, it was mafia, a place where hit men dump bodies,” he said.

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AT the Smorgasburg food fair in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Mikheil Saakashvili motored in fluorescent green sneakers among bearded men with tattoos and women in revealing overalls. They lined up for Cheese Pops, Dun-Well Doughnuts and other local delicacies. He ordered a fresh coconut.

“My friend, one of the biggest sheikhs of the United Arab Emirates, gave Georgia 20,000 palm trees,” Mr. Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, said as he dropped a straw in the machete-opened fruit and emptied its water with a few deep pulls. “As a personal gift.”

Mr. Saakashvili is in self-imposed exile on North Seventh Street — plotting a triumphant return, even as his steep fall from grace serves as a cautionary tale to the many American government officials who had hoped he would be a model exporter of democracy to former Soviet republics.

Since leaving office last November, this George W. Bush favorite — whose confrontation with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia led to a disastrous war in 2008 — has commandeered his uncle’s apartment in a tower on the Williamsburg waterfront, where he luxuriates in the neighborhood’s time-honored tradition of mysteriously sourced wealth. When not lingering in cafes, riding his bike across the bridge or spending stag evenings with friends on the Wythe Hotel rooftop, Mr. Saakashvili seizes on the Ukrainian conflict and his experience with Mr. Putin’s wrath as a lifeline back to political relevance.

Photo

Mr. Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, attended the Smorgasburg food fair last month in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he has lived since leaving office last November.

“It’s the end of Putin,” Mr. Saakashvili, 46, said of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, the topic of discussion on Thursday as its president, Petro O. Poroshenko, met in Washington with President Obama and congressional leaders. Mr. Saakashvili called Mr. Putin’s actions “very, very similar” to those in Georgia. “I think he walked into trap.”

BUT Mr. Saakashvili, considerably plumper than when he was in power, argues that the conflict should also mark a reappraisal of his own reputation as a reckless leader whose peaceful Rose Revolution and commitment to reform were eclipsed by years of riding roughshod over opponents, bending the rule of law and provoking Mr. Putin into a war that resulted in the death, displacement and impoverishment of thousands of Georgians. “It should be revisited,” he said.

Mr. Saakashvili said that while he had a “normal life” in Brooklyn, he considered himself a big deal in Eastern Europe, pointing out that on a recent trip to Albania “they shut down traffic for us and our 20-car escort.”

Mr. Saakashvili’s personal rehabilitation project is complicated by his eroded popularity back home and charges filed against him by Georgian prosecutors of human rights violations and embezzlement of government funds. He shrugs off the prosecutors as politically motivated puppets of his nemesis, the billionaire and former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili. Some of Mr. Saakashvili’s critics agree that the charges say as much about the current Georgian government’s hunger for revenge as they do about him.

For now Mr. Saakashvili is writing a memoir, delivering “very well-paid” speeches, helping start up a Washington-based think tank and visiting old boosters like Senator John McCain and Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state. He said he was in the process of changing his tourist status here to a work visa and in the meantime is enjoying the bars and cafes of his adopted homeland. On his roof deck, with sweeping views of Manhattan, he has entertained David H. Petraeus, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and is expecting Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, at the end of the month. Usually, a cousin mans the grill, along with the chef from Fabbrica, the neighboring Italian restaurant opposite a CVS. Like those chain drugstores, glassy high-rises and Eurocentric nightclubs, Mr. Saakashvili is evidence of Williamsburg’s steady transition to a playground for moneyed out-of-towners.

“I used to look at this place from Manhattan, it was such a pity, it was mafia, a place where hit men dump bodies,” he said, recalling his time in the 1990s as a Columbia University Law School student. Now he sees “a jazzy atmosphere” rife with energy and new construction.

“Williamsburg is part of the democratic transformation,” he said.

Mr. Saakashvili tends to see a lot of things through the lens of democracy building. He calls the fashionable Cafe Mogador “my absolute favorite cafe, because it’s very democratic.” And while he complains about Williamsburg’s high cost of living (“I’m not poor poor, but it really bites”), the champion of free enterprise admires the social mobility of his new neighbors.

“They are hipsters,” he said. “But they are still making tons of money, and they live a pleasant lifestyle and make it in life. They are no longer a marginal part of society.”

On one of his first nights in Williamsburg, Mr. Saakashvili waited in line with friends to get into the Wythe, but was turned away because he did not have identification. “It’s O.K.,” he said. “It’s not a posh place like in Manhattan.”

ON a more recent weekend, the man the Secret Service once dubbed “the Energizer Bunny” charged out of the food fair and into the Artists & Fleas market, where he pulled Prada sunglasses from his graying sideburns and went straight to a booth selling clocks made from retro hardcover books. “I bought 50 of them and sent them back to my presidential library,” he said. Five months before, he said, a woman spotted Leonardo DiCaprio here.

Moments later, a Georgian living in Manhattan, Lali Lobzhanidze, approached him and asked, “Are you Mikheil Saakashvili?”

Photo

Mr. Saakashvili in Williamsburg.

“My DiCaprio moment,” he said, delighted.

Mr. Saakashvili is frequently noticed by his countrymen, whose opinions of him vary. “He’s creating rifts in the diaspora,” said Vakhtang Gomelauri, a critic of Mr. Saakashvili who organized a 2012 protest of him at the United Nations after the revelation of rampant rapes of inmates in Georgian prisons. But a group of Georgian students was eager to pose with him on the Bedford Avenue subway platform. “It went viral,” Mr. Saakashvili said.

The former president usually takes the L train into Manhattan, where he frequents Oda House in the East Village (the owner likes him, the waiter does not) and Pepela, where he orders a 2004 vintage of the dry red Georgian wine Orovela Saperavi and he recently lunched with Bill Clinton.

In his Columbia days, he lived in Astoria, Queens, with his Dutch wife, Sandra Roelofs, who worked at Cheesy Pizza before they found jobs at Manhattan law firms and moved to the Upper West Side. “Queens is like wannabe New York,” Mr. Saakashvili said. “I remember that bitterly. Williamsburg is like New York, not over-the-bridge people.” As he spoke he looked over the Williamsburg Bridge.

These days, Ms. Roelofs remains in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, with their younger son. Their older son, Eduard, who once broke the world record for speed typing on an iPad, is at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Saakashvili said he expected a renewal of his own tenure as “senior statesmen” at Tufts, but the university said the relationship ended in May. In addition, Mr. Saakashvili said he had not pursued a position at his alma mater, Columbia, but a former professor said people close to Mr. Saakashvili had inquired about a job for him at the law school. Lincoln Mitchell, a critic of Mr. Saakashvili who was an associate professor at Columbia, said leaders of the law school had concerns. “Was he going to be indicted by an international tribunal?” Mr. Mitchell recalled their asking. “And concerns about his personal behavior.”

IN August, Georgian prosecutors charged Mr. Saakashvili with using public money to pay for, among other things, hotel expenses for a personal stylist, hotel and travel for two fashion models, Botox injections and hair removal, the rental of a yacht in Italy and the purchase of artwork by the London artist Meredith Ostrom, who makes imprints on canvases with her naked, painted body. They have also charged him in a violent crackdown on a rally of political protesters in 2007. If convicted, Mr. Saakashvili could serve up to 11 years in prison.

Mr. Saakashvili is also accused of using public money to fly his massage therapist, Dorothy Stein, into Georgia in 2009. Mr. Saakashvili said he received a massage from Ms. Stein on “one occasion only,” but Ms. Stein said she received 2,000 euros to massage him multiple times, including delivering her trademark “bite massage.”

“He gave me a bunch of presents,” said Ms. Stein, who splits her time between Berlin and Hoboken. “He said, ‘Oh, my wife won’t mind.’ He gave me a gold necklace with some kind of religious pendant, which obviously I’m not going to wear because my God is Frank Zappa.”

Mr. Saakashvili said the charges proved nothing more than that he is the target of a political witch hunt. “If you cannot find, for somebody who has been in power for nine years in a post-Soviet country, anything connected with corruption or enrichment or finding,” he said, adding, “that makes me very proud.”

When not catching movies or plays with friends, Mr. Saakashvili considers cycling his chief pastime. “You want a picture with bike?” he asked during a lull in conversation.

Mr. Saakashvili changed into red shorts for the photo, taken opposite a coffee shop where bearded men sat on the stoop in studied ennui.

“You know there is this Hasidic area,” he said as he pedaled his bike south. “They walk around in these big hats!”

Correction: September 19, 2014

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the location of the subway platform where Mikheil Saakashvili posed with students. It is on Bedford Avenue, not Bedford Street.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: Exile in Brooklyn, With an Eye on Georgia. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Georgia Leader Declares Emergency Over Protest

By C. J. CHIVERS

Published: November 8, 2007

MOSCOW, Nov. 7 � The president of Georgia declared a state of emergency Wednesday night after riot police officers used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon to clear thousands of demonstrators from the streets of Tbilisi, the capital. The order immediately closed two television stations and banned public assembly in the capital, a senior government official said by telephone.

The country�s principal opposition news outlet, Imedi television, went off the air as a special forces unit, its members armed and in dark masks, entered the station�s offices. By then at least 365 people had gone to hospitals with injuries, the country�s Health Ministry said.

The emergency order, issued by President Mikheil Saakashvili, plunged the country into uncertainty in the face of opposition anger after a day of violent police sweeps and clashes in the capital. The government later issued a statement saying the emergency would last 15 days.

Giga Bokeria, a prominent member of Parliament and one of Mr. Saakashvili�s closest allies, said the order was issued after Badri Patarkatsishvili, an owner of Imedi television who is widely believed to be Georgia�s richest man, appeared on the station and said he would work to remove the government from power.

�Mr. Patarkatsishvili made a statement on his television station that he will use all of his resources to overthrow the illegal state of Georgia,� Mr. Bokeria said by telephone, asserting that a conspiracy to topple the government was under way. �We strongly believe all of this was planned long ago.�

Mr. Patarkatsishvili said later that he had misjudged Mr. Saakashvili, and that the Georgian government had made an irreparable mistake. �I was very na�ve when I thought that the authorities would not dare to touch the people,� he said by telephone, saying he was calling from Israel. �Today, in front of the eyes of all of the world, the Saakashvili government lost its legitimacy.�

The declaration of a state of emergency followed a day of violence and public outrage that began in the morning when police officers tried to restore traffic flow on the city�s main boulevard, Rustaveli Avenue, which had been blocked by opposition demonstrators since Friday. An initial police effort was shoved back by the demonstrators, but officers returned forcefully with riot gear.

Witnesses and participants who fled the clouds of tear gas reported that the police had rushed through the streets and beaten demonstrators who were not swift enough to escape. Many protesters were bleeding. The police also scuffled with several journalists and confiscated or destroyed some of their equipment, witnesses and the country�s human rights ombudsman said.

While the police sweeps cleared the streets at least temporarily, they underlined the intensity of the challenge to the government and to the reputation of Mr. Saakashvili. Having risen to power through peaceful protests in 2003, he has cast himself as a darling of Washington � providing troops to the American-led war in Iraq and pledging to send units to Afghanistan next year � and the most democratic leader in the Caucasus.

The opposition has accused him of running a centralized government intolerant of dissent and undermined by high-level corruption and police and prosecutorial abuses.

Opposition leaders labeled the police action a political crackdown and collective punishment, and called for Georgians to gather in renewed protests.

�The authorities have used weapons against the peaceful demonstrators, and therefore the authorities will get what they deserve from the people,� said Kakha Kukava, an opposition member of Parliament, according to the Interfax news agency, hours before the emergency order was issued.

The government defended its actions, saying the demonstrations were not entirely peaceful and the riot police were needed after protesters forced their way though police lines.

�What happened this morning was very regrettable,� said Mr. Bokeria, who accused opposition leaders of urging the protesters to rush the police. �They behaved very badly. They just openly called for violence.�

Mr. Saakashvili, appearing on national television early in the night, said the violence pained his heart. But he defended the police and the decision to deploy them, and called on the public to cease the protests.

He blamed Russian intelligence services for coordinating elements of the demonstration, and said that three Russian diplomats would be expelled from the country. �We cannot let our country become the stage for dirty geopolitical escapades by other countries,� he said. �Our democracy needs a firm hand from the authorities.�

He made no clear concessions, but offered to enter talks with the opposition.

A short while later he issued the emergency order, and Imedi and a second television station promptly went off the air. The pro-government Rustavi television continued its broadcasts.

Mr. Saakashvili�s government faced an enraged opposition and widespread unease about its actions. Reached by telephone shortly after the first police sweeps, Sozar Subari, the country�s human rights ombudsman, denounced the government�s use of force and suggested that Georgia, which had undertaken many reforms since 2003, had taken large steps backward.

�Georgia is now the same as Lukashenko�s Belarus,� he said, referring to President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the leader of a post-Soviet state that much of the West has labeled a dictatorship. As Mr. Subari spoke, a woman could be heard screaming in the background.

Mr. Subari later called the police action illegal and said he, too, had been beaten by the police. �Even after I declared that I am the ombudsman, they beat me more,� he said.

The United States, the principal foreign sponsor and mentor of the Saakashvili government, urged the two sides to avoid steps that might cause further bloodshed. �Neither side, whether the government or the opposition, should take any steps that would be deliberately provocative to the other and could lead to violence,� said the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack.

Sergey V. Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, which ruled Georgia during Soviet times, called the unrest �a domestic issue for Georgia and its people.� The Kremlin made similar remarks during police crackdowns, some of them intensely violent or even lethal, in Uzbekistan, Belarus and Azerbaijan.

The protesters, who first gathered in front of Parliament on Friday, initially demanded early parliamentary elections and other measures that might relax what they regard as the government�s tight hold on power and allow a degree of political pluralism.

But after Mr. Saakashvili ignored the demonstrators for nearly three days, then publicly belittled their leaders on national television and said they were doing the bidding of the Kremlin, the demonstrators roundly demanded that he resign.

The Kremlin is highly unpopular in Georgia because of decades of Soviet occupation and its open support of separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two regions of Georgia that are out of the Georgian government�s control.

Many demonstrators have bristled at the government�s repeated efforts to discredit the opposition by casting it as a Russian proxy, and its refusal to either negotiate or openly acknowledge sources of popular discontent.

Mr. Saakashvili�s government had said it would respect the demonstrators� rights of free speech and assembly, and would allow protesters to stand on the steps of Parliament as long as they wished. It had cautioned, however, that it would not allow traffic in front of Parliament to be blocked indefinitely, and that no tents could be pitched.

Mr. Saakashvili and Parliament, which is controlled by his National Movement party, amended the Constitution last year to extend legislators� terms to the fall of 2008 and shorten the presidential term so that Mr. Saakashvili and Parliament could run for election at the same time. The government insisted that simultaneous elections were necessary for national security.

The government has said that Russia, which has presidential elections in the spring, could try to sow unrest in Georgia or recognize the breakaway region of Abkhazia, which could lead to a military confrontation.

The opposition said that the changes were political manipulation intended to allow the ruling party and the president to mass resources for a joint campaign, and that they would leave Parliament illegitimate when its original term ended in the spring.

Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting.

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Europe |NYT Now

Turkish President’s Allies Increasing Pressure on Times and Reporter

By RICK GLADSTONESEPT. 19, 2014

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Turkey’s president and his supporters have been denouncing The New York Times and one of its Istanbul correspondents with growing furor for the past three days, reacting to an article and photograph about the recruitment of fighters in Turkey by the Islamic State, the militant group that has seized parts of neighboring Iraq and Syria.

Despite protests by the newspaper and press-freedom advocates, the denunciations have turned personal, punctuated by threats conveyed via email and social media against the correspondent, Ceylan Yeginsu.

On Friday, leading pro-government newspapers controlled by allies of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, published front-page photographs of Ms. Yeginsu, who is Turkish, and suggested she was a traitor and a foreign agent.

Her motive, they said, was to malign Mr. Erdogan in a “perception operation” by insinuating that he is a closet supporter of the Islamic State, a group that Turkey, along with the United States and many other countries, classifies as a terrorist threat.

It was the photograph in particular, which showed President Erdogan visiting a mosque in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, that appeared to be the catalyst for the backlash against The Times and Ms. Yeginsu. Mr. Erdogan called it “despicable, vile and shameless,” contending it implied a connection between the Turkish government and the Islamic State.

The photograph, posted on the newspaper’s website, was promptly removed after Mr. Erdogan complained. The Times published a correction asserting that editors had erred in using it. The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, issued a statement Thursday that the article never said or implied that Mr. Erdogan supported the Islamic State or condoned the group’s recruitment in Turkey, and that the photograph also was not meant to imply such support.

Even for Turkey, known as a hostile environment for journalists, the reaction by Mr. Erdogan and his supporters was considered strong. It came against a backdrop of resistance by Mr. Erdogan to American-led pressure to join a coalition of nations that have pledged to eradicate the Islamic State by force.

“There may be some strategic lashing out, but it’s also important to keep in mind that Erdogan is a very thin-skinned individual,” said Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based advocacy group. “He takes criticism very personally.”

Mr. Erdogan, who routinely castigates and even sues journalists he regards as enemies, had been angered over a New York Times article last Sunday about Turkey’s role as a conduit for oil sales by Islamic State smugglers and the Turkish government’s apparent reluctance to curb them. When Ms. Yeginsu’s article was published a few days later, he turned even more furious.

“Perception operation turned out to be the work of a local,” the front-page headline in the Aksam newspaper said on Friday. Takvim, another pro-Erdogan daily, asserted that some people who had been mentioned in Ms. Yeginsu’s article were fictitious.

The Times has stood by the reporting on both articles, saying they speak for themselves. And despite the published correction, Mr. Baquet wrote in his statement, “some Turkish authorities and media outlets have mounted a coordinated campaign to intimidate and to impugn the motives of the reporter who wrote the story.”

“She has been sent thousands of messages that threaten her safety,” he wrote. “It is unacceptable for one of our journalists to be targeted in this way.”

Mr. Baquet said that The Times expected “the Turkish authorities to work to ensure the safety of our journalists working legally in the country.”

There was no sign of conciliation in the coverage in Turkey by the pro-government news media on Friday. Akit, an Islamist newspaper, said in reference to the removal of the offending photograph from The Times’s website: “The New York Times licked what it spit.”

Ms. Yeginsu, a Columbia Journalism School graduate who started as a reporter and editor for Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News & Economic Review in 2008 and began working for The Times in 2013, is only the latest in a series of journalists in Turkey who have been publicly vilified by Mr. Erdogan and his allies.

Last month, Mr. Erdogan denounced Amberin Zaman, the local correspondent for The Economist, as “a shameless militant disguised under the name of a journalist” and told her to “know your place,” The Economist reported. He was reacting to her interview with an opposition figure the day before.

In July, Mr. Erdogan asked the Ankara Public Prosecutor’s Office to conduct a criminal inquiry against the editor in chief of the English-language newspaper Today’s Zaman on charges of insulting him in Twitter postings. The newspaper is aligned with an exiled Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gulen, an influential adversary of Mr. Erdogan.

Other journalists criticized by Mr. Erdogan and pro-government newspapers in the past year include Ivan Watson of CNN International and Selin Girit and Rengin Arslan of the BBC.

“We are very concerned about journalists who work for people’s right to information targeted in such a direct way,” said Sibel Gunes, general secretary of the Turkish Journalists’ Association. Nina Ognianova, regional coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said, “Turkish authorities must abandon once and for all their aggressive antipress rhetoric, which translates into tangible risk for the journalists singled out.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkish President’s Allies Increasing Pressure on Times and Reporter. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe |NYT Now

ISIS Draws a Steady Stream of Recruits From Turkey

By CEYLAN YEGINSUSEPT. 15, 2014

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ANKARA, Turkey — Having spent most of his youth as a drug addict in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Turkey’s capital, Can did not think he had much to lose when he was smuggled into Syria with 10 of his childhood friends to join the world’s most extreme jihadist group.

After 15 days at a training camp in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto headquarters of the group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the 27-year-old Can was assigned to a fighting unit. He said he shot two men and participated in a public execution. It was only after he buried a man alive that he was told he had become a full ISIS fighter.

“When you fight over there, it’s like being in a trance,” said Can, who asked to be referred to only by his middle name for fear of reprisal. “Everyone shouts, ‘God is the greatest,’ which gives you divine strength to kill the enemy without being fazed by blood or splattered guts,” he said.

Hundreds of foreign fighters, including some from Europe and the United States, have joined the ranks of ISIS in its self-proclaimed caliphate that sweeps over vast territories of Iraq and Syria. But one of the biggest source of recruits is neighboring Turkey, a NATO member with an undercurrent of Islamist discontent.

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Graphic

How ISIS Works

With oil revenues, arms and organization, the jihadist group controls vast stretches of Syria and Iraq and aspires to statehood.

OPEN Graphic

As many as 1,000 Turks have joined ISIS, according to Turkish news media reports and government officials here. Recruits cite the group’s ideological appeal to disaffected youths as well as the money it pays fighters from its flush coffers. The C.I.A. estimated last week that the group had from 20,000 to 31,500 fighters in Iraq and Syria.

The United States has put heavy pressure on Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to better police Turkey’s 560-mile-long border with Syria. Washington wants Turkey to stanch the flow of foreign fighters and to stop ISIS from exporting the oil it produces on territory it holds in Syria and Iraq.

So far, Mr. Erdogan has resisted pleas to take aggressive steps against the group, citing the fate of 49 Turkish hostages ISIS has held since militants took over Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, in June. Turkey declined to sign a communiqué last Thursday that committed a number of regional states to take “appropriate” new measures to counter ISIS, frustrating American officials.

For years, Turkey has striven to set an example of Islamic democracy in the Middle East through its “zero problems with neighbors” prescription, the guiding principle of Ahmet Davutoglu, who recently became Turkey’s prime minister after serving for years as foreign minister. But miscalculations have left the country isolated and vulnerable in a region now plagued by war.

Turkey has been criticized at home and abroad for an open border policy in the early days of the Syrian uprising. Critics say that policy was crucial to the rise of ISIS. Turkey had bet that rebel forces would quickly topple the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, but as the war evolved, the extremists have benefited from the chaos.

Turkish fighters recruited by ISIS say they identify more with the extreme form of Islamic governance practiced by ISIS than with the rule of the Turkish governing party, which has its roots in a more moderate form of Islam.

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Stopping Home-Bound ISIS Fighters

Stopping Home-Bound ISIS Fighters A look at how governments around the world deal with their citizens who become jihadists. Video Credit By Christian Roman on Publish Date September 12, 2014. Image CreditReuters

Hacibayram, a ramshackle neighborhood in the heart of Ankara’s tourist district, has morphed into an ISIS recruitment hub over the past year. Locals say up to 100 residents have gone to fight for the group in Syria.

“It began when a stranger with a long, coarse beard started showing up in the neighborhood,” recalled Arif Akbas, the neighborhood’s elected headman of 30 years, who oversees local affairs. “The next thing we knew, all the drug addicts started going to the mosque.”

One of the first men to join ISIS from the neighborhood was Ozguzhan Gozlemcioglu, known to his ISIS counterparts as Muhammad Salef. In three years, he has risen to the status of a regional commander in Raqqa, and locals say he frequently travels in and out of Ankara, each time making sure to take back new recruits with him.

Mehmet Arabaci, a Hacibayram resident who assists with distributing government aid to the poor, said younger members of the local community found online pictures of Mr. Gozlemcioglu with weapons on the field and immediately took interest. Children have started to spend more time online since the municipality knocked down the only school in the area last year as part of an aggressive urban renewal project.

“There are now seven mosques in the vicinity, but not one school,” Mr. Arabaci said. “The lives of children here are so vacant that they find any excuse to be sucked into action.”

Playing in the rubble of a demolished building on a recent hot day here, two young boys staged a fight with toy guns.

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Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq

According to Peter Neumann, a professor at King’s College London, at least 12,000 foreign militants are fighting in Syria and Iraq — many of them with ISIS. Where the fighters originate from:

Sweden

Russia

Britain

Canada

Germany

Ukraine

Kazakhstan

France

Turkey

United

States

Syria

China

Afghanistan

Tunisia

Iraq

Pakistan

Libya

Morocco

Egypt

Saudi Arabia

Sudan

Somalia

KEY

Indonesia

50

100

500

1,500 fighters

Dotted lines represent

the low end of a range.

Australia

Sweden

Russia

Britain

Canada

Germany

Ukraine

Kazakhstan

France

United

States

Turkey

Syria

China

Afghanistan

Tunisia

Iraq

Pakistan

Libya

Morocco

Egypt

Saudi Arabia

Sudan

Somalia

KEY

Indonesia

50

100

500

1,500 fighters

Australia

Dotted lines represent

the low end of a range.

KEY

Dotted lines represent

the low end of a range.

50

100

500

1,500 fighters

Syria

Iraq

Syria

Iraq

KEY

50

100

500

1,500 fighters

Dotted lines represent the low end of a range.

Sources: Peter Neumann, King's College London; The International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence

When a young Syrian girl walked past them, they pounced on her, knocking her to the floor and pushing their toy rifles against her head. “I’m going to kill you, whore,” one of the boys shouted before launching into sound effects that imitated a machine gun.

The other boy quickly lost interest and walked away. “Toys are so boring,” he said. “I have real guns upstairs.”

The boy’s father, who owns a nearby market, said he fully supported ISIS’s vision for Islamic governance and hoped to send the boy and his other sons to Raqqa when they are older.

“The diluted form of Islam practiced in Turkey is an insult to the religion,” he said giving only his initials, T.C., to protect his identity. “In the Islamic State you lead a life of discipline as dictated by God, and then you are rewarded. Children there have parks and swimming pools. Here, my children play in the dirt.”

But when Can returned from Raqqa after three months with two of the original 10 friends he had left with, he was full of regret.

“ISIS is brutal,” he said. “They interpret the Quran for their own gains. God never ordered Muslims to kill Muslims.”

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OPEN Graphic

Graphic: The Iraq-ISIS Conflict in Maps, Photos and Video

Still, he said many were drawn to the group for financial reasons, as it appealed to disadvantaged youth in less prosperous parts of Turkey. “When you fight, they offer $150 a day. Then everything else is free,” he said. “Even the shopkeepers give you free products out of fear.”

ISIS recruitment in Hacibayram caught the news media’s attention in June when a local 14-year-old recruit came back to the neighborhood after he was wounded in a shelling attack in Raqqa. The boy’s father, Yusuf, said that the government had made no formal inquiry into the episode and that members of the local community had started to condemn what they saw as inaction by the authorities.

“There are clearly recruitment centers being set up in Ankara and elsewhere in Turkey, but the government doesn’t seem to care,” said Aaron Stein, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. “It seems their hatred for Bashar al-Assad and their overly nuanced view of what radical Islam is has led to a very short- and narrow-sighted policy that has serious implications.”

The Interior Ministry and National Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.

On a recent afternoon in Ankara, Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Davutoglu came to pray at the historic Haci Bayram Veli Mosque, just over 100 yards away from an underground mosque used by a radical Salafi sect known to oversee ISIS recruits.

When news of their visit reached the neighborhood, several residents scurried down the steep hill hoping to catch an opportunity to raise the issue.

At the same time, a 10-year-old boy lingered in his family’s shop, laughing at the crowd rushing to get a glimpse of the two leaders. He had just listened to a long lecture from his father celebrating ISIS’ recent beheading of James Foley, an American journalist. “He was an agent and deserved to die,” the man told his son, half-smirking through his thick beard.

To which the boy replied, “Journalists, infidels of this country; we’ll kill them all.”

Correction: September 17, 2014

A picture with an earlier version of this article,  which showed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu leaving a mosque in August, was published in error. Neither that mosque nor the president’s visit were related to the recruiting of ISIS fighters described in the article.

A version of this article appears in print on September 16, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: From Turkey, ISIS Draws Steady Stream of Recruits. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Middle East |NYT Now

Struggling to Starve ISIS of Oil Revenue, U.S. Seeks Assistance From Turkey

By DAVID E. SANGER and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVISSEPT. 13, 2014

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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is struggling to cut off the millions of dollars in oil revenue that has made the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria one of the wealthiest terror groups in history, but so far has been unable to persuade Turkey, the NATO ally where much of the oil is traded on the black market, to crack down on an extensive sales network.

Western intelligence officials say they can track the ISIS oil shipments as they move across Iraq and into Turkey’s southern border regions. Despite extensive discussions inside the Pentagon, American forces have so far not attacked the tanker trucks, though a senior administration official said Friday “that remains an option.”

In public, the administration has been unwilling to criticize Turkey, which insists it has little control over the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria across its borders, or the flow of oil back out. One senior official, calling President Obama’s recent conversations with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “sensitive,” said the decisions about what the country will do to counter ISIS “will be theirs to make.”

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Interactive Graphic

A Rogue State Along Two Rivers

The victories gained by the militant group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were built on months of maneuvering along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

OPEN Interactive Graphic

But behind the scenes, the conversations about the Sunni extremist group’s ability to gather vast sums to finance its operations have become increasingly tense since Mr. Obama’s vow on Wednesday night to degrade and ultimately destroy the group.

Turkey’s failure thus far to help choke off the oil trade symbolizes the magnitude of the challenges facing the administration both in assembling a coalition to counter the Sunni militant group and in starving its lifeblood. ISIS’ access to cash is critical to its ability to recruit members, meet its growing payroll of fighters, expand its reach and operate across the territory of two countries.

“Turkey in many ways is a wild card in this coalition equation,” said Juan Zarate, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of “Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare.” “It’s a great disappointment: There is a real danger that the effort to degrade and destroy ISIS is at risk. You have a major NATO ally, and it is not clear they are willing and able to cut off flows of funds, fighters and support to ISIS.”

Turkey declined to sign a communiqué on Thursday in Saudi Arabia that committed Persian Gulf states in the region to counter ISIS, even limited to the extent each nation considered “appropriate.” Turkish officials told their American counterparts that with 49 Turkish diplomats being held as hostages in Iraq, they could not risk taking a public stance against the terror group.

Still, administration officials say they believe Turkey could substantially disrupt the cash flow to ISIS if it tried.

“Like any sort of black market smuggling operation, if you devote the resources and the effort to attack it, you are unlikely to eradicate it, but you are likely to put a very significant dent in it,” a senior administration official said on Saturday.

A second senior official said that Mr. Obama’s national security team had spoken several times with Mr. Erdogan and other top Turkish officials in the past two weeks about what they can do to help counter ISIS, and that ISIS’ financing was part of those discussions. “Stopping the flow of foreign fighters, border security and dismantling ISIL funding networks are also key aspects of our strategy, and we will continue to work closely with Turkey and our other partners in the region on these efforts in the days ahead,” the official said, using a different acronym to describe the militant organization.

At the core of the talks are the dozen or so oil fields and refineries in Iraq and Syria on territory the group has controlled. The output has provided a steady stream of financing, which experts place at $1 million to $2 million a day — a pittance in terms of the global oil market, but a huge windfall for a terror group.

“Oil is a huge part of the financing equation” that empowers ISIS, said James Phillips, the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based research center.

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Speech Excerpt: Obama on ISIS Strategy

Speech Excerpt: Obama on ISIS Strategy The president said the United States would lead a coalition against ISIS and laid out the four parts of the strategy. Publish Date September 10, 2014. Image CreditPool photo by Saul Loeb

The territory ISIS controls in Iraq alone is currently producing anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000 barrels of oil a day, which can fetch a minimum of $1.2 million on the black market, according to Luay al-Khatteeb, a visiting foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, who also directs the Iraq Energy Institute. Some estimates have placed the daily income ISIS derives from oil sales at $2 million, though American officials are skeptical it is that high.

“The key gateway through that black market is the southern corridor of Turkey,” Mr. Khatteeb said. “Turkey is becoming part of this black economy” that funds ISIS.

But targeting the smuggling network has proved a major challenge, and so far the Turkish authorities have been unwilling to cooperate.

“They’ve been turning a blind eye to it, because they benefit from the lower price of smuggled black-market oil,” Mr. Phillips said, “and I’m sure there are substantial numbers of Turks that are also profiting from this, maybe even government officials.”.

The supply chain of routes, individuals, families and organizations that allow the oil to flow are well-established, some dating back decades, to when President Saddam Hussein of Iraq smuggled oil during the United Nations’ oil-for-food program. “Those borders have never been sealed, and they never will be sealed,” Mr. Phillips said.

For the Obama administration, getting at ISIS’ oil revenue is far more complex than, say, its crackdown on Iran. That has been the administration’s most successful use of sanctions, and officials credit the effects on Iran’s economy, along with American sabotage of its nuclear facilities, for Iran’s reluctant decision to negotiate on the future of its nuclear enrichment program.

But Iran used fairly conventional means of reaching oil markets, and not one of its techniques applies to ISIS’ black-market sales, which take place mostly through networks of smugglers.

The long-term American plan appears focused on persuading Turkey to crack down on the smuggling networks — some of which, one Western diplomat noted, “benefit a powerful Turkish elite” — and aiming at the refiners who would ultimately have to turn the crude oil into petrochemical products. But gathering the intelligence is a slow process, analysts say.

“It’s hard to use any of the suite of tools that are available to the U.S. Treasury Department to sanction people in this case,” said Patrick B. Johnston, a RAND Corporation researcher who is working on a top-to-bottom study of ISIS’ financing and organization. “Getting a grip on who the right financial targets would be at the Treasury Department would be difficult.”

That is equally true of the other major source of ISIS money — its extortion activities in the areas it controls, said Mr. Johnston, who is examining declassified documents that detail the group’s funding streams. ISIS demands anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent of revenue from businesses in its territories and operates other “mafia-style” rackets that yield as much as $1 million a day.

A version of this article appears in print on September 14, 2014, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Struggling to Starve ISIS of Oil Revenue, U.S. Seeks Assistance From Turkey. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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N.Y. / Region |NYT Now

Rowland, Ex-Connecticut Governor, Is Convicted in Campaign Finance Case

By ALISON LEIGH COWANSEPT. 19, 2014

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John G. Rowland

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NEW HAVEN — Former Gov. John G. Rowland of Connecticut, who nearly a decade ago was forced to resign from office in disgrace, was found guilty in federal court on Friday of engaging in corrupt political acts even after serving prison time for his previous conviction.

The verdict came just one day after closing arguments and represented a second major downfall for the 57-year-old politician, who as a young man had been hailed as a rising star in the Republican Party.

Mr. Rowland was found guilty on seven counts, and faces a maximum sentence of 57 years in prison. He will be sentenced on Dec. 12 by Judge Janet Bond Arterton, who is known for being tough in public corruption cases.

For more than two weeks, jurors heard testimony regarding allegations that Mr. Rowland sought to inject himself illegally into two congressional campaigns in roundabout ways that would have concealed any payments for his work from campaign regulators and voters.

Just before the verdict, the judge asked Mr. Rowland to stand. His wife, Patty, leaned into his shoulder and gripped his left hand.

Photo

Former Gov. John G. Rowland of Connecticut arriving at federal court on Thursday.

As the foreman read the guilty verdicts, sobs could be heard from Mr. Rowland’s relatives, and from one juror.

On the courthouse steps a few minutes later, Michael J. Gustafson, the chief of the criminal division of the United States attorney’s office, said, “Clearly, this is a sad day.” But he strongly defended the prosecution, handled by two of his assistant United States attorneys, Christopher M. Mattei and Liam Brennan, and aided by the United States postal inspectors.

Tweaking a remark that had been made by the defense a day earlier, Mr. Gustafson said: “I have heard it suggested that this case was not a criminal case, but simply politics as usual. It was far from that.” He said that transparency was a bedrock of the legal system. “What voters see is what they get,” he said. “The defendant today didn’t want that to happen.”

Six of the seven counts Mr. Rowland was found guilty of involved obstructing justice, conspiracy, falsifying documents relied on by federal regulators and other violations of campaign finance laws in connection with services he provided Lisa Wilson-Foley, a Republican candidate for Congress in 2012, and her husband, Brian Foley, an operator of nursing homes.

The Foleys pleaded guilty this year to related crimes and await sentencing. Mr. Foley served as the government’s star witness in Mr. Rowland’s trial.

Another of the seven counts, an obstruction charge, involved a contract Mr. Rowland drafted and presented to Mark Greenberg, a Republican congressional candidate in the 2010 election. That contract was never executed and Mr. Greenberg testified at Mr. Rowland’s trial that he ripped it up for lack of interest.

Mr. Rowland’s lawyer, Reid H. Weingarten, told reporters outside the courthouse, “We’re extremely disappointed with the verdict.” He said the defense always believed that the prosecution team made far too much of “an all-too-political dust-up” and that it was “very much looking forward to litigating this case” further, he added.

This was the second time a case named “U.S.A. v. John G. Rowland” had landed at the federal courthouse in New Haven. In 2004, Mr. Rowland had to step down from office midway through his third term to halt an impeachment inquiry. Within months, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit tax fraud and deprive taxpayers of his honest services, for which he served 10 months in prison.

Moreover, his reputation was in tatters after years of battling allegations that he had accepted renovations at his lakeside cottage, including a hot tub, expensive vacations and other free services from politically connected businessmen and vendors seeking state contracts.

“I acknowledge that my poor judgment has brought us here,” Mr. Rowland said in June 2004 as he announced his resignation on the back lawn of the governor’s mansion with his wife by his side.

For the 13 days he was back in federal court this month, his wife remained a close supporter, clutching his hand tightly as they walked outside at day’s end and faced the cameras.

Legally, Mr. Rowland could have worked for a candidate’s campaign and received payment, had it been properly reported. Mr. Rowland’s problem, as Mr. Mattei told the jury, was that candidates valued his experience but his criminal history made the association too risky.

“Hiring John Rowland on your campaign is like giving your opponent a loaded gun and saying, ‘Shoot me,’ ” Mr. Mattei said, quoting the testimony of one of Ms. Wilson-Foley’s campaign aides.

With much of the government’s case hinging on dozens of incriminating emails and on Brian Foley’s testimony, Mr. Weingarten sought to undercut Mr. Foley’s credibility. He challenged jurors to ask themselves how it was that Mr. Foley gave his wife $500,000, which she slowly added to her campaign funds, along with other donations he arranged from family and associates, without running afoul of campaign laws. He also expressed outrage at how Mr. Foley and his wife were allowed by prosecutors to plead guilty to only one misdemeanor, even though they could have been charged more harshly.

Testifying before the court, Mr. Foley explained how he had a corporate lawyer for Apple Rehab, his nursing home chain, hire Mr. Rowland as cover for his work as a political consultant to Ms. Wilson-Foley.

The defense team maintained that Mr. Rowland’s work for Apple Rehab was legitimate, but the prosecution called in a retired postal inspector, Mark Borofsky, who testified to the wide disparity between the volume of emails and phone calls Mr. Rowland made while doing campaign work and those that related to the nursing home business.

“It’s bittersweet, in the sense that justice has been done,” said Mike Clark, a former agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who played key roles in both of Mr. Rowland’s convictions.

In 2004, he was charged with investigating public corruption and with the help of colleagues gathered much of the evidence that led to Mr. Rowland’s conviction. In the current case, Mr. Clark, who now teaches criminal justice classes at the University of New Haven, was a Republican contender in the same 2012 congressional race as Ms. Wilson-Foley, and spotted some of the irregularities that helped unravel the scheme.

“The jury certainly accepted what was charged in the indictment,” Mr. Clark said.

The bitter part, he added, was that Connecticut’s corrupt politicians have alienated the young adults he teaches from the political process. “They’ve lost their trust in the democratic process,” he said. “That’s the sad part; that’s the legacy John Rowland is leaving.”

Correction: September 19, 2014

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a retired postal inspector who testified at former Gov. John G. Rowland’s trial. He is Mark Borofsky, not Marc.

Marc Santora contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Rowland Convicted in Campaign Finance Case; Faces Prison Again. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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N.Y. / Region

Beloved Vendor of Ices in South Bronx Is Killed

By WINNIE HUSEPT. 19, 2014

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Alfredo Thiebaud in 2007 at Delicioso Coco Helado on St. Ann’s Avenue in the Bronx. He started by selling coconut ices from pushcarts in 1967.

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Alfredo Thiebaud sold creamy coconut ice in paper cups on the streets of the South Bronx in the 1970s, undeterred by the crime and poverty that drove other people away. He built a fleet of pushcarts, all doling out tropical flavors that became synonymous with summertime and homelands far away.

But even as Mr. Thiebaud, an immigrant from Honduras, built a thriving family business, called Delicioso Coco Helado, he remained a modest, hard-working man who was quick to give other immigrants a job or a break. And he often donated his icy treats to neighborhood festivals and borough events, his friends and workers said. He was known for never saying no to anyone.

Mr. Thiebaud’s life came to an end early Friday morning as he readied his factory on St. Ann’s Avenue for another day of work. Mr. Thiebaud, 74, had just finished sweeping outside the factory and had activated an electric overhead gate to close when, for an undetermined reason, he ended up on the floor, the police said. The gate continued to roll down on his chest, the police said. He was found under the gate shortly afterward and pronounced dead at the scene.

The city medical examiner’s office later determined that his death was an accident and that the cause was “external compression of neck and upper chest.”

On Friday afternoon, dozens of Mr. Thiebaud’s workers and friends stood outside the red brick factory, decorated with images of tropical fruit against a blue sky. They fashioned an impromptu memorial in front of the electric gate, with a photograph of Mr. Thiebaud surrounded by flowers and lighted candles. Elected officials, including Representative José E. Serrano and the Bronx borough president, Ruben Diaz Jr., came to pay their respects.

Mr. Diaz said Mr. Thiebaud’s faith in the Bronx had helped revitalize a declining neighborhood and provided thousands of families with much-needed jobs over the years. “There was one person here when everyone else left,” said Mr. Diaz, who grew up eating the coconut ices that he called coquitos. “Whether with his coquitos or his money, Alfredo was always there.”

Mr. Thiebaud, a married father of two, started his company in 1967 in the kitchen of his South Bronx apartment, recreating a popular dessert in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to Paul Lipson, a business consultant who has known the Thiebaud family for more than two decades. He started with one flavor — coconut, which he made from real coconuts. Later he added cherry and many other flavors.

Mr. Lipson said the company eventually employed more than 30 seasonal workers and supplied more than 100 vendors with pushcarts, dry ice and, of course, the tropical-flavored ices in three sizes of cups, from April through October every year. Mr. Thiebaud designed and built the carts himself in the basement of his factory.

“When people of a certain age go to sleep dreaming of the summer, they wake up with the taste of Alfredo’s coquito on their tongue,” Mr. Lipson said. “There wasn’t a street fair or a Bronx community event in the last quarter-century that he didn’t contribute a pail of coconut or cherry ices to.”

Mr. Thiebaud’s workers and vendors said that no matter how successful he became, he never forgot his hardscrabble beginnings in the city. He used to tell them that he slept in subway cars because he was poor and did not know anyone. He later drove a taxi cab, they said.

As Mr. Thiebaud’s ice business grew, they said, he continued to work at the factory every day and would greet returning vendors to ask them how they had fared. He would joke with them or play cards. He used to rent a truck to take vendors to the National Puerto Rican Day Parade along Fifth Avenue. He would be there alongside them, pushing his own cart.

Mr. Thiebaud was close to his family, and every Mother’s Day without fail, he returned to Honduras to visit his own mother, they said.

Jose Mejia, 64, said he arrived at the factory that morning and saw Mr. Thiebaud’s body lying on the floor, covered by a blanket. “He was like my father for me,” Mr. Mejia said as he stood by the memorial hours later, reluctant to leave. “I have no words to say. He was the best guy.”

Mr. Mejia’s wife, Dilliam, 60, said that Mr. Thiebaud had given the couple their first jobs in 1982 shortly after they moved to the city. They had just $100 left when they struck up a conversation with another vendor selling coconut ice and decided to seek out Mr. Thiebaud. He gave them pushcarts the next day.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Beloved Vendor of Ices in South Bronx Is Killed. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Fashion & Style | Fashion Review

The Theme at Milan Fashion Week? Look to the Past

By VANESSA FRIEDMANSEPT. 19, 2014

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At Prada, the silhouette was lean and the fabrics were  brocade and chinoiserie and leather.

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MILAN — Here we go again: Less than 10 days after Apple stole New York Fashion Week’s thunder comes another enormously important, globally resonant, trend-setting, record-breaking, consumer-facing event that has nothing to do with the ready-to-wear shows.

It’s the Alibaba I.P.O., doncha know (dare you to say it 10 times fast), a.k.a. the New York Stock Exchange listing by the Chinese giant that could change e-tail as we know it.

Faced with such competition, what’s a nice Milanese brand to do? Look to the past, young man, look to the past.

The overwhelming trend of the Italian ready-to-wear shows thus far has been memory lane, and very specifically the memory lane of almost four decades ago. For whatever reason — discomfort with what President Obama calls today’s “messy” world and the technology that lets us see it all; a desire to return to what seems in retrospect more manageable times, despite Nixon, the Yom Kippur war and the oil crisis (everything is relative); maybe just Vulcan mind-meld — nostalgia is taking a very literal runway turn.

Photo

At Etro, Veronica Etro sent out feathers, fringe and Indian beading.

You know something is going on when even a “new” designer like Marco de Vincenzo, whose work is marked by a uniquely inventive facility with both color and fabric, nevertheless starts playing around with macramé, fringe and basket-weave — though to his credit, in his hands they became something else entirely: the silk fringing a vehicle for movement in miniskirt suits and flapper dresses; the weave, a rainbow checkerboard in a gray snakeskin coat.

And yet, when Miuccia Prada trucked in 150 tons of purple sand and piled it up in dunes atop a brown-carpeted runway, it was not about, as some in her audience posited, either “desert rose” or “Middle East” or some sort of Martian landscape.

“Head in the ...” was closer — though the actual answer, according to the designer who was dispensing her trademark gnomic explanations backstage after the show, was the “confrontation of antiquity and today.”

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Slide Show|11 Photos

The Look of Milan 2

The Look of Milan 2

Not that there were ancient treasures buried under the drifts, or little pickaxes given to the audience, though that would have been a new twist (digging for bags!). Rather there were narrow notch-collared belted trenches shown on the runway, the seams picked out in contrast stitching. Also, truncated “jean” jackets and matching skirts, likewise piped; smocked and folkloric details; and coats that looked as if they had been patched together from an old quilt.

The silhouette was lean — sleeveless tunics over pencil skirts; round-necked thin-strapped dresses with neatly demarcated waists, narrow skirts and sometimes a yoke of luxe material inset, like a special scrap. The fabrics were brocade and chinoiserie and leather, mixed with raw linen, most often with unfinished hems trailing loose threads. And the mood was 1970s-meets-grandmother’s trunk.

Pulled into the present, the result had an alluring, wistful prettiness with a 10-gallon edge; the saccharine subverting the square dance and vice versa, to the advantage of both.

Photo

Missoni had rainbow stripes fading into each other for the merest suggestion of tie-dye.

“Antiquity” is clearly a relative concept in a world where a garment that is five years old qualifies as vintage, though given that Ms. Prada originally made her name by challenging perceived notions of the decade that fashion once forgot (or tried to), she has a certain legitimate claim to the archaeology of her own line.

As do both Etro and Missoni, names that came to prominence at that time — which perhaps is the key to explaining the current catwalk situation: the 1970s were, in Italian fashion terms if nothing else, a halcyon era. In the game of Remembrance of Things Past, those signifiers are sartorial madeleines.

Etro, for example, was founded in 1968 and shot to prominence on a rocket ship of paisley. So, really, it should come as no surprise that the print was present for spring, along with many associated staples of Pocahontas-channeling earth mothers: feathers, fringe and Indian beading. Often all at the same time.

Photo

Marco de Vincenzo used silk fringing as a vehicle for movement in miniskirt suits and flapper dresses.

They appeared on caftans, handkerchief-hemmed washed-silk numbers, ponchos and maxi-dresses; on knee-length boots with tiers of suede fringe and drawstrings dangling tassels and shells. Editing optional (though encouraged).

And though Missoni, whose zigzags practically defined the pre-power shoulder/bling jet set, made some effort to shake off the dust of heritage — or at least abstract it as opposed to indulging it — it was visible in light-as-air embroidered lace maxi-dresses, rainbow stripes fading into each other for the merest suggestion of tie-dye, and palazzo-wide trousers paired with oversize silk button-down shirts. Treated with restrained celebration, it made for an effective point of contrast. Even, perhaps, something for a future Alibaba’s cave.

Follow our Fashion Week coverage on Twitter at @nytfashion.

Interested in Fashion Week? Follow the conversation at nytimes.com/fashionweeknow.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, in The International New York Times. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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NYT NOW

A Soaring Debut for Alibaba

By Michael J. de la Merced

September 19, 2014 8:18 pmSeptember 19, 2014 8:18 pm

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Maggie Wu, Alibaba's chief financial officer, rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

The long-awaited public market debut of the Alibaba Group, the Chinese Internet titan, did not disappoint on Friday, eclipsing every other company that has started to sell stock so far this year.

After pricing at $68 a share on Thursday night, Alibaba’s shares opened sharply higher on Friday and finished the day up 38 percent, at $93.89. Yet even Alibaba’s blockbuster stock sale appears unlikely to dampen a yearlong enthusiasm for initial public offerings as start-ups and private companies continue to flock to the stock markets.

Ever since it filed to go public in May, Alibaba has dominated headlines about its public offering. But it was entering a market that has already been filled with new stock issues. There have been 195 public offerings priced so far this year in the United States, according to data from Renaissance Capital, an increase of 34 percent compared with the numbers in the period a year earlier.

“The I.P.O. market right now is robust and healthy,” said David Ethridge, the head of capital markets for the New York Stock Exchange. “We’re seeing participation from every sector of the economy.”

Alibaba, which raised $21.8 billion in its stock sale, instantly became one of the biggest publicly traded technology companies in the world. (The amount of money raised in the public offering will rise if underwriters make use of an overallotment option to meet strong investor demand, an event that is widely expected.)

To truly appreciate how enormous Alibaba is, consider that its market value is nearly as big as the market value of the entire American initial public offering market so far this year. At its offering price, Alibaba’s market value was about $168 billion. The combined market value of the other United States companies that have gone public this year is $180.5 billion, according to Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ, a research firm.

Photo

Jack Ma, Alibaba's founder, celebrated his company's initial public offering at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

None of the companies that have gone public this year could command the attention that Alibaba has enjoyed.

Ringing the bell were eight customers of Alibaba as the company’s senior managers watched from a special cordoned-off section of the floor. Jack Ma, the company’s executive chairman and co-founder, watched with amusement before strolling along the floor of the Big Board.

Other senior executives, including Alibaba’s head of corporate development, whipped out their smartphones for selfies and snapshots.

As bankers at one underwriter, Goldman Sachs, and market makers at Barclays sorted through a flood of orders, a din filled the cavernous exchange — only to be quieted on occasion when a specialist bellowed yet another rise in the potential opening price of Alibaba shares.

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Finally, several minutes before noon, one market maker called out that Alibaba’s “book was frozen” at $92.70. Within a minute, Alibaba’s shares finally began trading on the Big Board under the ticker symbol BABA. Trading was heavy, with more than 270 million shares changing hands during the session.

Few companies sought to compete with that kind of spectacle; just four small health care companies priced I.P.O.s. The pace is expected to pick up next week, with 13 companies set to go public.

Among them is the Citizens Financial Group, the retail bank that is being spun off from the Royal Bank of Scotland. The company, which is seeking to raise as much as $3.5 billion from its stock sale, initially planned to list this week but chose to wait and make room for Alibaba.

Wayfair, a technology company based in Boston, had also considered going public this week but pushed the timing back to stay out of Alibaba’s shadow.

Investment bankers said that companies with significantly less impressive financial performance would most likely take their time going public. The GoDaddy Group, the Web registrar busy trying to become more of an all-around service provider for small businesses, is now leaning toward going public early next year rather than late this year, according to people briefed on its plans.

Over the longer term, however, analysts and executives in the capital markets business said that Alibaba’s stock sale was unlikely to squash investors’ appetites for other newly minted public companies. Big mutual fund operators like Fidelity and Vanguard have a plethora of funds, some of which focus on giant companies, others that specialize in health care companies and still others devoted to technology businesses.

The few biotechnology companies that priced this week, for example, drew primarily from smaller funds and not the big-money managers that flocked to Alibaba.

“They wouldn’t be on the same radar,” Matt Kennedy, an analyst at Renaissance Capital, said of the biotechnology investors. “It’s a different investor.”

It’s impossible for one stock sale — even one as big as Alibaba’s — to completely sap demand for initial public offerings, said Mr. Ethridge of the New York Stock Exchange.

“Historically there’s no pause after a big I.P.O.,” said Jackie Kelley, the global I.P.O. markets leader for Ernst & Young. “That’s assuming the transaction goes well.”

Photo

The Chinese flag adorned the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

Alibaba, together with underwriters, market makers and the New York Stock Exchange, took pains to avoid the pitfalls that befell Facebook, whose market debut was marred by trading flaws and an overaggressive fund-raising strategy that left it vulnerable to a botched first day of trading.

As long as initial offerings continue to perform and make money for investors, they will continue to find buyers. An exchange-traded fund that tracks initial public offerings and is run by Renaissance Capital is up 6.9 percent for the year, compared with a 4.2 percent rise in the Dow Jones industrial average. (The I.P.O. fund falls behind the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, however, which is up nearly 9 percent for the year.)

Should Alibaba’s stock perform strongly in the coming days, its success could help persuade even more companies to go to market. Mr. Ethridge of the New York Stock Exchange speculated that other foreign companies, particularly those in China, could then seek to emulate Alibaba.

“We’re going to end the year on an incredibly strong note,” said Nelson Griggs, head of new listings at Nasdaq. “The pipeline is exceptionally strong.”

A version of this article appears in print on 09/20/2014, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: A Soaring Debut for Alibaba .

I.P.O./Offerings, Technology, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Initial Public Offerings, Ma, Jack, New York Stock Exchange, Stocks and Bonds

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International Business |NYT Now

China Fines GlaxoSmithKline Nearly $500 Million in Bribery Case

By KEITH BRADSHER and CHRIS BUCKLEYSEPT. 19, 2014

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The Glaxo case involved accusations of criminal bribery to persuade hospitals and doctors to administer or sell the company's pharmaceuticals to their patients.

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HONG KONG — Global multinationals have invested billions of dollars in China over the last decade, with the prospect of selling to 1.4 billion people. But the promise of China’s growth is increasingly offset by the dangers of being caught up in the country’s anticorruption campaigns and rising economic nationalism.

In the strongest signal yet, a Chinese court on Friday imposed a fine of nearly $500 million on the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline for bribery, dwarfing the penalties in earlier criminal cases.

Multinational companies broadly have been under pressure in China, with technology companies, automakers and food manufacturers under investigation. As new cases and penalties have emerged, companies have been nervously preparing for their own potential fallout.

Last week, Chinese authorities fined the Audi unit of Volkswagen $40.5 million for violations of antitrust laws. In a similar case, a dozen Japanese auto parts and bearing manufacturers were assessed $200 million in penalties last month.

Beijing officials have gone out of their way in the last two weeks to deny complaints by foreign business groups and governments that China’s continuing legal crackdown represents an effort to discriminate against multinational companies and help Chinese companies compete. The Glaxo case showed that “an open China is not a lawless one,” Xinhua, the official news agency, said in a commentary.

But the Glaxo case underlines the dangers for multinationals as they continue to do business in a country where corruption has been widespread and where the legal and regulatory system has shown a greater willingness to prosecute foreign companies.

Two antitrust lawyers involved in other cases said in separate interviews that Chinese officials had rushed investigations along, sometimes in a few weeks, with little chance for multinationals to present their side. In some antimonopoly cases this summer, multinational company executives have not even been allowed to bring their lawyers to meetings with regulators, the lawyers said, both of whom insisted on anonymity because they were representing clients in litigation.

In many cases, regulators demanded that multinationals sharply reduce prices for products. Glaxo and a growing list of automakers have already done so.

Few companies have faced the level of scrutiny that Glaxo has. But no other multinational has acknowleged that its senior managers oversaw such a spree of bribe-giving and illicit sales tactics.

Chinese authorities accused Glaxo of bribing hospitals and doctors, channeling illicit kickbacks through travel agencies and pharmaceutical industry associations — a scheme that brought the company higher drug prices and illegal revenue of more than $150 million. In a rare move, authorities also prosecuted the foreign-born executive who ran Glaxo’s Chinese unit.

After a one-day trial held in secrecy, the court sentenced Glaxo’s British former country manager, Mark Reilly, and four other company managers to potential prison terms of up to four years. The sentences were suspended, allowing the defendants to avoid incarceration if they stay out of trouble, according to Xinhua. The verdict indicated that Mr. Reilly could be promptly deported. The report said they had pleaded guilty and would not appeal.

Glaxo said in a statement that it “fully accepts the facts and evidence of the investigation, and the verdict of the Chinese judicial authorities.” “GSK P.L.C. sincerely apologizes to the Chinese patients, doctors and hospitals, and to the Chinese government and the Chinese people.”

The British Embassy in Beijing said that it had no information on the possible deportation of Mr. Reilly and that while an appeal remained possible, it would have no comment on the trial.

“We note the verdict in this case,” an embassy spokesman said. “We have continually called for a just conclusion in the case in accordance with Chinese law. It would be wrong to comment while the case remains open to appeal.”

The court said that in deciding how to punish Mr. Reilly, it had taken into account that he had returned from Britain to face the investigators, and that he had “truthfully recounted the crimes of his employer,” meriting a relatively lenient punishment, the Xinhua report said. The other defendants also confessed and also earned relatively light sentences, according to the report.

The Glaxo case — and sizable fine — represents a setback for the company.

When the accusations first emerged last year, the company said that employees were “outside of our systems of controls.” It said the scandal involved a few rogue Chinese-born employees.

But the case escalated in May, when Chinese police accused Mr. Reilly, a Briton, of orchestrating a “massive bribery network.” Mr. Reilly and two Chinese-born executives, Zhang Guowei and Zhao Hongyan, had even bribed government officials in Beijing and Shanghai, they said. The names of the other defendants are Liang Hong and Huang Hong.

In its statement, Glaxo said that the court, the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court, had found the company guilty only of bribing nongovernmental personnel. The statement made no mention of any conviction for bribing government officials, a more politically delicate issue as President Xi Jinping of China pursues a broad campaign to root out corruption.

The accusations sent a chill through the industry when they came out last year. Many global drug makers used the same Shanghai travel agency that the authorities in the Glaxo case said had altered corporate travel expenses to pay cash bribes.

“It’s very hard to do business in the Chinese health care and pharmaceutical sectors without doing payoffs,” said David Zweig, the director of the Center on China’s Transnational Relations at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “Everyone else pays bribes. Glaxo just got caught.”

Glaxo has also loomed large over another case.

In August, business partners in the investigative firm ChinaWhys were sentenced by a Chinese court after they were hired by Glaxo to look into whether a former employee was passing information about suspicions of fraud at the company to Chinese authorities.

Glaxo hired the couple in spring 2013 to look into whether a former employee had sent the company emails and a sex video of Mr. Reilly recorded without his knowledge or consent, according to people who were briefed on the situation and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The video was recorded with a camera inside his Shanghai apartment bedroom.

ChinaWhys, which specialized in due diligence work, completed an inconclusive preliminary report on the sex video of Mr. Reilly by June 2013 and suggested continuing the inquiry. In July 2013, the couple was detained, and they were formally arrested a month later, accused of illegally obtaining private information for their company.

The couple’s family has said the arrests were almost certainly linked to the Glaxo investigation, adding that Glaxo had not told Peter Humphrey, one of the investigators, the full details of the person suspected of being a whistle-blower.

Mr. Humphrey was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. The other, his wife, Yu Yingzeng, who is a Chinese-born American citizen, was sentenced to two years. The court said Mr. Humphrey would be deported after he served his term.

Glaxo appeared to distance itself from ChinaWhys in its statement Friday evening, saying that, “GSK P.L.C. also apologizes for the harm caused to individuals who were illegally investigated by” one of its subsidiaries in China.

Jane Perlez contributed reporting from Beijing.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Glaxo Fined $500 Million by China. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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International Business

China Fines Volkswagen and Chrysler for Antitrust Violations

By KEITH BRADSHER and CHRIS BUCKLEYSEPT. 11, 2014

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A production line of Golf sedans manufactured at a Volkswagen plant jointly operated with China FAW in Guangdong Province.

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HONG KONG — Chinese regulators fined Volkswagen and Chrysler for violating antitrust laws, announcing on Thursday the first monetary penalties against large multinational carmakers swept up in a broad investigation.

The fines, which totaled $46 million, were the latest in a series of tough measures by China against what it considers monopolistic practices. In recent months, foreign companies in a range of industries including automobiles, technology, pharmaceuticals and food packaging have faced increased scrutiny, including raids and allegations of unfair practices.

The scrutiny of automakers comes as Chinese players are being pummeled by international competition. The government has been searching for ways to help its homegrown industry, which only several years ago held the promise of becoming a big exporter.

But Chinese officials have taken pains in recent weeks to deny that they are targeting multinationals. Prime Minister Li Keqiang said on Tuesday that antitrust cases against foreign companies represented only a tenth of all such investigations.

He said enforcement of the antitrust rules would, in fact, make “even more foreign investors, and more foreign products, willing and daring to enter China, because there is a fair competitive environment.”

On Thursday, price regulators in Hubei Province imposed a fine of $40.5 million on the Audi unit of Volkswagen, saying that the automaker had reached monopolistic agreements with 10 dealerships to maintain high prices for cars and replacement parts. The investigators said the agreements were “hurting the interests of consumers.”

(In China, as in the United States, dealerships are generally owned by independent businesses, and not by the automakers themselves.)

Audi, which confirmed the penalties and violations, said that its joint venture with China FAW, the partner in its Chinese operations, was “optimizing the management processes in the sales and dealership structure” and would “attach great importance that all applicable antitrust and competition laws are adhered to.”

Shanghai price regulators leveled similar accusations against Chrysler, levying a $5.2 million fine, the official Xinhua news agency said. The regulators accused Chrysler of conspiring with dealers to keep prices high for its vehicles — mostly Jeeps — and punishing dealers that did not cooperate by allocating few of the best-selling models to them.

Chrysler said in a brief statement that it “respects and accepts this final ruling by the Shanghai Price Bureau” and that it was committed to remaining highly competitive in the Chinese market.

Chinese private and state-owned automakers have long competed to offer the cheapest, most basic cars and have lost market share as Chinese families have become more prosperous and more willing to spend the extra money to buy foreign models. Big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have also severely curtailed the issuance of new license plates, prompting many consumers to buy the most expensive car they can afford when they can obtain a license plate at all.

Fines against Volkswagen and Chrysler could help the government address persistent complaints that international brands of cars typically cost twice as much in China as overseas, and sometimes almost three times as much. The main reason for such steep prices is that China imposes a series of huge taxes on the cars, largely hidden from buyers: an engine tax of up to 40 percent of the sales price, a 25 percent import tax and a 17 percent value-added tax.

The fines could foster an impression that auto prices are high in China not because of taxes but because of price gouging by multinationals. That could erode the ability of multinationals to charge extra for coveted brands that have strong reputations for style, safety or other attributes, making them more affordable for Chinese consumers.

On the same day the Chrysler and Audi fines were announced, government officials in Beijing argued at a news conference that their use of the antitrust rules was impartial and fair, and not directed unjustly at foreign companies.

“Our enforcement of the Antimonopoly Law has proceeded strictly according to legally stipulated procedures,” said Xu Kunlin, the director general of the price supervision bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission. “It’s fair and transparent, and is not targeted at any market entity, and not at foreign investment or foreign businesses.”

China is not the only Asian country this summer that has examined automakers’ compliance with antitrust regulations, particularly over replacement parts. India recently assessed fines totaling $420 million on 14 automakers after accusing them of manipulating the market for replacement parts. India said that they had forced consumers to purchase high-priced parts from the automakers’ factories instead of generic parts by using measures like not selling diagnostic tools to independent garages.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission in the 1960s and ’70s investigated whether automakers there were unlawfully preventing consumers from buying generic parts. Automakers agreed then to a series of measures to allow generic parts to compete.

Since then, the big change in the aftermarket auto parts industry has been the rapid rise of hundreds of Chinese manufacturers offering extremely inexpensive parts with varying levels of quality. New entrants in the replacement parts market have undercut automakers by wide margins on price, severely eroding profits in an area that had been a nearly guaranteed moneymaker for automakers.

More recently, global automakers have begun collaborating with insurers and higher-quality producers of generic parts to set minimum quality and safety standards, in the hope of beating back competition from low-priced manufacturers.

“They simply can’t compete with cheap, poorly made, unsafe parts in the market — the sellers will always undercut them in price,” said Jack Gillis, executive director of the Certified Automotive Parts Association, a private American group that sets standards and certifies exterior auto parts manufactured as crash replacements by independent companies.

“On the other hand, if the competitor is forced to build the part with the same materials and construction as they do, they have a fighting chance to compete,” Mr. Gillis added.

A version of this article appears in print on September 12, 2014, on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: China Fines Volkswagen and Chrysler for Antitrust Violations. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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International Business

China Fines Japanese Auto Parts and Bearings Makers in Price Rigging

By KEITH BRADSHERAUG. 20, 2014

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A Ford plant in Chongqing, China. The auto industry, particularly foreign companies, is under antitrust scrutiny in China.

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HONG KONG — Chinese regulators on Wednesday intensified their antitrust scrutiny of multinationals, finding 12 Japanese auto parts and bearings manufacturers guilty of fixing prices charged to the Chinese factories of at least five automakers, and imposing fines totaling roughly $200 million.

The fines, a record for China, are also notable for being levied exclusively against Japanese companies. They coincide with deteriorating diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Beijing over territorial disputes and how events in World War II are remembered and commemorated.

The scale of the fines, and the decision to impose them entirely on foreign companies, underline the Chinese government’s eagerness this summer to pursue antitrust cases, often with an emphasis on challenging multinationals. Many global companies have reaped substantial profits in China and captured market shares that are the envy of local competitors, although the multinationals have also transferred considerable technology and skills, and created millions of jobs, sometimes accompanied by large-scale layoffs back home.

The case, of eight Japanese auto parts makers and four bearings manufacturers, is focused on factories that are joint ventures. One of the auto parts manufacturers, Hitachi Automotive Systems, and one of the bearings manufacturers, the Nachi-Fujikoshi Corporation, were found guilty but were exempted from fines. The regulatory agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, said those two companies had reported monopolistic agreements to the authorities and provided evidence.

The commission, China’s top economic policy agency, clearly signaled in a news release announcing the fines that it was engaged in further antitrust cases.

“The National Development and Reform Commission will pursue clues of other illegality that were found during this investigation, as it continues to carry out investigations to ensure fair enforcement, maintain fair competition in the market, protect the legitimate rights and interests of operators and consumers and create a favorable environment for economic and social development,” the release said.

A few of the Japanese companies began stepping forward on Tuesday to acknowledge that they had been fined. The Japan Auto Parts Industries Association declined to comment.

The National Development and Reform Commission and provincial agencies are separately investigating numerous foreign automakers. They are trying to determine whether they colluded with dealers to compel customers to buy expensive replacement parts from the automakers’ own factories, instead of allowing customers to choose replacement parts from independent parts manufacturers.

Investigators from the commission on Aug. 4 searched the Shanghai offices of Daimler, the German manufacturer of Mercedes-Benz and Smart cars, a day after the company said it was cutting prices for replacement parts by an average of 15 percent “in response to antimonopoly investigations into the automobile industry.” General Motors said last week that it was cooperating with requests for information from the commission.

Another Chinese government agency, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, is also conducting antitrust investigations, most notably sending agents this summer to raid the offices of Microsoft, interrogate senior managers and copy internal records.

Although multinationals have borne the brunt of investigations this summer, Chinese companies have sometimes been fined. Two state-controlled alcoholic beverage companies, Kweichow Moutai and Wuliangye, were fined in February 2013 when provincial regulators found them guilty of requiring retailers to charge a minimum price for their premium liquors. Kweichow Moutai was fined $40 million and Wuliangye $33 million.

Many Chinese laws are broadly worded and give considerable discretion to government administrators. But antitrust laws are a conspicuous exception. Approved in 2007 and taking effect in 2008, China’s antimonopoly law was meant to incorporate the latest economic thinking in the West and provides more specific examples of prohibited activity than comparable European laws, and much more specific examples than the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 in the United States, said Thomas Cheng, an associate professor of law at Hong Kong University who specializes in antitrust issues.

The antitrust crackdown this summer has coincided with a sharp slowdown in foreign direct investment in China, which fell 17 percent in July compared with a year earlier. For the first seven months of this year, however, foreign direct investment in China is down only 0.4 percent.

Shen Danyang, the Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman, said on Monday that foreign direct investment fluctuated considerably from month to month, and that the July figure should not be construed to mean that antitrust cases were hurting foreign interest in China.

The Japanese auto parts and bearing manufacturers were accused on Wednesday of fixing prices for components used in the manufacture of more than 20 car models built by Ford, Honda, Nissan, Suzuki, Toyota and other unspecified automakers.

The seven auto parts makers that were assessed fines, totaling about $135 million, were the Aisan Industry Company, the Denso Corporation, the Furukawa Electric Company, the Mitsuba Corporation, the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Sumitomo Electric Industries and the Yazaki Corporation. Fines totaling almost $66 million were imposed on three bearings manufacturers: Jtekt Corporation, NSK and the NTN Corporation.

The National Development and Reform Commission said the parts makers had repeatedly colluded to fix prices for components like alternators and harnesses from 2000 to 2010, while the bearing manufacturers fixed prices from 2000 to 2011.

Some of the Japanese auto parts manufacturers have faced even heavier fines elsewhere. Yazaki agreed in 2012 to pay $470 million in the United States for conspiring from 2000 to 2010 to inflate the prices it charged automakers. Shortly before the Yazaki settlement with the Justice Department, Furukawa Electric agreed to pay $200 million in a similar settlement.

Antitrust rulings by Chinese administrative agencies can in theory be appealed by companies to the courts. But the Chinese government tightly controls the judiciary, so lawyers and companies have generally concluded that this is fruitless in antitrust cases and not even tried to file challenges.

A version of this article appears in print on August 21, 2014, on page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: China Fines Japanese Auto Parts and Bearings Makers in Price Rigging. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Glaxo Used Travel Firms for Bribery, China Says

GlaxoSmithKline's office in Shanghai.

By DAVID BARBOZA

Published: July 15, 2013

SHANGHAI — Earlier this year, the authorities here began looking into suspicious activity involving a Shanghai travel agency that was rumored to have huge revenue but few bookings.

What they uncovered, they said Monday, was a conspiracy involving tens of millions of dollars, directed by senior executives at the British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline.

Investigators said that for years, high-ranking executives at the company’s China operations used travel agencies as money-laundering shops to funnel bribes to doctors, hospitals, medical associations, foundations and government officials.

The payoffs, investigators said, helped bolster drug sales and allowed GlaxoSmithKline, also known as GSK, to sell its products for higher prices in China.

At a news conference in Beijing on Monday, the authorities accused senior executives at the company’s China operations of organizing fictitious conferences, overbilling for training sessions and in various other ways filing sham expenses for which the cooperating travel agencies would issue bogus receipts. That enabled the GSK executives to get reimbursed by their company with money they could use for bribes, investigators said, while the travel agencies skimmed off shares of the money for themselves.

The practice is said to be so common a form of money laundering, and so lucrative for travel agencies, that they would compete for the chance to take part. Sometimes they would induce GSK executives to throw the business their way by offering cash, luxury travel or even by hiring young women to engage in sexual activities — or “sexual bribery” — with GSK managers, Chinese officials said.

“It’s like a criminal organization — there’s always a boss,” Gao Feng, head of the economic crime unit of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, said at the news conference.

“And in this case,” he said, “GSK is the boss.”

The revelations came just days after the police announced that several GSK executives had confessed to engaging in bribery and tax fraud.

The possible punishments or fines for GSK are unclear, experts said, but the investigation is almost certain to cause concern among the ranks of major multinational companies operating in China.

In recent weeks, regulators in China have stepped up their scrutiny of multinationals. After dairy producers were accused of price-fixing, for instance, several of them announced price cuts.

GSK is one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. Last year, it recorded nearly $40 billion in revenue worldwide by selling popular drugs like the antidepressant Paxil, the diabetes treatment Avandia and the ulcer medicine Zantac.

Although China still accounts for but a small portion of GSK’s revenue — about $1.2 billion last year, out of nearly $40 billion over all — it is one of the company’s fastest-growing markets and home to 6,000 employees as well as large manufacturing and research and development facilities.

On Monday, the government said four senior executives from GSK’s China offices were being detained, including the head of the drug maker’s legal department, the head of business development and two vice presidents. The four held are all Chinese nationals, the police said.

Mark Reilly, head of GSK’s operations in China, a British national, recently left the country, the police said, shortly after investigators raided the company’s offices in late June.

“This is a very serious allegation,” Mr. Gao, one of the lead investigators, said at the news conference, while noting that the head of the company’s China operations had left the country.

The investigation is a huge embarrassment for GSK, which recently fired the head of its research and development department in Shanghai for misrepresenting data in a paper he co-wrote in 2010.

The company also said that it had conducted an internal investigation into its China operations this year after a whistle-blower claimed that bribery was used to bolster drug sales. The company said it found no evidence of wrongdoing or bribery in the China operation.

But on Monday, GSK released a lengthy statement that expressed its frustration.

“We are deeply concerned and disappointed by these serious allegations of fraudulent behavior and ethical misconduct by certain individuals at the company and third-party agencies,” the company said. “Such behavior would be a clear breach of GSK’s systems, governance procedures, values and standards. GSK has zero tolerance for any behavior of this nature.” The statement added: “GSK shares the desire of the Chinese authorities to root out corruption. These allegations are shameful and we regret this has occurred.”

The company said it would cooperate with the authorities and take immediate action to improve compliance procedures and end its dealings with travel agencies that might have committed fraud.

At the news conference on Monday in Beijing, the authorities said the investigation was continuing and that the case involved scores of travel agencies as well as other multinational corporations.

In detailing its accusations against GSK, investigators suggested that using travel agencies to engage in bribery was a common business tactic in China.

“From our investigation, we found that bribery was part of the strategy of the company,” Mr. Gao said of GSK.

The investigation is certain to heighten concerns among other global drug makers, some of which are already under scrutiny from regulators in the United States and elsewhere over the incentives they give to doctors or clients.

Some of the toughest penalties could come in the United States, since most major drug makers are subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars companies from bribing foreign officials to gain or retain business.

Kim Nemirow, a lawyer based in Hong Kong for the United States law firm Ropes & Gray, said global drug companies faced stiff challenges in China. Their sales agents deal mostly with Chinese government officials because much of the health care sector is controlled by the state.

“The government is pervasive in all aspects of this industry — the doctors, the pharmacies, the distributors, the state-owned hospitals. And that means what they do could come under the U.S. F.C.P.A.,” she said, referring to the corrupt practices act.

Investigators in the GSK case have not yet filed criminal charges. But in an unusual move, they released information about some of the confessions.

The Shanghai Linjiang International Travel Agency, they said, appeared to be colluding with GSK and other companies to funnel bribes and payoffs to corporate executives by creating fake bookings of conferences and training sessions.

In some cases, GSK and Linjiang might report that 100 people attended a conference when only 80 people showed up. The receipts would be used as reimbursement for expenses from the company. Some of the money made would be used for bribes or kickbacks for GSK executives, the government said.

“That’s the way the business works,” the government quoted one of the GSK executives saying in a confession. “It’s quite common to do this.”

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International Business |NYT Now

Former Head of Glaxo in China Is Accused of Bribery

By DAVID BARBOZA and KATIE THOMASMAY 13, 2014

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SHANGHAI — Chinese authorities sent a strong warning to the pharmaceutical industry on Wednesday, implicating a top Western executive at GlaxoSmithKline in a long-running bribery scheme.

While major pharmaceuticals have faced increased scrutiny of their marketing practices from governments around the world, China’s actions go significantly further by singling out a foreign national, a move that could potentially prompt drug companies to rethink their strategy in the fast-growing market.

On Wednesday, Chinese police accused Mark Reilly, the former head of Glaxo’s China operations, of ordering his subordinates to form a “massive bribery network” that resulted in higher drug prices and illegal revenue of more than $150 million. As part of that scheme, Mr. Reilly, a Briton, and two Chinese-born Glaxo executives, Zhang Guowei and Zhao Hongyan, had even arranged to bribe government officials in Beijing and Shanghai, authorities said at a news conference in Beijing.

Such accusations are an escalation in the case and increase the pressure on Glaxo and other industry players in China. Major American and European drug makers have spent the last several years bolstering their presence in the country, hiring sales agents and opening research centers in the hope of gaining a foothold in what many think will soon be the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical market, ahead of Japan and behind the United States.

But as foreign drug companies have rushed to gain market share, Beijing has increasingly pressed multinational companies on their pricing strategies. Authorities have accused Glaxo executives of inflating drug prices in the Chinese market, making them as much as seven times as expensive as other countries.

The new charges against Mr. Reilly appear to challenge Glaxo’s previous statements that the employees involved in the scheme were “outside of our systems of controls.” It also said repeatedly that the scandal involved just a handful of rogue Chinese-born employees. Chinese authorities now seem to be implying that the problems may have been more widespread.

Mr. Reilly, 52, has worked at Glaxo since 1989, holding several finance positions before moving to Shanghai in 2009. Mr. Reilly left China after the investigation got underway last summer, but then returned to assist in the company’s own inquiry. Glaxo hired the law firm Ropes & Gray to conduct the inquiry, which is continuing.

A spokesman for Glaxo said that Mr. Reilly was still employed by the company and that he was in China, but had not been detained by authorities. The two Chinese executives — Mr. Zhang, the company’s human resources director, and Mr. Zhao, the head of the legal affairs department — are being held in China and are expected to face prosecution.

In a statement, Glaxo said it was cooperating with the investigation and had been updated Wednesday on the case by China’s Ministry of Public Security. “We take the allegations that have been raised very seriously,” the statement reads. “They are deeply concerning to us and contrary to the values of GSK.”

Although bribery is common in China, it is rare for foreign-born executives from multinational companies to be prosecuted. In 2009, a Chinese-born Australian executive at the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto was arrested in a bribery and money-laundering case.

Some said the accusations against Mr. Reilly might cause some companies to rethink their investment in the country.

“It may be that there’s no middle ground, and that’s going to cause people to hesitate,” said Michael Li-Ming Wong, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher who specializes in white-collar crime and has experience in overseas corruption investigations. The legal landscape in countries like the United States, he said, is better understood. But multinationals may find it more difficult to navigate the Chinese government. “It’s very different to be subjected to a different country’s laws, especially a country that is just not known for the rule of law, and protection of individual rights,” Mr. Wong said.

The case, which was first uncovered by the police in June, has dealt a devastating blow to Glaxo’s fast-growing business in China and has shaken up other global drug makers operating here. Many were using the same small Shanghai travel agency that the authorities said specialized in altering corporate travel expenses to pay cash bribes to doctors, hospital staff and government employees. Authorities say that 46 people have been implicated in the case.

When the case broke, many pharmaceutical executives complained privately that it was part of a Chinese government effort to control drug prices in China and punish highly profitable multinational companies. The authorities, though, have said that the big drug companies have done similar things in other countries and that the case involved extensive fraud against consumers.

Authorities in China said last summer that several of the Chinese executives had confessed to “economic crimes.” The police had also shut down the Shanghai Linjiang International Travel Agency for its role in what they called a kickback and money-laundering scheme. Documents reviewed by The New York Times showed that at least six other global pharmaceutical companies had used the same small travel agency, though it was unclear whether any wrongdoing had taken place.

In the months since the case was first announced, Glaxo has moved to repair its image. The company said in December that it would stop paying doctors to promote its products, and that it would stop providing financial support directly to doctors to attend medical conferences, a practice that is prohibited in the United States through an industry-imposed ethics code, but that still occurs in other countries.

On Wednesday, the police said its 10-month investigation had found that under Mr. Reilly, Glaxo had pushed its staff to meet aggressive sales targets and that the company had conducted “false transactions” through its financial department to transfer “illegal gains” made in China to overseas companies. The authorities also said Mr. Reilly and other senior executives at Glaxo had bribed officials to stop investigations of wrongdoing at the company.

Glaxo said it hoped to reach a resolution with the Chinese government “that will enable the company to continue to make an important contribution to the health and welfare of China and its citizens.”

David Barboza reported from Shanghai, and Katie Thomas from New York. Chad Bray contributed reporting from London.

A version of this article appears in print on May 15, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Former Head of Glaxo in China Is Accused of Bribery. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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International Business

In China, British Investigator Hired by Glaxo, and Wife, Sentenced to Prison

By DAVID BARBOZAAUG. 8, 2014

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Peter Humphrey and Yu Yingzeng in court.

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SHANGHAI — In spring 2013, GlaxoSmithKline, a British pharmaceutical giant, hired a firm to investigate a former employee, who was suspected of trying to smear the drugmaker’s top executive in China. Glaxo management told the firm’s British investigator that the company had received a sex video of the executive. The investigator called the case “Project Scorpion.”

The investigator, however, and his business partner — who is also his wife — turned out to be on a collision course with Chinese authorities. And on Friday, they were given prison terms after pleading guilty to violating ordinary citizens’ rights.

In a highly anticipated one-day trial, the investigator, Peter Humphrey, and his wife, Yu Yingzeng, admitted that they regularly bought confidential government records to help them research corporate fraud for their risk management consulting firm, according to a transcript of the court hearing. Their actions were usually taken on contract for foreign or multinational companies.

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Ms. Yu was sentenced to two years in prison.

The couple’s arrest last year stunned the international community, and has had a chilling effect on companies that engage in due diligence work for global companies, many of whom believe the couple may have been unfairly targeted. The companies sell services considered essential to doing business in China, like background checks. But because public records are limited and corruption is rampant, it can be a difficult business.

The court said Mr. Humphrey would be deported after he serves his term of two and a half years. The couple was also ordered to pay about $55,000 in combined fines, and Ms. Yu was sentenced to a two-year term. They can appeal.

According to transcripts released by the court, Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate Court, Glaxo was not specifically mentioned in the trial. The foreign news media was not permitted inside the courtroom, but was allowed to see photos and summaries of the proceedings on the court’s blog.

Under questioning by prosecutors, Mr. Humphrey, 58, and Ms. Yu, 60, a Chinese-born American citizen, acknowledged that from 2009 to 2013, they obtained about 250 pieces of private information about individuals, including government-issued identity documents, entry and exit travel records and mobile phone records, all apparently in violation of China’s privacy laws.

But the couple insisted in testimony released by the court that the information was used to combat fraud. At one point, Ms. Yu said that she did not realize her actions were illegal.

Photo

Peter Humphrey leaving court.

“We did not know obtaining these pieces of information was illegal in China,” she said, according to a court transcript. “If I had known, I would have destroyed all the evidence.”

Looming behind the proceedings Friday was Glaxo. The Chinese authorities detained Mr. Humphrey and Ms. Yu in July 2013, several months after Glaxo asked their firm, ChinaWhys, based in Hong Kong, to investigate whether a former Glaxo employee was passing information about suspected fraud at the company to the Chinese authorities. According to people briefed on the case who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, the former employee was targeting Mark Reilly, the company’s top executive in China.

Stephen Rea, a spokesman for Glaxo, noted that the company had not been named in the trial Friday and said that GlaxoSmithKline required all contractors “to conduct themselves in accordance with the laws and regulations of the environment in which they operate.”

The ChinaWhys investigation began in April 2013. Glaxo executives told Mr. Humphrey, a former journalist turned corporate detective, that in March 2013 the drug company had received emails and a sex video of Mr. Reilly recorded without his knowledge or consent, apparently with a camera placed inside his Shanghai apartment bedroom.

By June 2013, Mr. Humphrey had completed a preliminary report into the former employee, a Chinese citizen, without concluding whether that person was behind the video or emails attacking Mr. Reilly and the company. Mr. Humphrey proposed extending the case.

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Harvey Humphrey said he hoped that his parents would be released “on medical grounds.”

But shortly thereafter, the Chinese authorities raided several Glaxo offices in China and arrested four senior executives, all Chinese-born. Some confessed on state-run television to bribery, fraud and taking kickbacks from a travel agency used by Glaxo employees. The authorities accused the drug maker of engaging in widespread bribery, fraud and tax-related crimes — accusations that Glaxo has since acknowledged and called shameful.

In early July 2013, the authorities detained Mr. Humphrey and Ms. Yu. Just over a month later, they were formally arrested, accused of illegally obtaining private information while doing business for ChinaWhys and an affiliated Shanghai-based company, Shelian, both of which engaged in consulting and due diligence work for corporate clients, according to court transcripts.

At the time, Glaxo executives gave no indication that the arrests were linked to the work by ChinaWhys on its own case. But in late June 2014, after the British news media published details about the video, the drug company acknowledged that ChinaWhys had been hired after Mr. Reilly came under attack from an anonymous whistle-blower.

The family of Mr. Humphrey says the arrests were very likely linked to the Glaxo investigation. In interviews, the couple’s 19-year-old son, Harvey Humphrey, has quoted his father as saying that he would not have taken the assignment from Glaxo if he had been aware of the full details and accusations of the suspected whistle-blower, claims that he said that the company told him were unlikely to be true.

Harvey Humphrey read a statement outside the courthouse after the verdict, according to a family friend, expressing hope that his parents would be released “on medical grounds.”

Ms. Yu has a kidney ailment, the friend said, and the elder Mr. Humphrey has arthritis, and hernia and prostate problems.

This past May, the authorities stepped up their case against Glaxo, accusing Mr. Reilly, a British national, of ordering his staff at Glaxo to commit bribery, and he was ordered not to leave the country.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on August 9, 2014, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: In China, British Investigator Hired by Glaxo, and Wife, Are Sent to Prison. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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In China, the Dangers of Due Diligence

By JANE PERLEZ

Published: September 13, 2013

SHANGHAI — When Peter Humphrey and his wife, Yu Yingzeng, appeared on Chinese national television recently, handcuffed and wearing orange prison vests, it was the first time in more than a month that family and friends had seen the British-American couple, well-known figures in the foreign business world here.

But any sense of relief was tempered by what they saw next: Mr. Humphrey, his face electronically blurred, his head bowed, confessed to a crime and apologized to the Chinese government.

The broadcast not only stirred immediate alarm among foreigners in China, but also cast a light on a murky corner of business life in the world’s most dynamic economy. Until they disappeared in July, Mr. Humphrey and Ms. Yu ran ChinaWhys, one of many firms in the hush-hush industry of consultants and investigators in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong that promise to guide foreign corporations through China’s opaque and often treacherous business environment.

The companies sell services that are considered essential to doing business in China, including background checks, financial audits, fraud investigations and trademark protection. In most of the world, such work is fairly mundane. But in China, where public records are limited and corruption is rampant, it can be tricky and dangerous.

The arrests of Mr. Humphrey and Ms. Yu on charges of illegally acquiring private personal information, and the recent jailing of several other business researchers on similar charges, suggest the risks are rising. Taken together with the bribery investigation against GlaxoSmithKline, the increasing pressure on American car companies to lower their prices here, and the not-so-veiled threats against American technology companies to subcontract to Chinese companies, China appears to be throwing new obstacles in the way of foreign companies doing business in China.

A spokesman for Bayer HealthCare, a pharmaceutical company based in Germany, said on Friday that Chinese officials had begun investigating the company’s China operations for “a potential case of unfair competition.”

Representatives from a local office of China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce visited one of Bayer’s offices at the end of August, said the spokesman, Oliver Renner. He added that Bayer would investigate any accusations of violation of corporate policies and “take full responsibility for appropriate measures.”

It is unclear whether the investigation into Bayer is related to the ones that Chinese officials have opened into GlaxoSmithKline and other foreign pharmaceutical companies. Earlier this year, Chinese officials also investigated makers of infant milk powder for price fixing; most of the companies under scrutiny were foreign ones. Officials fined several of the companies the equivalent of millions of dollars, and the companies said they would pay the fines.

Foreign investors — hedge funds, private equity firms and multinational companies — typically hire consulting firms like ChinaWhys to investigate potential partners and employees or keep tabs on current ones.

The goal is to uncover wrongdoing that could hurt investments, things like a hidden relationship with a supplier or a fraud that could sink a publicly listed company.

“Unfortunately, even as due diligence into the integrity of domestic enterprises in China has become more important in the light of perceived widespread fraud and misrepresentation, access to records has become even more difficult,” said John Kuzmik, a consultant and former partner-in-charge of the law firm Baker Botts in Hong Kong. “Investigators are working in a very gray and somewhat dangerous environment.”

China has yet to develop a comprehensive system for collecting and assessing individual credit histories, or even accessing criminal or land records, Mr. Kuzmik said. And last year, the government began clamping down on access to corporate and household registration documents.

Indeed, much of the business going to these firms comes from Western lawyers, who must perform due diligence on Chinese deals for their clients but are wary about getting their hands dirty in the process.

“We work with private investigators but we don’t want to know where they get the information,” said a lawyer in a major American law firm in China.

Because the rules about access to corporate and other records are uncertain — the police and the courts themselves are susceptible to outside influence — the greatest risk may be an investigation of an individual with the means to retaliate.

That appears to be what happened to Huang Kun, a Canadian investigator who is in a Chinese jail and is expected to face criminal charges after helping prepare a negative report about Silvercorp, a mining operation that suffered a 20 percent fall in its share price on the Toronto stock exchange after Mr. Huang’s work was released.

Some are convinced that something similar happened to Mr. Humphrey and Ms. Yu.

An arrest like Mr. Humphrey’s is “never about the legal issues. It’s always about who has an interest in suppressing information,” a Western consultant in Beijing said.

Dan David, co-founder of GeoInvesting, a Pennsylvania company that investigates Chinese companies listed on American stock exchanges, said the decision by the Chinese to single out Mr. Humphrey was particularly unfair given that he and other investigators were trying to protect United States investors.

“Keep in mind that we are not talking about filming or hidden camera interviews, but basic background checks, and the government of China puts you in jail,” Mr. David said.

Mr. Humphrey, 57, who is British, and Ms. Yu, 60, who is a Chinese-born, naturalized American, fit easily into the orbit of private investigators who must be part gumshoe, part financial analyst. Mr. Humphrey, who first came to China in 1979, had a long career as a foreign correspondent with Reuters, including in Central Europe. Ms. Yu is an accountant.

Mr. Humphrey was the founder of the Shanghai chapter of a Texas-based group, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, and gave a lengthy presentation last year at a conference in Hong Kong about how his company operated. Among his pieces of advice: “Think like the fraudsters.”

ChinaWhys, which kept modest offices in Shanghai, had about 10 employees, according to Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency.

Its clients included manufacturing, hotel and real estate companies and, most notably, GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical giant, which the Chinese government has accused of widespread bribery of Chinese doctors.

A Glaxo spokesman said Mr. Humphrey was never an employee of the company, but declined to say for how long or under what circumstances ChinaWhys did work for the company.

Acquaintances of Mr. Humphrey said they believed that Glaxo had asked Mr. Humphrey to find out if the company was in compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

In the CCTV report last month, a uniformed Shanghai police officer, Lu Wei, said the couple had collected the personal household registrations of Chinese citizens, known as hukous, automobile and homeownership records and details of cross-border travel.

The couple paid $130 to $163 per item of illegally obtained information, which they packaged into reports they sold for over $16,000 each, making about $980,400 annual profit, the report said.

It seemed likely that Mr. Humphrey and Ms. Yu were caught because they failed to adapt after the rules of the road changed last year.

That was when the Chinese government tightened access to corporate records at state industry and commerce bureaus, which give information about company structure, and made hukous virtually off-limits, several Western consultants said. The powerful Ministry of Public Security controls hukous, which are important to investors because they are often the only way to verify that someone is who he or she claims to be.

Many investigators stopped seeking hukous after a subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet was charged in September 2012 by the Shanghai public prosecutor with “illegally obtaining private information from Chinese citizens.” Four employees were sentenced to up to two years in jail.

Mr. Humphrey appeared to be aware of the new limitations and wrote about them earlier this year on the Web site of the fraud examiners group.

“In February 2013, the government issued strict new rules to restrict access to what it called ‘personal information,’ ” he wrote. “I find this a step backwards that will make due diligence and catching fraudsters harder. We will have to be even more creative from now on.”

He described the consequences of failing to conduct proper due diligence, and cited the disastrous acquisition of a Chinese company, Siwei Mechanical Electrical Engineering, by Caterpillar last year.

“If Caterpillar had done the kind of due diligence” combining accounting with background investigation, retrieval of corporate records and discreet supporting inquiries, “it might have spotted the fraud before doing the deal,” Mr. Humphrey wrote.

There was no word from the Chinese authorities about when or whether Mr. Humphrey and Ms. Yu would be put on trial. The British Embassy in Beijing said it was concerned that Mr. Humphrey was “publicly interviewed about the details of his case, which is currently under investigation and has yet to come to trial.”

People with knowledge of the case said Mr. Humphrey was being held in the Shanghai Detention Center in Pudong.

The American Embassy in Beijing said consular officers had visited Ms. Yu on a regular basis since her arrest and would continue to do so.

Bree Feng contributed research.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 26, 2013

An article on Sept. 14 about the perils of doing due diligence on business transactions in China misspelled the given name of the wife and business partner of Peter Humphrey, whose company, ChinaWhys, provided services including background checks, financial audits and fraud investigations to foreign corporations. She is Yu Yingzeng, not Yingzheng.

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Sunday Book Review

Man Down

‘The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace,’ by Jeff Hobbs

By ANAND GIRIDHARADASSEPT. 18, 2014

Inside

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There are places in America where life is so cheap and fate so brutal that, if they belonged to another country, America might bomb that country to “liberate” them. This book is a mesmeric account of such a place — a ghetto near Newark — that asks the consummate American question: Is it possible to reinvent yourself, to sculpture your own destiny?

“The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace” seeks answers in the true story of two men, reared in the same mostly black, mostly luckless neighborhood, whose trajectories spectacularly diverge.

One man is Shawn, born to a sweet-talking, drug-pushing father named Skeet, who tries to keep his son from books, fearing they will make him too soft for a hard world. Instead, Skeet teaches Shawn how to fight, intimidate, know everyone on avenues where it’s lethal not to. When Skeet is imprisoned for killing two women, Shawn inherits his friends. He becomes a dealer, too, eventually sleeping in his car, wearing a Kevlar vest.

The other man is Rob, son of a feistily aspirational mother, who, while toiling in kitchens, wishes for her child the escape she never had. She borrows books from the local library to read to her small son, and later buys him the first volume of an encyclopedia, getting additional ones, letter by letter, when she can afford them. She navigates their bleak world to find institutions and people who will help him. A Benedictine school rescues Rob. A bank executive offers to pay all his college expenses. Yale accepts him. He majors in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and works in a cancer and infectious disease laboratory.

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Robert DeShaun Peace

What makes this book so devastating is that these two men, Rob and Shawn, are really one: Robert DeShaun Peace, who went from a New Jersey ghetto to Yale to wherever men go after dying face down, knees bent, in a drug-related murder.

Nowadays there is reporting aplenty on the theme of two Americas. The originality of Jeff Hobbs’s work lies in finding a man who lived simultaneously in both countries, who thrived and failed at the same time, who escaped his past and didn’t, who was his father’s son and his mother’s son. Peace used and helped deal drugs while scoring a 1510 out of 1600 on his SATs, putting him in the 99th percentile nationally, and starring as a water-polo player at his prep school; he got into Yale and immediately feared getting “curbed,” having his face pressed into the street and a foot stomp on the back of his head until his teeth shattered; he worked in a cancer research lab while using that lab to launder drug revenue.

That one man can contain such contradictions makes for an astonishing, tragic story. In Hobbs’s hands, though, it becomes something more: an interrogation of our national creed of self-invention. It reminds us that there are origins in this country of ours that cannot be escaped, traumas that have no balm, holes that Medicaid and charter schools and better mental health care and prison reform can never fill.

In the summer of 1998, Hobbs was just another wealthy white kid bound for Yale, in the tradition of his brother and sister. He received a roommate assignment: Robert Peace. The first thing Hobbs surmised about Peace, in their maladroit male attempt at a décor-coordinating phone call, was that he was black. But because Peace played water polo and seemed to live near Manhattan, Hobbs assumed skin color was probably all that separated them.

Thus began an enduring odd-couple relationship. Hobbs and Peace were from different worlds, but at Yale they roomed together, commiserated over women, smoked weed (which Peace supplied as a leading campus dealer). They knew a bit about each other’s pasts, but not much. They kept in touch sporadically after college, and Peace was a groomsman at Hobbs’s wedding in Brooklyn. And then on May 18, 2011, 13 years after their first encounter, Hobbs learned over Facebook that his friend had passed away — had, in fact, been murdered in the game he had never stopped playing but had so masterfully hidden from so many.

The death prompted Hobbs, until then a fiction writer (whose first book was also about Yale students), to swerve into nonfiction and investigate the man he and so many others thought they knew.

Hobbs methodically reconstructs each of the worlds that made his friend: Peace’s boyhood house on Chapman Street, with its “weedy rectangle of lawn” and “five buckled stoop stairs”; the fiercely loving St. Benedict’s Preparatory School, where the boys sang school songs in the corridors; his neighborhood posse, whose dreams of college, wealth and stability slowly evaporate; the dealing underworld, which for Peace and many of his peers is the easiest, truest meritocracy they can see; Yale, with its suffocating levels of entitlement and the angst of many of its minority students.

As a page turner alone, the story wins. It doesn’t need further selling, and I won’t spoil it. What is worth adding is that the book will be highly provocative, even irritating, to those who answer the problems of the American underclass with prefab ideological theories and solutions.

It will force liberals to reconsider their aversion to talking about culture, habits, values and family breakdown as contributors to poverty. Poverty may be “structural,” as liberals like to say, but the structures worked for Peace, and still there was a brokenness to his spirit, “crippling emotional trauma” from the absence of his imprisoned father, and a rage of generations — a rage that cannot be explained by the physics of one life alone. Hobbs is particularly convincing on the idea that no level of achievement or external intervention can compensate for the lack of family.

As Hobbs writes from the point of view of Ina, one of Rob’s girlfriends, whom he tried in vain to make a gun smuggler: “Problems such as theirs, problems that traced back generations and involved far more than money (though money was often their emblem), would never be solved with $500 every two weeks.”

Conservatives will love that a religious school and a rich banker were Peace’s principal rescuers, but Hobbs’s reporting shows us that Peace was the beneficiary of happy accidents, and that free markets and charity will never, on their own, solve a problem this dense, complex and knotted.

Hobbs is a solid writer with considerable empathy and gifts for narrative and suspense. What mars this book is only the often bland prose. Where there is a cliché at Hobbs’s disposal, an interesting word simply won’t do.

Mothers “gossip.” Children “play.” Someone has a “wrong place-wrong time misunderstanding.” Someone else has to “get on with her life.” Rob’s friend’s approach to life: “laid-back.” A friar’s sermon is full of — you guessed it — “fire and brimstone.” Peace feels “nostalgia for the past and excitement about the future.” At times, Hobbs lapses into what can only be called a dude-bro patois: “Rob and I made a food run.”

Too, Hobbs loves starting sentences with “too.”

Narrative nonfiction is already hard pressed to compete with concocted tales, and such poverty of expression forces it to dazzle us with the reporting alone. Fiction has such inbuilt advantages in its power to imagine inner life and present narratives free of the factual gaps inevitable in true stories. Narrative nonfiction must strive for the literary if it’s to have a chance at the audience garnered by important fiction.

And “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace” deserves that chance. It deserves a turn in the nation’s pulpit from which it can beg us to see the third world America in our midst. Robert Peace, who called his mother “my heart,” was her only and beloved son. But he was our son, too. We are the wondrous country that made him a Yale man. We are the wanting country where even that wasn’t enough to spare him.

THE SHORT AND TRAGIC LIFE OF ROBERT PEACE

A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League

By Jeff Hobbs

406 pp. Scribner. $27.

Anand Giridharadas writes the “Letter From America” column for The International New York Times and is the author of “The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas.”

A version of this review appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page BR1 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Man Down. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Middle East |NYT Now

Fleeing Gaza, Only to Face Treachery and Disaster at Sea

By FARES AKRAM and ISABEL KERSHNERSEPT. 19, 2014

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Mourners in Gaza City threw roses in the Mediterranean on Thursday for Palestinian migrants who were on a ship that sank off Malta last week.

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ABASSAN, Gaza Strip — Samir Asfour, 57, held a mobile phone that never stopped ringing in one hand, a cigarette in the other. His Palestinian passport was sticking out of the chest pocket of his white jalabiya.

“I will travel whenever I can,” he said, speaking nervously outside his home in Abassan, a small town east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. “I need to go and bring back their bodies from wherever they are.”

Mr. Asfour’s son Ahmed, 24, and three of Ahmed’s cousins, ages 17 to 27, are among dozens of young Gazans missing in the Mediterranean. Mr. Asfour last heard from them on Sept. 6, a week after they left Gaza for Egypt. There, they intended to board an illegal migrant ship bound for Italy. Their final destination was not clear, but relatives said they had been heading to Europe in search of jobs and better medical care.

The ship, with about 500 migrants aboard, sank last week off the coast of Malta after it was rammed by human traffickers on another boat during an argument with the migrants, according to survivors. Nearly all aboard are believed to have died.

Photo

The mother of Ahmed Asfour, among the passengers on the sunken ship, kissed a picture of him. Survivors say smugglers rammed the ship.

Mr. Asfour said he had contacted one survivor who made it to Malta, Mamoun Doghmosh, who confirmed that he had seen Ahmed on the boat. Mr. Asfour said he was sure that his son was dead because he was sick and could not swim.

The recent war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that dominates Gaza, prompted a wave of attempts by Palestinians to reach Europe with the aid of Egyptian smugglers, despite — or perhaps because of — Israeli and Egyptian restrictions on regular movement in and out of the Palestinian coastal enclave.

Fleeing conflict, unemployment and an outlook that many here described as hopeless, at least 1,000 Palestinians have left Gaza in the past three months seeking passage to Europe, according to Palestinians tracking the migration, joining the increasing flow of asylum seekers and migrants from Syria, and from Egypt, Sudan and other parts of Africa who set out from ports in Egypt and Libya. Facebook posts by those who made it safely to Europe encourage others to attempt the journey.

But the deadly shipwreck has suddenly shined a light on the exodus, and for the distraught relatives back in Gaza, it has underscored the risks involved. The Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights, an organization based in Geneva with an office in Gaza, said 90 Gaza residents were among the hundreds missing and feared dead in the shipwreck, though information about the dead, the missing and possible survivors has been scarce here.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations human rights chief, on Friday condemned what he said appeared to be a “mass murder in the Mediterranean” and called for concerted international action against traffickers.

“The callous act of deliberately ramming a boat full of hundreds of defenseless people is a crime that must not go unpunished,” Mr. Zeid said in a statement from his Geneva office.

The ramming was just the worst case among four or five other boat sinkings over several days.

For many, the journey out of Gaza began in a smuggling tunnel running beneath the border with Egypt. But because Ahmed Asfour and his cousins were wounded in an Israeli airstrike in Abassan during a previous Gaza conflict, in 2008-9, they had medical records allowing them to enter Egypt legally, via the Rafah border crossing, on the understanding that they would receive treatment, Samir Asfour said.

Ahmed had the worst injuries. He lost sight in one eye and part of his pancreas. Leg injuries prevented him from walking long distances. After that earlier war, he initially received treatment in Egypt, then in Israel, and he was arrested and spent three years in an Israeli prison, his father said, declining to elaborate.

After his release in 2012, Ahmed could not find a job and received welfare payments of 800 shekels (about $220) a month. The Palestinian authorities said they could not pay for further treatment. “We reached a dead end,” Mr. Asfour said.

Before boarding the boat in Egypt, Ahmed and his cousins phoned their relatives in Gaza and asked them to pay the smugglers through a money-changing store in Khan Younis.

“They are a network,” Mr. Asfour said. “The smugglers have agents here, and they are like the Western Union.”

Mr. Asfour and his sister-in-law Samah Asfour, the mother of one of the cousins, Raed, 17, went to the money changer together and paid $2,000 for each of the four. Mrs. Asfour said that the usual cost was $1,500, but that the money changer had told her that the extra cash would ensure their sons a place on a large, sturdy ship, not a small one that could sink.

“We paid more so our boys would be safe,” she said. They were hoping to find medical treatment, jobs and a better future than the one they saw for themselves in Gaza. “They went for treatment. Why would we send them there?” Mrs. Asfour said. “This country doesn’t care for them, and they are desperate. They were seeking a good life.”

Mr. Asfour said he spoke to one of the smugglers in Egypt on his son’s mobile phone. “I asked him to take care of Ahmed because of his special situation,” Mr. Asfour said. “The smuggler told me not to worry and said Ahmed should only bring with him boxes of bottled water and juice and a box of dried dates.”

Other Gazans described how relatives left through the tunnels at Rafah in groups organized by a smuggler, paying him $1,500 per person and $2,000 for the boat runners.

The International Organization for Migration, based in Geneva, says records show that around 2,900 Palestinians have reached Italy this year, most of them in July and August.

Only 11 people are known to have survived the sinking of the rammed vessel, eight of them Palestinians from Gaza, and accounts from relatives of others aboard the doomed ship suggest that most of the passengers were Gazans, according to Joel Millman, a spokesman for the migration organization. He said the office had received a constant stream of calls from Gazans desperately seeking news of family members.

Relatives in contact with some of the migrants as they prepared for the journey said they had been driven in buses carrying 90 to 100 people to an Egyptian port, Damietta. Those aboard the boat included around 100 children younger than 10 who were stuffed below the deck, the migration organization reported.

Some of the Palestinians on board may have already spent a few years in Egypt before leaving for Europe, according to Palestinians tracking the migration.

Majdi Abu Daqqa, a lawyer and human rights activist in Gaza, said most had been sailing to Italy with the intention of moving to Sweden, Belgium or Greece, where friends told them it was easier to stay. Mr. Abu Daqqa said some members of the security services in Gaza were colluding with the smugglers, taking a cut of their fees.

Now, amid the recriminations of relatives in Gaza, Hamas, which controls the border area on the Gaza side, says it is taking measures to prevent further illegal migration. Mr. Abu Daqqa said about 150 illegal migrants who had crossed through the tunnels were caught at Egyptian checkpoints and were being held in Egypt.

But the money-changing store in Khan Younis, on a street full of other currency exchange stores, was still open this week. When a reporter asked about transferring money to his wife in Egypt, a man behind the counter asked, “For immigration?” Asked how much it would cost, the man replied, “Two thousand dollars.” He then became suspicious and said the store handled only money transfers.

“We have nothing to do with the immigration,” he said.

Fares Akram reported from Abassan, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Fleeing Gaza, Only to Face Treachery and Disaster at Sea. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe

Smugglers Rammed Migrants’ Boat, Sinking It, Group Says

By NICK CUMMING-BRUCESEPT. 15, 2014

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GENEVA — Human traffickers rammed a boat filled with migrants they were smuggling from North Africa to Europe, making it sink in the open sea and “deliberately drowning” hundreds of the migrants, the International Organization for Migration said Monday.

Christiane Berthiaume, a spokeswoman for the migration organization, said the traffickers rammed the boat with another vessel off the coast of Malta on Wednesday after an argument broke out between the traffickers and the migrant passengers. Ms. Berthiaume cited accounts by two Palestinians who had survived the sinking and had been rescued. Only nine people are known to have survived the disaster, the group said, out of as many as 500 who were said to have been on the boat.

“If the survivors’ reports are confirmed, this will be the worst shipwreck of migrants in years,” Leonard Doyle, a spokesman for the organization, said in a statement. He said the sinking was “not an accidental tragedy, but the deliberate drowning of helpless migrants by the criminal smugglers who extort money from them for their desperate journeys.”

The Italian authorities in Sicily, where some of the survivors were taken, confirmed that a criminal investigation of the shipwreck had begun, but refused to provide any details or otherwise comment.

Another boat of Europe-bound migrants sank in recent days, off the coast of Libya, with as many as 250 passengers aboard, most of them feared dead, said the migration organization, based in Geneva. In all, as many as 700 people may have died in the past week, adding to what was already the worst year on record for the hazardous route. By the group’s tally, more than 2,900 are feared dead so far in 2014, compared with about 600 in all of 2013.

The United Nations refugee agency is investigating reports of additional sinkings in recent days that may push the death toll higher. “Alarmingly, these two incidents look as if they are among four or five that have occurred in the last few days,” said Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The precise details of the confrontation and the sinking near Malta were not immediately clear. The boat that was reportedly rammed set out last week from an Egyptian port, Damietta, the migration organization said. Citing the accounts of the two Palestinian survivors, who were interviewed over the weekend, the organization said the smugglers ordered their human cargo to transfer to a smaller boat they were towing.

The migrants refused to comply because of the dangerously small size of the second boat. The traffickers then rammed the boat carrying the migrants “in order to sink it,” Ms. Berthiaume said.

The two Palestinian survivors are men from Gaza, the organization said, adding that they were plucked from the sea at different locations by an Italian commercial vessel nearly two days after the sinking. Ms. Berthiaume said they were taken to Pozzallo, a port in southern Sicily, and interviewed there by the Italian police and the migration organization, who agreed that their accounts were “precise and reliable.”

The migrants on the boat were reportedly Palestinians, Sudanese and Egyptians. But there was little mention of the disaster in the Egyptian news media; only a few outlets made any note of it, and those few outlets published articles by international news agencies after deleting all references to Egypt.

One of the Palestinian survivors recounted how he spent hours in the water with an Egyptian teenager who said he was trying to reach Europe to earn money to help pay for heart treatment for his father, Ms. Berthiaume reported, but the survivor said the boy succumbed to exhaustion and drowned.

Eyad Bozum, a spokesman for the Gazan Interior Ministry, said Monday that 30 Palestinians from Gaza were on a migrant boat that sank, and that at least 15 were dead, but there was confusion about which ship they were on. Mr. Bozum said his ministry had been unable to obtain satisfactory responses from the Egyptian authorities so far, and did not have the names of the dead or missing or of survivors.

The recent war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that dominates Gaza, appears to have prompted a wave of attempts by Palestinians to reach Europe with the aid of Egyptian smugglers. One of those migrants was Mohammed Abu Tuaima, 20, a second-year law student from Abassan, a village east of Khan Younis, who told relatives that he saw no future in Gaza. His father, a retired Palestinian Authority police officer, said Mr. Tuaima entered Egypt through the Rafah crossing using a falsified medical referral and then headed for Alexandria with $3,500, most of which was to pay the smugglers.

His relatives in Gaza last heard from him about 12:45 a.m. on Sept. 7. Now they are glued to the radio and television and scouring social media for any scraps of news about boat sinkings and what might have happened to him.

In the sinking off Libya, coast guards reported over the weekend that they had rescued 26 people from a boat believed to have been carrying around 250 migrants when it went down.

The latest deaths lent new urgency to the request last month by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for urgent action by European states to address the soaring death toll among migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean. This week, the high commissioner, António Guterres, and the actress Angelina Jolie met in Valletta, Malta, with three survivors of a boat sinking, according to a statement from Mr. Guterres’s office. It did not specify which sinking the three survived.

Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram from Gaza; Jim Yardley from Pozzallo, Sicily; David D. Kirkpatrick from Baghdad; and Merna Thomas from Cairo.

A version of this article appears in print on September 16, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Smugglers Rammed Migrants’ Boat, Sinking It, Group Says. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Middle East |NYT Now

U.S. Hopes Face-Saving Plan Offers a Path to a Nuclear Pact With Iran

By DAVID E. SANGERSEPT. 19, 2014

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Over the years, the United States has shown considerable ingenuity in its effort to slow Iran’s production of nuclear fuel: It has used sabotage, cyberattacks and creative economic sanctions.

Now, mixing face-saving diplomacy and innovative technology, negotiators are attempting a new approach, suggesting that the Iranians call in a plumber.

The idea is to convince the Iranians to take away many of the pipes that connect their nuclear centrifuges, the giant machines that are connected together in a maze that allows uranium fuel to move from one machine to another, getting enriched along the way. That way, the Iranians could claim they have not given in to Western demands that they eliminate all but a token number of their 19,000 machines, in which Iran has invested billions of dollars and tremendous national pride.

And if the plumbing is removed, experts at America’s national nuclear laboratories have told the Obama administration, the United States and its allies could accurately claim that they have extended the time Iran would need to produce enough fuel for a bomb — and given the West time to react.

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That is one of the few ideas that may offer a glimmer of hope in closed-door negotiations in New York this weekend, before the arrival of President Obama and Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, for the annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly. A year ago, when greater progress seemed in the offing, it appeared likely that the two men would move on from the first phone call between the two nations’ leaders in three decades to the first meeting in person.

No one is betting on that now.

“We’re open to it,” is the most a senior Obama administration official would allow on Thursday night, briefing reporters.

The time would seem ripe, with the United States and Iran finding themselves, uncomfortably, on the same side in the fight against the extremists of the Islamic State, and just two months away from an ostensibly final deadline to strike a nuclear accord.

Yet the atmosphere is sour, with the Americans saying they have no intention of “coordinating” action with Iran against the Islamic State, and the Iranians saying they want to solve the nuclear issues first, which the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said this week was “complicated enough.”

In fact, it has gotten more complicated. Tentative agreements on issues negotiated at great length in Vienna through July, when talks were extended, suddenly seem back on the table. The global nuclear inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency report stonewalling by Iran on details of the “possible military dimensions” of past research, while, within the country, the Revolutionary Guards push back against Mr. Zarif.

“There’s a bit of a sense of desperation about coming up with ways to break the logjams, on the nuclear talks and the larger relationship,” another participant in the negotiations said. “Because if we don’t figure this out in the next few months, it is not clear the opportunity is going to come again.”

The Iranians are clearly doing far better in public diplomacy in New York than are the United States or its allies. Mr. Zarif, who is American-educated, media savvy, and often humorous, has already given interviews to the radio network NPR, parried with members of the Council on Foreign Relations in an on-the-record meeting, and made Iran’s case in background briefings.

While he has taken many pokes at President Obama for being slow to confront the Islamic State, he has also mocked the conspiracy theorists in Tehran who claim the Sunni group was invented by the C.I.A.

By contrast, the Obama administration has rarely allowed its negotiating counterparts to Mr. Zarif to go on the record; after the first full day of talks, the officials spoke to reporters only on background, meaning their names could not be used. They complain that Mr. Zarif talks a good game, but has offered few meaningful cuts in the centrifuges. Both sides are clearly worried, because if they cannot win agreement on the main issue over the next 10 days or so — how much fuel-production ability Iran will be allowed to maintain, and how long an agreement to limit its production abilities will last — it is hard to imagine how the complex details of a final accord can be resolved in the remaining time. Which is where the plumbing comes in.

Disconnecting the pipes is one of several ideas that have emerged from the conversations between Mr. Obama’s negotiating team and the Energy Department’s national laboratories, which develop and maintain the American arsenal of nuclear weapons.

But the proposal is not without flaws. “To be credible, it would have to keep the Iranians from restoring operations for a considerable period of time,” said Robert Einhorn, a former member of the negotiating team who is now at the Brookings Institution.

It is far from clear that those suspicious of the deal, in Congress and in Israel, would buy it. And there is considerable opposition within the Iranian establishment, including the military. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, gave a speech in the summer calling, with great specificity, for an eventual 10-fold increase in the country’s enrichment capacity.

Clearly, Mr. Zarif cannot go home with a deal that seems to violate the course that the ayatollah wants to set.

“Unless the Iranians are talking about reducing their currently operational enrichment capability by around a half, it is not very impressive,” Mr. Einhorn said.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Hopes Face-Saving Plan Offers a Path to a Nuclear Pact With Iran. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Timeline on Iran’s Nuclear Program

Whether Iran is racing toward nuclear weapon capabilities is one of the most contentious issues challenging the West, including the United States and Israel, which has been involved in a shadow war with the country.

Nuclear Program Begins Iran begins a civilian nuclear program in the 1950s, led by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who reaches a deal through the Eisenhower administration's Atoms for Peace program. Under the agreement, the United States agrees to provide a nuclear research reactor in Tehran and power plants. Iran Signs Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty With the American-provided research reactor running, starting in 1967, Iran becomes one of 51 nations to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, agreeing to never become a nuclear-weapon state. Creation of Atomic Energy Body

The shah creates the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, which conducts training for its personnel and nuclear deals with countries including the United States, France, West Germany, Namibia and South Africa. By training engineers in Iran and abroad, the country gains a solid understanding of nuclear technologies and capabilities.

A year later, Kraftwerk Union, a West German company, agrees to construct two light water reactors to produce nuclear energy at the Bushehr complex, 470 miles south of Tehran. Construction begins in 1974 but the contract is not signed until 1976.

By the late 1970s, the United States becomes worried that Iran may harbor nuclear weapon ambitions.

Shah Flees

The shah is overthrown and flees the country, in what becomes known as the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar takes over and cancels the $6.2 billion contract for the construction of two nuclear power plants at the Bushehr complex.

The United States retracts a deal it had made with Iran a year earlier and stops supplying enriched uranium for the Tehran research reactor.

Khomeini Comes to Power Prime Minister Bakhtiar is overthrown by followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an exiled cleric, after bloody clashes in Tehran.

The new leader is uninterested in the nuclear program and ends the shah's effort. Many nuclear experts flee the country.

Any nuclear cooperation between Iran and the United States breaks down completely with the American Embassy hostage crisis from November 1979 until January 1981.

Nuclear Program Restarts

The Iran-Iraq war, from 1980 to 1988, changes Iran's thinking about the nuclear program. With Saddam Hussein pursuing a nuclear program in Iraq, Ayatollah Khomeini secretly decides to restart Iran's program and seeks the assistance of German partners to complete the construction at Bushehr, which was damaged by bombs during the war.

Help From Pakistani Scientist

In the late 1980s, Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani metallurgist and the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, sells Iran, North Korea and Libya his uranium enrichment technology, and in Libya's case, a bomb design. The transactions do not become public until years later.

In 2005, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency is on the verge of reviewing Tehran's nuclear program when Iranian officials admit to a 1987 meeting with Dr. Khan's representatives. But Tehran tells the agency that it turned down the chance to buy the equipment required to build the core of a bomb.

New Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's nominal president for eight years, becomes supreme leader after Ayatollah Khomeini dies. Iran and Russia Sign Nuclear Contract

Iran announces that it will sign an $800 million contract with Russia to complete construction on one of two light water reactors at the Bushehr nuclear plant within four years. After many delays, the project was completed in 2010.

The United States has been persuading countries like Argentina, India, Spain, Germany and France to prohibit the sale of nuclear technology to Iran's civilian program.

Sanctions Against Iran and Libya With growing intelligence estimates that Iran may secretly be trying to build a nuclear weapon, President Bill Clinton signs a bill imposing sanctions on foreign companies with investments in Iran and Libya. Such rules are already in place for American companies. Proposal for Nuclear-Free Mideast

President Mohammad Khatami of Iran goes to Saudi Arabia, becoming the first Iranian leader since 1979 to visit the Arab world.

He issues a joint statement with King Fahd expressing concerns about Israel's nuclear weapons program and support for ridding the Middle East of nuclear weapons. In 2003, Iran supports such a proposal initiated by Syria.

Discovery of Secret Plants

Mujahedeen Khalq, an Iranian dissident group also known as the M.E.K., obtains and shares documents revealing a clandestine nuclear program previously unknown to the United Nations.

The program includes a vast uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water plant at Arak. In December, satellite photographs of Natanz and Arak appear widely in the news media. The United States accuses Tehran of an "across-the-board pursuit of weapons of mass destruction," but takes relatively little action because it is focused on the approaching invasion of Iraq the next year.

Iran agrees to inspections by the I.A.E.A. It also signs an accord with Russia to speed up completion of the nuclear power plant at Bushehr.

Nuclear Program Is Suspended

Possibly in response to the American invasion of Iraq, which was originally justified by the Bush administration on the grounds that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Ayatollah Khamenei orders a suspension of work on what appear to be weapons-related technologies, although he allows uranium enrichment efforts to continue.

Inspectors with the United Nations atomic agency find traces of highly enriched uranium at the Natanz plant, and Iran concedes to demands, after talks with Britain, France and Germany, to accept stricter international inspections of its nuclear sites and to suspend production of enriched uranium.

Violation and New Agreement

Iran violates the agreement, charging that the Europeans reneged on their promises of economic and political incentives. After 22 hours of negotiations, an Iranian delegation and senior officials from France, Germany, Britain and the European Union come to a preliminary agreement to immediately suspend Iran's production of enriched uranium. The Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, praises the so-called Paris Agreement but emphasizes that any suspension will be temporary.

In a few weeks, the I.A.E.A verifies Iran's suspension of its enrichment activities, with one exception: its request to use up to 20 sets of centrifuge components for research and development.

With Laptop Files, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran's Nuclear Aims

Senior American intelligence officials present the International Atomic Energy Agency with the contents of what they say is a stolen Iranian laptop containing more than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments -- studies for crucial features of a nuclear warhead.

Intelligence reports reveal that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a little-known Iranian scientist, leads elements of Iran's weaponization program known as Project 110 and Project 111.

But doubts about the intelligence persist among some experts, in part because American officials, citing the need to protect their source, have largely refused to provide details of the origins of the laptop beyond saying that they obtained it in mid-2004 from a source in Iran who they said had received it from a second person, now believed to be dead.

Ahmadinejad Elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, known only as a secular conservative and a former mayor of Tehran, becomes president. He becomes a divisive figure in world affairs, cheering on the development of Iran’s nuclear program despite orders from the United Nations Security Council to halt it, calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map’' and describing the Holocaust as “a myth.” Natanz Production Is Restarted

Iran resumes uranium enrichment at Natanz after negotiations with European and American officials collapse.

The I.A.E.A. approves a resolution to report Iran's nuclear program to the Security Council, citing “the absence of confidence" among the atomic agency's members "that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

Iran Opens a Heavy-Water Reactor

Just days before Iran is supposed to suspend enrichment of uranium or face the prospect of sanctions, President Ahmadinejad formally kicks off a heavy-water production plant in Arak, 120 miles southwest of Tehran, which would put Iran on the path to obtaining plutonium, a fuel used in nuclear weapons.

In November, Iran seeks international assistance to ensure safe operation for a 40-megawatt reactor it is building. Citing broader doubts about Iran's nuclear ambitions, the United Nations atomic agency, the United States and European countries oppose offering help.

First Round of U.N. Sanctions The Security Council unanimously approves sanctions intended to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The sanctions ban the import and export of materials and technology used in uranium enrichment and reprocessing and in the production of ballistic missiles. U.S. - Israel Cyberattacks Begin

President George W. Bush rejects a secret request by Israel for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wants for an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. The Bush administration is alarmed by the Israeli idea to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz and decides to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Mr. Bush will hand off the major covert program to President Obama.

The United States works with Israel to begin cyberattacks, code-named Olympic Games, on computer systems at the Natanz plant. A year later, the program is introduced undetected into a controller computer at Natanz. Centrifuges begin crashing and engineers have no clue that the plant is under attack.

Talks End in Deadlock

International talks on Iran's nuclear ambitions end in deadlock despite the Bush administration’s decision to reverse policy and send William J. Burns, a senior American official, to the table for the first time.

Iran responds with a written document that fails to address the main issue: international demands that it stop enriching uranium. Iranian diplomats reiterate before the talks that they consider the issue nonnegotiable.

U.S. Joins Regular Iran Talks Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announces that the United States will participate in talks with Iran involving five other nations: Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. Warning on Nuclear ‘Deception’

American, British and French officials declassify some of their most closely held intelligence and describe a multiyear Iranian effort, tracked by spies and satellites, to build a secret uranium enrichment plant deep inside a mountain.

The new plant, which Iran strongly denies is intended to be kept secret or used for making weapons, is months from completion and does nothing to shorten intelligence estimates of how long it would take Iran to produce a bomb. American intelligence officials say it will take at least a year, perhaps five, for Iran to develop the full ability to make a nuclear weapon.

Leaked Gates Memo on U.S. Policy

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warns in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran's steady progress toward nuclear capability.

When the memo becomes public in April, Mr. Gates issues a statement saying that he wishes to dispel any perception among allies that the administration had failed to adequately think through how to deal with Iran.

Work on Warhead

The United Nations’ nuclear inspectors declare for the first time that they have extensive evidence of “past or current undisclosed activities” by Iran’s military to develop a nuclear warhead.

The report also concludes that some Iranian weapons-related activity apparently continued “beyond 2004," contradicting an American intelligence assessment published in 2008 that concluded that work on a bomb was suspended at the end of 2003.

Computer Worms Leak Online; 1,000 Centrifuges Destroyed

The United States and Israel realize that copies of the computer sabotage program introduced in Natanz are available on the Internet, where they are replicating quickly. In a few weeks, articles appear in the news media about a mysterious new computer worm carried on USB keys that exploits a hole in the Windows operating system. The worm is named Stuxnet.

President Obama decides not to kill the program, and a subsequent attack takes out nearly 1,000 Iranian centrifuges, nearly a fifth of those operating.

U.N. Approves New Sanctions

The United Nations Security Council levels its fourth round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program. The sanctions curtail military purchases, trade and financial transactions carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls the nuclear program.

The Security Council also requires countries to inspect ships or planes headed to or from Iran if they suspect banned cargo. In addition, Iran is barred from investing in other countries' nuclear enrichment plants, uranium mines and related technologies, and the Security Council sets up a committee to monitor enforcement.

Iranian Scientist Defects to U.S., Then Reconsiders

Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist who American officials say defected to the United States in 2009, provided information about Iran's nuclear weapons program and then developed second thoughts, returning to Iran. (After a hero's welcome, he was imprisoned on treason charges and tortured, according to reports from Iran.)

The bizarre episode was the latest in a tale that has featured a mysterious disappearance from a hotel room in Saudi Arabia, rumors of a trove of new intelligence about Iran's nuclear plants and a series of contradictory YouTube videos. It immediately set off a renewed propaganda war between Iran and the United States.

Bombings Strike Scientists in Iran Unidentified attackers riding motorcycles bomb two of Iran's top nuclear scientists, killing one and prompting accusations that the United States and Israel are again trying to disrupt Iran's nuclear program.

The scientist who was killed, Majid Shahriari, reportedly managed a ''major project'' for the country's Atomic Energy Organization. His wounded colleague, Fereydoon Abbasi, is believed to be even more important; he is on the United Nations Security Council's sanctions list for ties to the Iranian nuclear effort. West Expands Sanctions, and U.N. Offers Evidence on Nuclear Work

Major Western powers take significant steps to cut Iran off from the international financial system, announcing coordinated sanctions aimed at its central bank and commercial banks. The United States also imposes sanctions on companies involved in Iran’s nuclear industry, as well as on its petrochemical and oil industries.

The United Nations atomic agency releases evidence that it says make a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device” at its Parchin military base and that the project may still be under way.

Natanz Plant Recovers

After a dip in enriched uranium production in 2010 because of the cyberattacks, Iranian production recovers. While the United States and Israel never acknowledged responsibility for the cyberprogram, Olympic Games, some experts argue that it set the Iranians back a year or two. Others say that estimate overstates the effect.

With the program still running, intelligence agencies in the United States and Israel seek out new targets that could further slow Iran’s progress.

A Blow to U.S., as Drone Crashes

A stealth C.I.A. drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, crashes near the Iranian town of Kashmar, 140 miles from the Afghan border. It is part of a stepped-up surveillance program that has frequently sent the United States’ most hard-to-detect drone into Iran to map suspected nuclear sites.

Iran asserts that its military downed the aircraft, but American officials say the drone was lost because of a malfunction.

Bomb Kills Nuclear Scientist A bomber on a motorcycle kills Mostafa Ahmadi Rosha, a scientist from the Natanz site, and his bodyguard. Iran blames Israel and the United States. The Americans deny the accusation, but Israel is more circumspect. New Centrifuges at Natanz

Iran says it is building about 3,000 advanced uranium-enrichment centrifuges at the Natanz plant.

Meanwhile, I.A.E.A. inspectors are still trying to gain access to the Parchin site, 20 miles south of Tehran, to ascertain whether tests have been carried out there on nuclear bomb triggers.

But satellites images show that the site has been extensively cleaned by the Iranians.

Talks With West Falter After a brief spurt of optimism, talks between Iran and six world powers on its disputed nuclear program fail to produce a breakthrough in Baghdad. The United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany wanted a freeze on Iranian production of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity, which is considered a short step from bomb grade. The Iranians wanted an easing of the onerous economic sanctions imposed by the West and a recognition of what they call their right to enrich. The countries agree to meet again in June, but talks were further slowed after a new regimen of harsh economic sanctions and a statement from the International Atomic Energy Agency that said Iran had made ''no progress'' toward providing access to restricted sites it suspects of being used to test potential triggers for nuclear warheads. Embargo on Iranian Oil

A European Union embargo on Iranian oil takes effect, playing a large role in severely restricting Iran's ability to sell its most important export.

In retaliation, Iran announces legislation intended to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Persian Gulf shipping lane, and tests missiles in a desert drill clearly intended as a warning to Israel and the United States.

In January 2013, Iran’s oil minister, Rostam Qasemi, acknowledged for the first time that petroleum exports and sales had fallen by at least 40 percent in the previous year, costing the country $4 billion to $8 billion each month.

New Work at Nuclear Site

The United Nations atomic agency reports that Iran has installed three-quarters of the nuclear centrifuges needed to complete a deep-underground site under a mountain near Qum for the production of nuclear fuel.

The I.A.E.A. also says that Iran may have sought to cleanse another site where the agency has said it suspects that the country has conducted explosive experiments that could be relevant to the production of a nuclear weapon.

Meanwhile, the United States imposes more punishing sanctions against Iran, aimed at its oil and petrochemical sectors, as well as its shipping trade, intensifying existing sanctions intended to choke off the revenue that Iran reaps from its two largest export industries.

Israel's 'Red Line' Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel tells the United Nations that Iran’s capability to enrich uranium must be stopped before the spring or early summer, arguing that by that time Iran will be in a position to make a short, perhaps undetectable, sprint to manufacture its first nuclear weapon. Iran's Currency Tumbles

After months of harsh, American-led sanctions, Iran's currency, the rial, plunges 40 percent. The currency lost about half its value in 2012.

Most of that decline comes in a frenzy of speculative selling by Iranians worried that rapid inflation could render their money worthless. The government responds with a crackdown in which some money traders are arrested.

The depressed value of the rial forces Iranians to carry ever-fatter wads of bank notes to buy everyday items. But the sanctions also present a new complication to Iran's banking authorities: they may not be able to print enough money.

Meanwhile, the European Union toughens sanctions against Iran, banning trade in industries like finance, metals and natural gas, and making other business transactions far more cumbersome.

U.S. Bolsters Sanctions

A new round of American sanctions take effect which state that any country that buys Iranian oil must put the purchase money into a local bank account. Iran cannot repatriate the money and can use it only to buy goods within that country. Violators risk severe penalties in doing business with the United States. Oil exports from Iran have already dropped by a million barrels a day.

A week earlier, Iran announces that it would deploy a new generation of centrifuges, four to six times as powerful as the current generation.

New Deposits of Uranium

The state news agency IRNA quotes a report by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, saying that it had found significant new deposits of raw uranium and identified sites for 16 more nuclear power stations.

Iran’s raw uranium reserves now total around 4,400 tons, including discoveries over the past 18 months, IRNA quoted the report as saying.

A few weeks earlier, Ayatollah Khamenei said that his country was not seeking nuclear weapons but added that if Iran ever decided to build them, no “global power” could stop it.

Defiant Mood at Talks

Iran meets with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany in Kazakhstan, but talks end with no specific agreement over a proposal that would sharply constrain Iran’s stockpile of the most dangerous enriched uranium, in return for a modest lifting of some sanctions.

The six powers also agreed that Iran could keep a small amount of 20 percent enriched uranium — which can be converted to bomb grade with modest additional processing — for use in a reactor to produce medical isotopes.

Iranian oil sales have been reduced by half as a result of the international pressure on the country, and restrictions on financial transactions and transportation have created many difficulties for its leaders.

Iran Nuclear Weapon to Take Year or More, Obama Says

President Obama tells an Israeli television station that his administration believes it would take Iran “over a year or so” to develop a nuclear weapon.

Mr. Obama’s estimated timeline contrasts with Mr. Netanyahu’s stated belief that Israel and its Western allies are likely to have to intervene by the spring or summer, when, he says, Iran’s scientists will have enriched enough uranium to become a nuclear threat.

Navy Deploying Laser Weapon Prototype Near Iran

The U.S. announces that the Navy will deploy a laser weapon prototype in the Persian Gulf, where Iranian fast-attack boats have harassed American warships and where the government in Tehran is building remotely piloted aircraft carrying surveillance pods and, someday potentially, rockets.

The laser will not be operational until next year. It has been shown in tests to disable patrol boats and blind or destroy surveillance drones.

After Talks End, Iran Announces an Expansion of Nuclear Fuel Production

Iran’s president announces an expansion of the country’s uranium production and claims other atomic energy advances, striking a pugnacious tone in the aftermath of diplomatic talks that ended in an impasse with the big powers on April 6 in Kazakhstan.

US Blacklists an Iranian and Businesses Over Violation of Sanctions

The United States blacklists an affluent Iranian business executive, Babak Morteza Zanjani, and what it describes as his multibillion-dollar money laundering network, accusing them of selling oil for Iran in violation of the Western economic sanctions imposed over Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

On March 14, The Treasury Department, which administers the government’s Iran sanctions, blacklisted a Greek shipping tycoon, Dimitris Cambis, over what it called his scheme to acquire a fleet of oil tankers on Iran’s behalf and disguise their ownership to ship Iranian oil.

Israeli Officials Stress Readiness for Lone Strike on Iran

In an interview with the BBC, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat, saying Israel has “different vulnerabilities and different capabilities” than the United States. “We have to make our own calculations, when we lose the capacity to defend ourselves by ourselves.”

Israeli defense and military officials have been issuing explicit warnings this week that Israel was prepared and had the capability to carry out a lone military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

U.S. Arms Deal With Israel and 2 Arab Nations Is Near The Defense Department is expecting to finalize a $10 billion arms deal with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates next week that will provide missiles, warplanes and troop transports to help them counter any future threat from Iran. Fearing Price Increases, Iranians Hoard Goods

Iranians rush to supermarkets to buy cooking oil, red meat and other staples, stockpiling the goods over new fears of price spikes from a change in the official exchange rate that could severely reduce the already weakened purchasing power of the rial, the national currency.

Prices of staples are set to increase by as much as 60 percent because of the currency change.

Economists say the result is from a combination of severe Western sanctions and what many call the government’s economic mismanagement.

U.S. Imposes Sanctions on Those Aiding Iran

The United States expands its roster of those violating Iran sanctions, blacklisting four Iranian companies and one individual suspected of helping the country enrich nuclear fuel. It also singles out two other companies, including a Venezuelan-Iranian bank, accused of helping Iran evade other Western-imposed prohibitions on oil sales and financial dealings.

The penalties came a day after the Senate introduced legislation that could effectively deny the Iran government access to an estimated $100 billion worth of its own money parked in overseas banks, a step that proponents said could significantly damage Iran’s financial stability.

Iran Is Seen Advancing Nuclear Bid

The I.A.E.A. says Iran has made significant progress across the board in its nuclear program, while negotiations with the West dragged on this spring. But it said that it has not gone past the "red line" that Israel’s leaders have declared could trigger military action.

In its last report before the Iranian elections next month, the agency also gives details that point to an emerging production strategy by the Iranians. One strategy involves speeding ahead with another potential route to a bomb: producing plutonium. The report indicates that Iran is making significant progress at its Arak complex, where it has built a heavy-water facility and is expected to have a reactor running by the end of next year.

U.S. Adds to Its List of Sanctions Against Iran

The Obama administration escalates sanctions against Iran for the fourth time in a week, blacklisting what it describes as a global network of front companies controlled by Iran’s top leaders, accusing them of hiding assets and generating billions of dollars worth of revenue to help Tehran evade sanctions.

The White House also accuses Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of personally directing an effort to bypass them.

The United States also blacklists Iranian petrochemical companies, its automotive industry and more than 50 Iranian officials, and threatens to sanction foreign banks that trade or hold Iran’s national currency, the rial.

Iran Elects New President

Voters overwhelmingly elect Hassan Rouhani, 64, a mild-mannered cleric who advocates greater personal freedoms and a more conciliatory approach to the world.

The diplomat sheik played a key role in Iran’s voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment in 2004, which Western powers responded to by asking for more concessions from Iran.

Mr. Rouhani replaces his predecessors' foreign minister with Mohammad Javad Zarif, an American-educated diplomat known for his understanding of the West, and makes him responsible for negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. Mr. Rouhani also removes a hard-line nuclear scientists as head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, and replaces him with the former foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi. In September, Iran’s longtime ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency will be replaced as well.

Iran Slows Its Gathering of Enriched Uranium, Report Says

I.A.E.A. inspectors say that Iran is slowing its accumulation of enriched uranium that can be quickly turned into fuel for an atomic bomb. The report's disclosure is significant politically because it delays the day when Iran could breach what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel last fall called a “red line” beyond which Iran would not be allowed to pass — the point at which it has enough purified uranium to quickly make a single nuclear weapon. Iran Said to Seek a Nuclear Accord to End Sanctions

Seizing on a perceived flexibility in a letter from President Obama to President Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s leaders are focused on getting quick relief from crippling sanctions, a top adviser to the Iranian leadership says.

The adviser says that Mr. Obama’s letter, delivered about three weeks ago, promised relief from sanctions if Tehran demonstrated a willingness to “cooperate with the international community, keep your commitments and remove ambiguities.”

Rouhani, Blunt and Charming, Pitches a Moderate Iran in First U.N. Appearance

Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, turns himself into a high-speed salesman offering a flurry of speeches, tweets, televised interviews and carefully curated private meetings, intended to end Iran's economic isolation.

At the United Nations General Assembly, he preaches tolerance and understanding, decries as a form of violence the Western sanctions imposed on his country and says nuclear weapons have no place in its future. He takes aim at Israel's nuclear arsenal in a public - while the country's leaders caution over what they deem as an empty charm offensive.

First Direct US-Iran Talk Since 1979

President Obama says he has spoken by phone with President Hassan Rouhani, the first direct contact between the leaders of Iran and the United States since 1979. Mr. Obama, speaking in the White House briefing room, said the two leaders discussed Iran’s nuclear program and said he was persuaded there was a basis for an agreement.

Moments before Mr. Obama's announcement, Mr. Rouhani's Twitter account posted this now-deleted message: "In a phone conversation b/w #Iranian & #US Presidents just now: @HassanRouhani: "Have a Nice Day!" @BarackObama: "Thank you. Khodahafez." Iran Talks Called Substantive

Iran and a group of six world powers say that they have engaged in “substantive” and “forward-looking” discussions on the disputed Iranian nuclear program and that they will reconvene on November 7.

The account of the two days of talks in Geneva came in a rare joint statement from Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and Catherine Ashton, the foreign policy chief for the European Union, who is the lead negotiator with Iran.

Iran Says It Agrees to ‘Road Map’ With U.N. on Nuclear Inspections

The I.A.E.A. says that Iran has agreed to resolve all outstanding issues with the agency, and will permit “managed access” by international inspectors to two key nuclear facilities. But the promise does not extend to the Parchin military site, which inspectors have been trying to see for months.

Marathon talks between major powers and Iran fail to ease sanctions on the country and produce a deal to freeze its nuclear program.

Obama Calls for Patience in Iran Talks

I.A.E.A. inspectors release a report stating that for the first time in years, they saw evidence that the Iranians have put the brakes on their nuclear expansion.

President Obama makes an appeal to Congress to give breathing space to his efforts to forge a nuclear deal with Iran.

Deal With Iran Halts Nuclear Program

The United States and five other world powers announce a landmark accord that would temporarily freeze Iran’s nuclear program and lay the foundation for a more sweeping agreement.

The aim of the accord, which is to last six months, is to give international negotiators time to pursue a more comprehensive accord that would ratchet back much of Iran’s nuclear program and ensure that it could only be used for peaceful purposes.

Negotiators Put Final Touches on Iran Accord

Iran and a group of six world powers complete a deal that will temporarily freeze much of Tehran’s nuclear program starting Jan. 20, in exchange for limited relief from Western economic sanctions.

The agreement faced opposition from Iranian hard-liners and Israeli leaders, as well as heavy criticism from some American lawmakers, who have threatened to approve further sanctions despite President Obama’s promise of a veto.

SHREEYA SINHA and SUSAN C. BEACHY

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Iran, the United States and a Political Seesaw

Far from a monolithic relationship, Iran and the United States have spent as many decades as friends as they have as enemies.

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Europe |NYT Now

New Leader Likens Poland to ‘Reasonable Polish Woman’

By RICK LYMANSEPT. 19, 2014

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Ewa Kopacz will be sworn in as prime minister on Thursday.

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WARSAW — Poland’s incoming prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, said Friday that she intends to take a somewhat different, more feminine approach to the job.

At a news conference to introduce her new cabinet she was asked whether Poland should be sending weapons to aid the Ukrainian government — as the country’s leading opposition party has advocated. Ms. Kopacz (pronounced co-POTCH) replied that Poland should act only in concert with other European Union nations, not unilaterally.

“Poland,” she said, “should act like a reasonable Polish woman.”

She explained that this meant putting the safety of the home and children first.

“You know, I’m a woman,” she said. “I can imagine what I would do if I saw a person waving a sharp tool or holding a gun. My first thought would be: Right behind me, there is my house and my children. So I’d rush back and protect my children.”

A man, she said, would react differently.

“He would think: I don’t have a decent stick at hand, but so what? Am I not going to stand up and beat them up just because they dared to come here and threaten my family?” she said.

To some, the language had echoes of the way Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, compared her government’s approach to economic policy to that of a thrifty housewife. To others, it seemed a discordant note to sound at the arrival of a country’s second female leader.

“I am happy to have a female prime minister,” said Barbara Nowacka, head of the Plan Change research arm of the liberal party Your Movement. “But I was very surprised to hear her say today that she is more like a mother, not like a politician, which is again putting women into a certain stereotype.”

Others said that Ms. Kopacz’s language indicated that her government intended to take a calmer, less blustery approach to potentially volatile issues like the Ukraine conflict. She made it clear that if the European Union decided to take action regarding Ukraine — even if that meant sending weapons — Poland would be a part of the effort, said Marcin Zaborowski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

Ms. Kopacz and her cabinet will be sworn in on Thursday and then face an Oct. 1 confidence vote in Parliament. She is replacing Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who was elected president of the European Council.

“I don’t think her comments indicate any change in policy,” Mr. Zaborowski said. “Perhaps a shift in tone.” When Ms. Kopacz referred to the nation as a Polish woman, she did not mean it should be weak and passive, he said, but that it would take a more deliberate approach in protecting hearth and home.

Not everyone heard it that way, though.

“A country is not a home,” Ms. Nowacka said. “It is our country.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: New Leader Likens Country to ‘Reasonable Polish Woman’. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe | News Analysis

East Meets West to Fill European Post, and It’s Harder to Tell Them Apart

By RICK LYMANAUG. 31, 2014

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WARSAW — The election of Donald Tusk, the veteran Polish prime minister with deft political skills, a shaky command of the English language and no French, as president of the European Council is both an acknowledgment of Poland’s rising profile and yet another sign that the old distinctions between Eastern and Western Europe are rapidly crumbling.

“Poland has arrived in the West, you might say,” Janusz Reiter, a former ambassador and the founder of the Center for International Relations, a research group in Warsaw, said Sunday. “His election in Brussels shows that we must redefine what we mean by the West to include the experiences of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.”

The former Eastern bloc nations, which shared a common drive to escape Soviet shackles a quarter-century ago, speak with less unanimity these days. Even on an issue as crucial as the conflict in Ukraine, the hard-line position of Poland and the Baltic States is not shared by other nations in the region like Slovakia and Hungary.

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Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, a rising nation, will lead the European Council.

And the notion of a prosperous West and a poor, struggling East has been largely erased in recent years, with countries like Spain and Italy struggling while Poland is the only European nation to experience economic growth in every quarter since the recession hit in 2008.

“The economic crisis has shaken the traditional ranking list in Europe,” Mr. Reiter said. “This image of Central Europe and Poland being poor cousins is badly out of date.”

At the university in his hometown, Gdansk, Mr. Tusk, 57, was active in organizing support of Solidarity, the trade-union movement that led the fight to topple Communism in the 1980s.

He was elected to Parliament in 1991, representing a party that he co-founded, and served in that body for most of the next two decades. In 2001, he was one of the founders of the Civic Platform party and ran unsuccessfully for president in 2005, pushing a program of free-market capitalism and a larger international role for Poland.

Two years later, Civic Platform won parliamentary elections, and Mr. Tusk has been prime minister ever since, forging a particularly strong relationship with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. Although Mr. Tusk’s relations with France have not always been so close, he has built a bond with President François Hollande, who did not move to block his election on Saturday.

Aleksander Smolar, who divides his time between Warsaw and Paris as president of the Batory Foundation, which promotes democracy and civic issues, said he had seen a palpable shift in the last half-dozen years in the way Western European leaders thought about Poland.

“Not so long ago, when European politics was discussed in Paris and Brussels, none of the countries of the so-called New Europe were even mentioned,” Mr. Smolar said. “It was always about Old Europe, about Germany, France, Britain, Italy.

“Now, it is quite different,” he added. “The Polish position on many issues, especially regarding Russia and the East, is always mentioned and taken seriously.”

Mr. Tusk has ascended to the top of the European Council — from which he will direct the agendas for the regular gatherings of European leaders and act as a kind of spokesman for the Continent internationally — after years of lobbying by Poland to include the former Soviet bloc nations in the leadership.

“Once that argument was accepted, it seemed rather logical that one of the most important posts should go to the biggest and most influential country in the region,” said Marcin Zaborowski, the director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs. “Also, everywhere throughout Europe, sentiment toward a stronger European Union has been slowly declining. Only in Poland has it been on the rise.”

As a politician, Mr. Tusk has a reputation for compromise and shrewd parliamentary maneuvering. The latter skill was on display this year when he managed to preserve his government after a scandal in which top officials were caught on wiretaps making unsavory comments, including calling for a parliamentary vote of confidence before the opposition expected one.

But it is his skills as a compromiser that are expected to come into play in Brussels. Even on the issue of the Ukraine crisis, about which Polish passions run high, Mr. Tusk was much less vocal about calling for harsh sanctions against Russia than some neighboring countries, or even the United States.

“In Brussels, he will be the man who will find the compromise,” said Marek Wasinski, a Polish analyst of European affairs.

The problem, Mr. Wasinski said, is that one of Mr. Tusk’s other skills is eliminating potential opponents to his leadership, and as a result there is no strong candidate to replace him as prime minister, with elections approaching next year.

While it will be good for Poland to have Mr. Tusk at the head of the council, Mr. Wasinski said, the actual Polish representative on it — the next prime minister — is likely to have less clout.

Linguistically, Mr. Tusk’s election can also be seen as an indicator of changing attitudes in Western European capitals toward Poland and the East. Though his second language is German, his skills in English are modest (he conducted his opening news conference in Brussels in Polish), and he speaks no French, a language once seen as a prerequisite for such a high position.

“I hope and think that Tusk will not pretend to be one of the Western European boys, that he will not just join their club,” said Mr. Reiter, the former diplomat. “Poland is never going to be another Belgium or France. But it, too, is a part of Europe, and now its experiences are getting equal weight, not worse or better than the German or Italian experience.”

Correction: August 31, 2014

An earlier version of this article gave an outdated association for Marek Wasinski. He is an independent analyst, and no longer  affiliated with the journal Polityka Insight.

A version of this news analysis appears in print on September 1, 2014, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: East Meets West to Fill European Post, and It’s Harder to Tell Them Apart. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe

Peace Negotiators Agree on a Buffer Zone in Eastern Ukraine

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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MINSK, Belarus — Negotiators in Ukrainian peace talks agreed early Saturday to create a buffer zone to separate government troops and pro-Russian militants and withdraw heavy weapons and foreign fighters in order to ensure a stable truce in eastern Ukraine.

The deal reached by representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the Moscow-backed rebels and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe marks an effort to add substance to a cease-fire agreement that was signed Sept. 5 but has been frequently broken by clashes.

The memorandum, signed after hours of talks that dragged late into the night, says that the fighters on both sides should stay where they were on Friday and make no attempts to advance.

Leonid Kuchma, a former president of Ukraine who represented the Kiev government in the talks, said the memorandum would be put into effect within a day.

Under the terms of the accord, reached here in the Belarussian capital, each party must pull its artillery at least nine miles back, setting up a buffer zone that would be 19 miles wide. The longer-range artillery systems are to be pulled even farther back to make sure the parties cannot reach each other.

The deal also specifically bans combat aircraft over the area of conflict and the laying of new minefields.

“It should offer the population a chance to feel secure,” said Igor Plotnitsky, the leader of rebels in the Luhansk region. The memorandum also envisages the withdrawal of “all foreign armed units and weapons, as well as militants and mercenaries” — a diplomatic reference to Russians fighting alongside the rebels.

Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of fueling the insurgency in eastern Ukraine with weapons and soldiers. Russia has denied that, saying that Russians who joined did so as private citizens.

Pressed to comment about the agreement on the withdrawal of foreign fighters, the Russian ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, who represented Moscow in the talks, said that “those whom we call mercenaries are present on both sides.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: Peace Negotiators Agree on a Buffer Zone in Eastern Ukraine. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Middle East

Iraqi Cleric’s Speech Strikes a Balance

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and DAN BILEFSKYSEPT. 19, 2014

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Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is influential among Shiites.

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BAGHDAD — Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the influential Shiite cleric, on Friday urged vigilance against Western political interference in Iraqi affairs but stopped short of opposing the American-led military campaign against the extremists of the Islamic State.

“All political leaders of the country must be aware and awake to prevent the external assistance against the Islamic State from becoming an entrance to breach Iraq’s independence,” Ayatollah Sistani said. “Cooperation with the international effort shall not be taken as a pretext to impose foreign decisions on events in Iraq, especially military events.”

His carefully balanced comments, in a statement read by his spokesman at Friday Prayer in the Iraqi city of Karbala, underscored the challenge facing the United States and its allies in their efforts to push back the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, without bolstering or antagonizing rival Shiite factions.

The ayatollah’s comments came shortly after the office of President François Hollande of France announced that French fighter jets had carried out their first attacks on Islamic State targets in Iraq, fulfilling his pledge a day earlier to join the international military campaign against the group.

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A Rafale fighter at France's Al Dhafra airbase in Abu Dhabi this week.

In recent days, a handful of other Iraqi Shiite leaders or militias with closer ties to Iran have made statements expressing more wariness or opposition to the American-led military efforts, and American officials have said the Iranian proxies may be seeking to remind the Western states that Tehran, too, should be taken into account. On Friday, the Iraqi cleric Moktada al-Sadr, another influential voice with ties to Iran, called for a demonstration in Baghdad on Saturday to protest a potential incursion by American ground forces.

But Ayatollah Sistani, considered both independent and uniquely popular here, was more judicious. While he warned Iraqis to guard against foreign interference, he also appeared to endorse the idea that foreign help may be required to successfully engage the Sunni extremists.

“Iraq may be in need of assistance from its friends and brothers to combat black terrorism,” Ayatollah Sistani said. But he insisted that for Iraq, “preserving its sovereignty and independence must be the most important thing and must be taken into consideration.”

He also appealed for intersectarian solidarity in the fight against the extremists by specifically urging support for Dhuluiya, a Sunni town that has held out for months against a siege by the Sunni extremists. “Our brave Iraqi forces should help and defend Dhuluiya,” he said, “because its people are our brothers and they are the sons of our country.”

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How ISIS Works

With oil revenues, arms and organization, the jihadist group controls vast stretches of Syria and Iraq and aspires to statehood.

OPEN Graphic

Elsewhere, French Rafale warplanes struck a logistics depot belonging to the Islamic State in northeastern Iraq on Friday. Mr. Hollande said in a statement, “The objective was hit and entirely destroyed.”

Mr. Hollande said other operations would take place in the coming days.

Remarking on the violent tactics employed by the Sunni militants, who have conquered wide areas of Iraq and Syria, Mr. Hollande said Thursday at a news conference in Paris that the group had been able to grow partly because the international community had failed to intervene. But he emphasized that France’s role would be limited to providing air support, including strikes, in Iraq.

He indicated that France would not expand its mission into Syria, and French officials have made it clear that the government does not want to give the impression that it supports the Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad.

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The Iraq-ISIS Conflict in Maps, Photos and Video

A visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria.

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France was a vociferous opponent of the American-led effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003, and analysts say the French public remains wary of sustained Western intervention in the region. Mr. Hollande, whose domestic political approval rating has hit a low of 13 percent amid persistent economic troubles, has framed the fight against Islamic State as important for French national security.

In Washington, Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said American troop levels in Iraq could increase as Iraqi security forces and Kurdish pesh merga fighters press their fight to retake territory seized by the Islamic State.

General Odierno, who served as the top American military commander in Iraq, said the 1,600 American troops who are currently on the ground in Iraq was “a good start.” He added, “I don’t think there’s a rush — a rush to have lots of people in there now.” But during a breakfast meeting with reporters, he did not rule out the possibility of sending more American military advisers to Iraq.

President Obama has repeatedly said that he will not send American ground combat troops to Iraq.

In northern Syria, an Islamic State offensive has driven thousands of Syrian Kurds from their homes, with many fleeing across the border into Turkey on Friday, prompting a call by an Iraqi Kurdish leader for international intervention.

In recent days, extremist fighters seized villages in northern Syria, officials said, and on Friday were attacking the mainly Kurdish town of Ayn al-Arab, known as Kobani in Kurdish, on the Turkish border, news services reported.

“I’d like to ask the international community to take every measure as soon as possible to save Kobani,” Massoud Barzani, president of the largely autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, said in a statement. The militants, he said, “have to be hit and defeated wherever they are.”

David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Baghdad, and Dan Bilefsky from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Kirk Semple from Erbil, Iraq; Omar Al-Jawoshy from Baghdad; Maïa de la Baume from Paris; and Helene Cooper from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Iraqi Cleric’s Speech Strikes a Balance. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Middle East |NYT Now

U.S. Faces Tough Struggle on Ground to Oust ISIS

By MICHAEL R. GORDON, ERIC SCHMITT and HELENE COOPERSEPT. 18, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

WASHINGTON — The American air campaign to thwart the advance of fighters from the Islamic State has been the easy part of President Obama’s strategy in Iraq and Syria. Soon begins the next and much harder phase: rolling back their gains in Mosul, Falluja and other populated areas, which will require American advisers to train and coordinate airstrikes with Iraqi forces.

Pentagon officials are more willing than their counterparts at the White House to acknowledge that this will almost certainly require American Special Operations forces on the ground to call in airstrikes and provide tactical advice to Iraqi troops. “There is no one in this building who does not know that clearing out the cities will be much harder,” a senior Defense Department official said in an interview. “That’s when the rubber is going to meet the road.”

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this week described this phase as “extraordinarily complex.”

Urban warfare in Iraq has been challenging for the United States, which had 70 troops killed in the second battle of Falluja in 2004 and fought hard to regain control of cities like Mosul, Baquba and Baghdad. So it will be even harder for the Iraqis, who have so far proved ineffective in combating the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Continue reading the main story

Graphic

How ISIS Works

With oil revenues, arms and organization, the jihadist group controls vast stretches of Syria and Iraq and aspires to statehood.

OPEN Graphic

Military officials say they plan to use Iraqi security forces, Kurdish fighters and local Sunnis — whom they hope to turn against the militants — to roll back the Islamic State’s gains. They see the Sunnis as playing a similar role to what played out in the Sunni awakening during the surge in Iraq.

Assembling those ground forces, however, will take time. General Dempsey said that of the 50 Iraqi brigades whose readiness the United States had closely examined, 26 “were assessed to be reputable partners,” with adequate equipment and leadership, to be loyal to the government and not overly sectarian.

But many of the Iraqi units will require training and re-equipping before they are ready to begin a major counteroffensive.

The United States is trying to institutionalize the Sunni tribal awakening by establishing new national guard units that it would have a crucial role in training and equipping. The idea is to avoid the need to send a largely Shiite army to Sunni areas and to win the allegiance of local Sunnis. In their attempt to seize urban areas from the Islamic State, the Iraqis’ firepower will be limited. On Saturday, Iraq’s new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, said that the Iraqi military would not use artillery or carry out airstrikes in populated areas — an effort to reduce the risk of civilian casualties and avoid alienating the Sunni population.

A senior State Department official said Sunday that the Iraqi air force’s “targeting is not nearly as precise as ours, and they’ve made some real mistakes.”

“So that’s why Prime Minister Abadi yesterday announced that even in populated areas in which ISIL has control, we are not going to do airstrikes or artillery-type stuff because it could harm the civilians,” the official said.

It falls, then, to the United States and other allied nations to conduct the airstrikes, which will need to be carefully coordinated.

In the past week, the offensive strikes that Mr. Obama promised have started slowly, targeting a few scattered Sunni militant positions — a truck here, a small boat on the Euphrates there, an artillery position somewhere else — in what is known in the military as “plinking.”

American military advisers are already working closely with Iraqi battalions in the field and have not limited themselves to staying in Iraqi brigade headquarters, American officials said. But so far none have been used to call in airstrikes.

The operation to take back the Mosul Dam, in which fewer than 200 Iraqi Counterterrorism Service commandos played the critical role, along with Kurdish fighters, posed a particular challenge.

Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the Central Command, had recommended deploying American military advisers to coordinate airstrikes in support of Iraqi and Kurdish forces who had never worked together before and indeed spoke different languages.

Given Mr. Obama’s reluctance to put American advisers alongside Iraqi combat troops, a workaround was arranged, General Dempsey noted Tuesday in testimony at a Senate hearing. He said that the Kurds would pass targeting information on Islamic State positions to an operations center in Erbil manned by Iraqi and American troops, and they, in turn, would pass the information on to American aircraft. It was a bit of a Rube Goldberg command structure, but it worked.

But this arrangement, as General Dempsey signaled, is unlikely to be sufficient for the next, more challenging phase of rolling back the Islamic State’s gains in Iraqi cities.

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Graphic

The Iraq-ISIS Conflict in Maps, Photos and Video

A visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria.

OPEN Graphic

In fact, General Austin said that air controllers would be needed. “He shares my view that there will be circumstances when we think that’ll be necessary, but we haven’t encountered one yet,” General Dempsey said of General Austin.

But the White House made clear on Wednesday that requests to use the advisers to call in airstrikes to provide tactical advice on the battlefield to Iraqi units would need to be approved by the president on a case-by-case basis.

In weighing such requests, the White House may have to choose between the increased risk to American personnel and the danger that without the use of advisers on the battlefield, the counteroffensive may stall.

The Iraq war provided a telling example of what can happen when the Iraqis operate largely on their own. In March 2008, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki decided to mount an operation to retake Basra called “Charge of the Knights.”

The Iraqi military and the Shiite militias fought to a bloody stalemate until the United States dispatched FA-18 jets, AC-130 gunships and Predator drones.

To help the Iraqis’ Basra campaign, American commanders also arranged for three rifle platoons from the 82nd Airborne to team with Iraqi battalions so they could call in airstrikes and back up the Iraqis. An Iraqi battalion sent from Anbar Province in the West deployed with its Marine advisers and also had success.

But even with American help, the counteroffensive against the Islamic State may confront an enemy that is rapidly adapting to the American airstrikes by hiding equipment and troops under trees and tarps, and eschewing many electronic communications that American intelligence services can intercept.

“They’re beginning to adapt now,” General Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

And this is just the Iraqi part of the campaign. Attacking forces of the Islamic State in Syria will come later, but first the United States will have to train the Syrian rebels who will fight the militants on the ground.

General Dempsey said this week that Pentagon planners estimated that it would take eight to 12 months to train the first 5,400 soldiers; the goal is to train about 5,000 a year, Pentagon officials said.

But those numbers would be only the beginning of the forces the Pentagon believes will be necessary. General Dempsey said that American planners estimated that 12,000 personnel would be needed to control liberated areas in Syria and restore the border with Iraq.

The Central Intelligence Agency recently estimated that the Islamic State had 20,000 to 31,500 fighters, two-thirds of them based in Syria. The advance of the militants through Iraq led to the larger estimate.

David R. Shedd, acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said at a conference in Washington on Thursday that it was “very difficult to measure the size and capability of the truly committed.”

But some seasoned military officials have questioned whether the strategy that Mr. Obama and his advisers have developed will be sufficient to defeat the Islamic State.

“Unfortunately, the strategy in many ways will be made up on the fly,” said Gen. James N. Mattis, who retired from the Marine Corps and is a former head of Central Command. “It would be better if clearly defined political end states were objectively and persuasively conveyed at the outset.”

Mark Mazzetti and Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 19, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Faces Tough Struggle on Ground to Oust ISIS. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Middle East |NYT Now

How ISIS Works

The jihadist group has oil revenues, arms and organization, controls vast stretches of Syria and Iraq and aspires to statehood. UPDATED September 16, 2014

Organization

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has a detailed structure that encompasses many functions and jurisdictions, according to ISIS documents seized by Iraqi forces and seen by American officials and Hashim Alhashimi, an Iraqi researcher. Many of its leaders are former officers from Saddam Hussein’s long-disbanded army who augmented their military training with terrorist techniques during years of fighting American troops.  Related article »

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of ISIS, has two deputies. One is responsible for Syria and the other for Iraq.

Leadership council

Mr. Baghdadi relies on a number of advisers with direct access to him. Members of this council help handle religious differences, order executions and ensure that policies conform to ISIS doctrine.

Cabinet

Managers oversee departments like finance, security, media, prisoners and recruitment.

Local leaders

At least a dozen deputies across Iraq and Syria report to the deputy of each country. Many of these officials were military officers during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of ISIS, has two deputies. One is responsible for Syria and the other for Iraq.

Leadership council

Mr. Baghdadi relies on a number of advisers with direct access to him. Members of this council help handle religious differences, order executions and ensure that policies conform to ISIS doctrine.

Cabinet

Managers oversee departments like finance, security, media, prisoners and recruitment.

Local leaders

At least a dozen deputies across Iraq and Syria report to the deputy of each country. Many of these officials were military officers during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of ISIS, has two deputies. One is responsible for Syria and the other for Iraq.

Leadership council

Mr. Baghdadi relies on a number of advisers with direct access to him. Members of this council help handle religious differences, order executions and ensure that policies conform to ISIS doctrine.

Cabinet

Managers oversee departments like finance, security, media, prisoners and recruitment.

Local leaders

At least a dozen deputies across Iraq and Syria report to the deputy of each country. Many of these officials were military officers during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Sources: Jasmine Opperman, Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium; Hisham Alhashimi. Photograph by The Associated Press.

Territory

ISIS has rapidly expanded its control over Iraq and Syria by seizing towns and cities near major supply routes, critical infrastructure and border crossings.

ISIS-controlled

places

Areas under

full control

Areas of

recurring attacks

Sparsely populated

areas

ISIS-controlled places

Areas under full control

Areas of recurring attacks

Sparsely populated areas

Sources: Caerus Associates; IHS Jane’s; Institute for the Study of War; Soufan Group; (control areas as of Sept. 9)

Over the summer, the group pressed deeper into Syria, regaining some territory it had lost to other rebel groups and capturing several government military bases. It is still trying to consolidate its control along the border between Iraq and Syria.

ISIS fighters experienced some setbacks in Iraq, where American airstrikes helped Iraqi and Kurdish forces reclaim the Mosul Dam and the Turkmen city of Amerli.

Financing

Millions of dollars in oil revenue have made ISIS one of the wealthiest terror groups in history. Experts estimate the value of the output from the dozen or so oil fields and refineries under its control in Iraq and Syria at $1 million to $2 million a day.  Related article »

Oil fields Oil fields controlled by ISIS

100 Miles

TURKEY

IRAQI

KURDISTAN

IRAN

Mosul

Raqqa

Erbil

Aleppo

Iraq-Turkey

pipeline

Kirkuk

Omar

oil field

Baniyas

Tartus

Baiji oil

refinery

Euphrates

Homs

Tigris

SYRIA

LEBANON

IRAQ

Damascus

Baghdad

Falluja

Rutba

ISRAEL

JORDAN

TURKEY

100 miles

IRAQI

KURDISTAN

IRAN

Mosul

Erbil

Raqqa

Aleppo

Iraq-Turkey

pipeline

Omar

oil field

Kirkuk

IRAQ

Baniyas

Tartus

Baiji oil

refinery

Euphrates

Homs

Tigris

SYRIA

LEBANON

Damascus

Baghdad

Falluja

Rutba

TURKEY

IRAN

100 miles

IRAQI

KURDISTAN

Aleppo

IRAQ

Homs

Tigris

SYRIA

Tigris

Euphrates

Baghdad

Damascus

Sources: Brookings Doha Center; Caerus Associates; Energy Information Administration; International Energy Agency; Iraq Oil Report; Platts

The group controls many of Syria’s eastern oil fields. In July, ISIS fighters took control of the country's largest oil field, Omar, which was producing about 30,000 barrels a day when it was fully functioning. Recently it was producing about a third of that or less.

ISIS expanded its attacks into Iraq’s oil-producing areas in June, and an August sweep into the Kurdish region gave it access to more of the country’s oil assets. Experts estimate that the Iraqi oil fields under ISIS control may produce 25,000 to 40,000 barrels of oil a day — worth a minimum of $1.2 million in the underground market.

Governing

When it seizes a city, ISIS keeps select services operating while using brute force to impose its vision of a fundamentalist Islamic state. Religious police make sure that shops close during Muslim prayers and that women cover their hair and faces in public. Public spaces are walled off with heavy metal fences topped with the black flags of ISIS. People accused of disobeying the law are punished by public executions or amputations. At the same time, ISIS keeps markets, bakeries and gas stations functioning.

Food distribution near Aleppo.

Distribution of cooking gas in Deir al-Zour.

Destruction of an unapproved religious site.

A member of the ISIS religious police.

Food distribution near Aleppo.

Distribution of cooking gas in Deir al-Zour.

Destruction of an unapproved religious site.

A member of the ISIS religious police.

Source: ISIS videos posted online

Military

The Central Intelligence Agency believes that ISIS has between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters in Iraq and Syria and estimates that 15,000 of the jihadists are foreign recruits.  Related article »

The origins of ISIS’s foreign recruits

Sweden

Russia

Britain

Canada

Germany

Ukraine

Kazakhstan

France

United

States

Turkey

Syria

China

Afghanistan

Tunisia

Iraq

Pakistan

Libya

Morocco

Egypt

Saudi

Arabia

Sudan

Somalia

KEY

Indonesia

50

100

500

1,500 fighters

Australia

Dotted lines represent the low end of a range.

Syria

Iraq

KEY

50

100

500

1,500 fighters

Dotted lines represent the low end of a range.

Sources: C.I.A.; Peter Neumann, King's College London; the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence; Soufan Group

The largest blocs of foreign fighters come from nearby Muslim countries, like Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. Smaller contingents come from countries as far away and disparate as Belgium, China, Russia and the United States.

Weapons

ISIS has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of weapons and equipment from Iraqi and Syrian military installations. It has also intercepted supplies en route to Syrian rebel groups from foreign governments. Conflict Armament Research, a private firm that investigates arms trafficking, has tracked small arms and rockets used by ISIS that appear to have been provided to other combatants by Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Among the weapons that Conflict Armament Research examined were M16 and M4 rifles stamped “Property of U.S. Govt.” Such weapons are also in the hands of irregular Shiite forces in Iraq, where the United States provided hundreds of thousands of small arms to supportive forces during its long occupation.

Conflict Armament Research found M79 antitank rockets from the former Yugoslavia that were identical to M79 rockets provided by Saudi Arabia to rebels in Syria.

Sources: Conflict Armament Research; IHS Jane's

Related Coverage »

- The Iraq-ISIS Conflict in Maps, Photos and Video

- A Rogue State Along Two Rivers

- Ukraine Crisis in Maps

- Assessing the Damage and Destruction in Gaza

Reporting from Iraq and Jordan by TIM ARANGO, SUADAD AL-SALHY, C.J. CHIVERS, BEN HUBBARD, ROD NORDLAND and ALISSA RUBIN

By Gregor Aisch, Joe Burgess, C. J. Chivers, Alicia Parlapiano, Sergio Peçanha, Archie Tse, Derek Watkins and Karen Yourish

- © 2014 The New York Times Company

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Middle East |NYT Now

The Iraq-ISIS Conflict in Maps, Photos and Video

A visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria. UPDATED September 9, 2014

Areas Under ISIS Control

Updated September 9

Having occupied crucial sections of Syria over the past year and more recently seizing vast areas of Iraq, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria controls territory greater than many countries and now rivals Al Qaeda as the world’s most powerful jihadist group. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

ISIS-controlled

places

Areas under

full control

Areas of

recurring attacks

Sparsely populated

areas

ISIS-controlled places

Areas under full control

Areas of recurring attacks

Sparsely populated areas

Sources: Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

Strikes in Northern Iraq

Published August 19

American fighter jets and drones attacked 68 targets in northern Iraq in the first week and a half of airstrikes, according to the U.S. Central Command. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Note: Strikes were not reported comprehensively day by day, so some may be missing from daily tallies.

Strikes Reported

Each Day

Area of

detail

AugUST 8

IRAQ

Baghdad

KURDISH

AUTONOMOUS

REGION

Mosul Dam

AUGUST 18

0

15

Mosul

Mount Sinjar

Erbil

Iraq

Kirkuk

Near Mount Sinjar

At least 13 strikes

Near Mosul Dam

At least 35 Strikes

Near Erbil

At least 20 Strikes

Strikes Reported Each Day

15

0

AUG. 18

Aug. 8

Area of detail

Baghdad

KURDISH

AUTONOMOUS

REGION

Mosul Dam

Mosul

Mount Sinjar

Erbil

Iraq

Near Mount Sinjar

At least 13 strikes

Near Erbil

At least 20 Strikes

Near Mosul Dam

At least 35 Strikes

Mount Sinjar

Thousands of Yazidi refugees were trapped on the mountain after fleeing Islamist fighters. Targets included:

3 armed vehicles5 personnel carriers1 armored vehicle1 Humvee3 trucks1 mortar position4 checkpoints

Mosul Dam

American strikes allowed Kurdish fighters to regain the dam, which they lost two weeks ago. Targets included:

19 armed vehicles7 Humvees2 antiaircraft guns1 armored vehicle9 fighting positions3 checkpoints2 I.E.D.s2 personnel carriers

Erbil

Strikes in this area helped repel militants approaching the regional capital. Targets included:

7 armed vehicles1 mobile artillery7 vehicles2 mortar positions1 mine-resistant vehicle

Note: Strikes were not reported comprehensively day by day, so some may be missing from daily tallies.

A Closer Look At Mount Sinjar

Updated August 15

Tens of thousands of Yazidis, a religious minority group in Iraq, were trapped on Mount Sinjar, besieged by ISIS militants who captured their towns at the foot of the mountain range in early August. Satellite imagery taken Aug. 7 indicates that many of the displaced fled ISIS by driving vehicles up the mountain, where some encountered road blocks and abandoned their cars. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Source: Vehicle locations from satellite imagery by DigitalGlobe via Amnesty International

SYRIA

IRAQ

NORTH

Red dots are vehicles visible in satellite imagery

About 13 miles

TO BORDER

Sinuni

ROADBLOCKS

Kursi

ABOUT 70 MILES

TO MOSUL

25 miles

Bara

Sinjar

Jaddala

Sinjar Mountains

Elevation 4,449 ft.

Area

visible

Area of

assessed

satellite

imagery

Mosul

IRAQ

Baghdad

ABOUT 250 MILES TO BAGHDAD

Area of assessed

satellite imagery

SYRIA

IRAQ

Sinjar

Red indicates

vehicles on mountain

Sinjar Mountains

Elevation 4,449 ft.

Source: Vehicle locations from satellite imagery by DigitalGlobe via Amnesty International

Iraqis Driven From Their Homes by ISIS

Published August 14

The United Nations estimates that militants with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have forced nearly 180,000 families — or more than a million people — from their homes in Iraq. The exodus roughly breaks down into three phases. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Note: The United Nations estimates one Iraqi family is equal to six individuals. Source: IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix

January 1 to May 31

Over 151 days, families, on average, were displaced daily.

Anbar Province

321,210 families

known displaced

Months before it became something of a household name, ISIS took control of much of Anbar Province, displacing an estimated 500,000 Iraqis.

June 1 to July 31

Over 61 days, families, on average, were displaced daily.

Anbar Province

321,210 families

known displaced

Another half-million Iraqis were displaced in June and July when ISIS captured Mosul and advanced south toward Baghdad.

August 1 to August 6

Over 6 days, families, on average, were displaced daily.

Anbar Province

321,210 families

known displaced

In early August, ISIS seized several towns under Kurdish control, displacing Yazidis, Christians and other religious minority groups. Although the United Nations says that the capture of Sinjar may have displaced as many as 33,000 families, that number is not yet included in the official data.

Note: The United Nations estimates one Iraqi family is equal to six individuals. Source: IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix

U.S. Strikes Militants Near Erbil

Published August 8

American jets attacked mobile artillery vehicles that had been shelling Kurdish targets in Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region. The city has boomed since the American-led invasion of Iraq. It is home to a growing expatriate community of investment consultants and oil executives, as well as to an American consulate. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: American and Kurdish officials

Mosul

Islamist militants have controlled Iraq's second-largest city since June 10.

Mosul Dam

Captured by

militants on

Thursday.

ABOUT 150 MILES

TO BAGHDAD

Iraq

Mahmour

Bombed by American

jets on Friday.

Gwer

Bombed on Thursday.

About 40

miles TO

ERBIL

About 35

miles TO

ERBIL

Kalak

Historic citadel

of Erbil

United States Consulate

is in this neighborhood

Chammah

ERBIL

AIRPORT

Area

visible

Erbil

Erbil

Kurdish capital

IRAQ

Baghdad

NORTH

Mahmour

Bombed by

American jets

on Friday.

Gwer

Bombed on

Thursday.

Mosul

Islamist militants have

controlled Iraq's second-largest

city since June 10.

Mosul Dam

Captured by militants

on Thursday.

Iraq

About 40 miles

TO ERBIL

About 35 miles

TO ERBIL

Historic citadel

of Erbil

United States Consulate

is in this neighborhood

Area

visible

Erbil

Kurdish capital

Erbil

IRAQ

Baghdad

NORTH

Mahmour

Bombed by American

jets on Friday.

Mosul Dam

Captured by militants

on Thursday.

Gwer

Bombed on

Thursday.

Mosul

About 40 miles TO ERBIL

Erbil

Kurdish

capital

Iraq

NORTH

Sources: American and Kurdish officials

Iraq’s Tangle of Insurgent Groups

Published July 12

Though ISIS has grown to be the most powerful militant group in Iraq, its foothold in the country relies on negotiating a shifting tangle of smaller groups and alliances. This is a snapshot of the active militant groups in provinces north and west of Baghdad, based on information from the Pentagon and other U.S. officials and reporting by Times journalists in Iraq. Related article »

Related Maps and Multimedia »

Click group names for more details.

Naqshbandia Order/J.R.T.N. »

Baathist

Active in: Diyala, Salahuddin

ISIS relationship: Fighting

Established in 2007, the group's reputed leader was a high-ranking deputy in Saddam Hussein's regime. The group is believed to have initially assisted ISIS in its push south from Mosul.

1920 Revolution Brigades »

Baathist

Active in: Diyala, Anbar

ISIS relationship: Fighting in some areas

Formed by disaffected Iraqi Army officers who were left without jobs after the Americans dissolved the military in 2003.

Islamic Army of Iraq »

Salafist

Active in: Diyala, Salahuddin, Anbar

ISIS relationship: Periodic fighting

ISIS has targeted family members of the leadership of this group, which has long had a presence in Diyala and has been involved in past sectarian battles.

Mujahedeen Army »

Salafist

Active in: Diyala, Salahuddin, Anbar

ISIS relationship: Truce

A nationalist Islamist group that advocates overthrowing the Iraqi government.

Khata'ib al-Mustapha »

Salafist

Active in: Diyala

ISIS relationship: Truce

Islamic militants who fight against the government.

Army of Muhammad »

Salafist

Active in: Anbar

ISIS relationship: Allies

Islamic militants who fight against the government.

Khata'ib Tawrat al-Ashreen »

Anti-government Sunni Tribe

Active in: Diyala, Salahuddin

ISIS relationship: Truce

Sunni tribes opposed to the Iraqi government.

Ansar al-Islam/Ansar al-Sunna »

Islamist Jihadist

Active in: Diyala

ISIS relationship: Fighting

An Al Qaeda-affiliated group that has led a number of deadly attacks in Iraq over the years.

Opportunity and Hazard for Iraq’s Kurds

Published July 10

In northern Iraq, Kurds control a semiautonomous region that is more economically secure because of access to oil, and relatively stable because of a well-trained military force known as the pesh merga.

Recent gains by militants in Iraq prompted the pesh merga to take control of towns (), including the oil-rich area around Kirkuk. The regional government hopes to hold a referendum on independence soon, but faces pressure from the United States and other countries to remain a part of Iraq. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project, Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

Turkey

PREDOMINANTLY

KURDISH AREAS

Iran

Al Kasik

military base

Rabia

Aleppo

Mosul

Sinjar

Kirkuk

Syria

Tuz

Khurmatu

Leb.

Khanaqin

Kurdish autonomous region

Damascus

Baghdad

Iraq

JORDAN

Amman

Najaf

Turkey

PREDOMINANTLY

KURDISH AREAS

Iran

Al Kasik

military base

Rabia

Sinjar

Mosul

Syria

Kirkuk

Tuz

Khurmatu

Khanaqin

Kurdish autonomous region

Baghdad

Iraq

Najaf

Sources: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project, Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

Refugees From Two Countries in Turmoil

Published June 29

More than a million Iraqis have been displaced this year, according to new estimates by the United Nations, worsening a regional refugee crisis stemming from Syria’s civil war. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Source: United Nations

turkey

Syrian RefugeesMost of the Syrians who have been displaced have fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Nearly all of those fleeing to Iraq have gone to the Kurdish autonomous region.

iran

Mosul

Raqqa

Erbil

Aleppo

Kurdish

autonomous

region

Kirkuk

syria

lebanon

Damascus

Thousands of

refugees at

destination

Baghdad

iraq

ISRAEL

jordan

10

100

Saudi Arabia

turkey

iran

Displaced IraqisThe rapid advance of Sunni militants from Mosul toward Baghdad displaced an estimated 500,000 Iraqis in recent weeks, adding to the hundreds of thousands displaced earlier this year. Many have gone to the already crowded camps in the Kurdish autonomous region.

Mosul

Raqqa

Erbil

Aleppo

Kirkuk

syria

leb.

Damascus

iraq

Baghdad

jordan

Amman

ISRAEL

Saudi Arabia

THOUSANDS OF REFUGEES

AT DESTINATION

10

100

Mosul

Aleppo

syria

Kurdish

autonomous

region

Leb.

Damascus

Baghdad

iraq

jordan

Syrian RefugeesMost of the Syrians who have been displaced have fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Nearly all of those fleeing to Iraq have gone to the Kurdish autonomous region.

turkey

Mosul

Erbil

Aleppo

Kirkuk

syria

leb.

Damascus

iraq

Baghdad

jordan

Displaced IraqisThe rapid advance of Sunni militants from Mosul toward Baghdad displaced an estimated 500,000 Iraqis in recent weeks, adding to the hundreds of thousands displaced earlier this year. Many have gone to the already crowded camps in the Kurdish autonomous region.

Source: United Nations

How Syria and Iraq’s Borders Evolved

Published June 26

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is trying to establish its own Sunni state across borders that have their origins in the Ottoman Empire and post World War I diplomacy. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Rand, McNally & Co. World Atlas (1911 Ottoman Empire map); United Kingdom National Archives (Sykes-Picot); Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project (religious and ethnic map)

- Ottoman Empire

- Sykes-Picot Agreement

- Current Boundaries

Ottoman provincial borders

Current borders

Adana

Turkey

Persia

Aleppo

Aleppo

Nicosia

Mosul

Iran

Zor

Beirut

Syria

Lebanon

Beirut

Lebanon

Damascus

Baghdad

Syria

Iraq

Beirut

Baghdad

Tel Aviv

Amman

Jerusalem

Israel

Basra

Jordan

Jerusalem

Saudi Arabia

Kuwait

Kuwait

Ottoman provincial borders

Current borders

Turkey

Adana

Persia

Aleppo

Aleppo

Mosul

Zor

Iran

Beirut

Syria

Lebanon

Lebanon

Damascus

Baghdad

Syria

Beirut

Baghdad

Iraq

Tel Aviv

Israel

Basra

Jerusalem

Saudi Arabia

Sykes-Picot

Current borders

Turkey

French Control

Aleppo

Independent Arab states

under French influence

Nicosia

Iran

Syria

Lebanon

British

Control

Beirut

Damascus

Iraq

Independent

Arab states under

British influence

International

Zone

Baghdad

Tel Aviv

Amman

British Control

Jerusalem

Israel

Jordan

Saudi Arabia

Kuwait

Kuwait

Sykes-Picot

Current borders

Turkey

French

Control

Independent Arab states

under French influence

Iran

Syria

British

Control

Damascus

Baghdad

Iraq

International

Zone

Independent

Arab states under

British influence

British

Control

Israel

Jordan

Saudi Arabia

Shiite

Sunni

Shiite/Sunni mixed

Other religions

Kurdish

Turkey

Aleppo

Nicosia

Iran

Syria

Lebanon

Beirut

Damascus

Iraq

Baghdad

Tel Aviv

Amman

Jerusalem

Israel

Jordan

Saudi Arabia

Kuwait

Kuwait

Shiite

Sunni

Shiite/Sunni mixed

Other religions

Kurdish

Turkey

Aleppo

Iran

Syria

Lebanon

Damascus

Baghdad

Iraq

Tel Aviv

Israel

Jordan

Saudi Arabia

Ottoman Empire

Before WWI, the Middle East was divided into several administrative provinces under the Ottoman Empire. Modern Iraq is roughly made up of the Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra.

Sykes-Picot Agreement

In 1916, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, British and French diplomats, secretly drew the first map to divide up the Ottoman Empire, beginning a series of border negotiations that led to the establishment of British and French mandates in 1920.

Religious and Ethnic Regions Today

Iraq's current boundaries bring together different, often adversarial, groups under one mixed national identity that has been strained by conflict. Still, if Iraq were to split, partition would not be so simple as drawing new borders along religious or ethnic lines.

Sources: Rand, McNally & Co. World Atlas (1911 Ottoman Empire map); United Kingdom National Archives (Sykes-Picot); Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project (religious and ethnic map)

Who Controls the Border Crossings?

Updated July 1

Beginning on June 20 and in a rapid succession, ISIS fighters captured the western border crossings at Qaim, Waleed and Trebil. More recently the Iraqi government claims to have retaken some crossings. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

Key

Border crossing Crossing controlled by ISIS

TO DAMASCUS

TO ALEPPO

TURKEY

Tanf

Controlled by

Syrian government

SYRIA

Euphrates

River

JORDAN

Yaroubia

Syrian

Kurdish

forces

Karamah

Jordanian

Army

SYRIAN

DESERT

Waleed

Unclear

Trebil

Unclear

Bukamal

ISIS

WESTERN

BORDER

OF IRAQ

Rabia

Iraqi Kurdish

pesh merga

Area of

detail

Qaim

ISIS

SYRIA

iraq

NORTH

IRAQ

JORDAN

30 MILES

TO BAGHDAD

Area of

detail

SYRIA

WESTERN

BORDER

OF IRAQ

IRAQ

JORDAN

Yaroubia

Controlled by

Syrian Kurdish forces

Rabia

Iraqi Kurdish

pesh merga

iraq

SYRIA

Euphrates

River

TO ALEPPO

Bukamal

ISIS

Qaim

ISIS

SYRIAN

DESERT

TO BAGHDAD

Tanf

Syrian

government

Waleed

Unclear

TO

DAMASCUS

Trebil

Unclear

Karamah

Jordanian Army

NORTH

30 MILES

JORDAN

Syria and

Jordan

Karamah

Control Jordanian Army

The Jordanian army has increased security at the crossing, which remains open, but with little traffic.

Tanf

Control Syrian government

Bukamal

ControlISIS

Seized June 25

A local agreement between ISIS and the Nusra Front on June 25 effectively placed Bukamal under ISIS control. By June 30, ISIS had wrested full control of the town and border crossing.

Yaroubia

Control Syrian Kurdish forces

Seized October 2013

This side is controlled by Syrian Kurdish forces affiliated with a party that is engaged in a power struggle with Iraqi Kurdish leaders.

Iraq

Trebil

Control Unclear

ISIS took this crossing on June 22 after Iraqi forces fled, but recent reports of vehicle traffic from Jordan indicate that the crossing may be back the hands of the government.

Waleed

Control Unclear

ISIS took this crossing on June 22. The Iraqi government said that it is back in control of the crossing, but this could not be confirmed.

Qaim

Control ISIS

Seized June 20

ISIS took control of the municipal council, customs office, border crossing and Iraqi police station, increasing its already significant presence on the main route between Baghdad and Aleppo. The Iraqi government said it abandoned the crossing in a strategic move to concentrate forces in Baghdad.

Rabia

Control Iraqi Kurdish pesh merga

Seized June 10

Kurdish pesh merga forces secured this crossing on June 10 immediately following the fall of Mosul.

Sources: Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

Consequences of Sectarian Violence on Baghdad’s Neighborhoods

Published June 20

Baghdad became highly segregated in the years after the American-led invasion of Iraq. The city’s many mixed neighborhoods hardened into enclaves along religious and ethnic divisions. These maps, based on the work of Michael Izady for Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project, show how the city divided from 2003 to 2009. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Source: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project

Key

Sunni majority Shiite majority Christian majority Mixed areas

2003

Sadr

City

Kadhimiya

Adhamiya

BAGHDAD

Green Zone

Baghdad

Airport

Tigris River

2 miles

2009

Adhamiya

Huriya

BAGHDAD

Green Zone

Amiriya

Baghdad

Airport

Tigris River

2 miles

2003: Before the Invasion

Before the American invasion, Baghdad’s major sectarian groups lived mostly side by side in mixed neighborhoods. The city’s Shiite and Sunni populations were roughly equal, according to Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor and Middle East expert.

2009: Violence Fuels Segregation

Sectarian violence exploded in 2006. Families living in areas where another sect was predominant were threatened with violence if they did not move. By 2009 Shiites were a majority, with Sunnis reduced to about 10 percent to 15 percent of the population.

• Kadhimiya, a historically Shiite neighborhood, is home to a sacred Shiite shrine.

• Adhamiya, a historically Sunni neighborhood, contains the Abu Hanifa Mosque, a Sunni landmark.

• The Green Zone became the heavily fortified center of American operations during the occupation.

• Sadr City was the center of the insurgent Mahdi Army, led by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

• Huriya was transformed in 2006 when the Mahdi Army pushed out hundreds of families in a brutal spasm of sectarian cleansing.

• More than 8,000 displaced families relocated to Amiriya, the neighborhood where the Sunni Awakening began in Baghdad.

• Adhamiya, a Sunni island in Shiite east Baghdad, was walled and restricted along with other neighborhoods in 2007 for security.

• Neighborhoods east of the Tigris River are generally more densely populated than areas to the west.

2003

Sadr

City

Kadhimiya

Adhamiya

BAGHDAD

Green Zone

Baghdad

Airport

Tigris River

2 miles

2003: Before the Invasion

Before the American invasion, Baghdad’s major sectarian groups lived mostly side by side in mixed neighborhoods. The city’s Shiite and Sunni populations were roughly equal, according to Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor and Middle East expert.

• Kadhimiya, a historically Shiite neighborhood, is home to a sacred Shiite shrine.

• Adhamiya, a historically Sunni neighborhood, contains the Abu Hanifa Mosque, a Sunni landmark.

• The Green Zone became the heavily fortified center of American operations during the occupation.

• Sadr City was the center of the insurgent Mahdi Army, led by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

2009

Adhamiya

Huriya

BAGHDAD

Green Zone

Amiriya

Baghdad

Airport

Tigris River

2 miles

2009: Violence Fuels Segregation

Sectarian violence exploded in 2006. Families living in areas where another sect was predominant were threatened with violence if they did not move. By 2009 Shiites were a majority, with Sunnis reduced to about 10 percent to 15 percent of the population.

• Huriya was transformed in 2006 when the Mahdi Army pushed out hundreds of families in a brutal spasm of sectarian cleansing.

• More than 8,000 displaced families relocated to Amiriya, the neighborhood where the Sunni Awakening began in Baghdad.

• Adhamiya, a Sunni island in Shiite east Baghdad, was walled and restricted along with other neighborhoods in 2007 for security.

• Neighborhoods east of the Tigris River are generally more densely populated than areas to the west.

Source: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project

Battle for the Baiji Oil Refinery

Published Jun 19

Witnesses reported that Sunni extremists seized Iraq’s largest oil refinery on June 18 after fighting the Iraqi Army for a week, but officials disputed the reports and the situation remains unclear. Workers were evacuated, and the facility, which provides oil for domestic consumption to 11 Iraqi provinces, including Baghdad, was shut down. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Source: Satellite image by NASA

ABOUT 100

MILES TO

MOSUL

ABOUT 50 MILES

TO KIRKUK

Power

plant

1

Tigris

River

Oil refinery

Employee

dormitories

Village

Employee

village

Village

Smoke plume

at 10:30 a.m.

Wednesday.

Baiji

ABOUT 115 MILES

TO BAGHDAD

1 MILE

1 MILE

Oil refinery

Power

plant

ABOUT 100

MILES TO

MOSUL

Employee

dormitories

Village

Employee

village

Tigris

River

Village

Baiji

Smoke plume

at 10:30 a.m.

Wednesday.

ABOUT 115 MILES

TO BAGHDAD

Source: Satellite image by NASA

Encroaching on Baghdad

Published June 18

Since seizing Mosul on June 10, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been attacking towns along the main highway heading south, coming closer and closer to the capital. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Institute for the Study of War, Long War Journal

Key Towns attacked Bomb attacks

ABOUT 140 MILES

TO MOSUL

Miles from

Central Baghdad

ABOUT 80 MILES

TO KIRKUK

Several clashes occurred at the outskirts of Samarra, where Shiite militiamen have been sent to protect the Al-Askari Shrine.

70

Adhaim

June 15

Samarra

JUNE 11, 13, 17

60

Al-Mutasim

JUNE 14

Dhuluiya

JUNE 12

50

Ishaqi

Muqdadiya

The Iraqi army retook control of Ishaqi and Muqdadiya on June 14. In Muqdadiya, a Shiite militia assisted the government forces.

40

Dujail

JUNE 14

30

Militants took control of several neighborhoods in Baquba on June 16 but were repulsed by security officers after a three-hour gun battle. Later, 44 Sunni prisoners were killed in a government-controlled police station.

Baquba

June 16, 17

Tarmiyah

JUNE 11

20

Falluja and many towns in the western province of Anbar have been under ISIS control for about six months.

Tigris

River

10

At least five bomb attacks occurred in Baghdad, mainly in Shiite areas, in the week after the rebel group took Mosul. The bodies of four young men were found shot on June 17 in a neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen.

Sadr City

Kadhimiya

Falluja

Bab al-Sheikh

Al-Bab Al-Sharqi

Baghdad

Saidiyah

Key Towns attacked Bomb attacks

Miles from

Central Baghdad

70

Adhaim

Samarra

60

Al-Mutasim

Dhuluiya

Muqdadiya

Ishaqi

40

Dujail

30

Baquba

Tarmiyah

20

10

Falluja

Baghdad

Several clashes occurred at the outskirts of Samarra, where Shiite militiamen have been sent to protect the Al-Askari Shrine.

The Iraqi army retook control of Ishaqi and Muqdadiya on June 14. In Muqdadiya, a Shiite militia assisted the government forces.

Militants took control of several neighborhoods in Baquba on June 16 but were repulsed by security officers after a three-hour gun battle. Later, 44 Sunni prisoners were killed in a government-controlled police station.

At least five bomb attacks occurred in Baghdad, mainly in Shiite areas, in the week after the rebel group took Mosul. The bodies of four young men were found shot on June 17 in a neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen.

Falluja and many towns in the western province of Anbar have been under ISIS control for about six months.

Sources: Institute for the Study of War, Long War Journal

Ten Years of ISIS Attacks in Iraq

Published June 15

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni militant group that staged a stunning operation to seize Iraq’s second largest city, has been fueling sectarian violence in the region for years. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Global Terrorism Database, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (attack data); Congressional Research Service; Council on Foreign Relations; Long War Journal; Institute for the Study of War

100

80

60

Attacks That Could Be Attributed to ISIS

40

20

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

Mosul

Kirkuk

Baghdad

IRAQ

Basra

2004

51 attacks

2005

58 attacks

2006

5 attacks

2007

56 attacks

2008

62 attacks

2009

78 attacks

2010

86 attacks

2011

34 attacks

2012

603 attacks

2013

419 attacks

100

80

Attacks That Could

Be Attributed to ISIS

60

40

20

’04

’05

’06

’07

’08

’09

’10

’11

’12

’13

Mosul

Baghdad

IRAQ

Basra

2004

51 attacks

2005

58 attacks

2006

5 attacks

2007

56 attacks

2008

62 attacks

2009

78 attacks

2010

86 attacks

2011

34 attacks

2012

603 attacks

2013

419 attacks

2004-05 The group emerges as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Its goal is to provoke a civil war.

2006-07 The group’s February 2006 bombing of one of Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines ignites sectarian violence across the country. After merging with several other Sunni insurgent groups, it changes its name to the Islamic State of Iraq.

2008-10 I.S.I. claims responsibility for more than 200 attacks, many in densely-populated areas around Baghdad.

2011-12 The group is relatively quiet for most of 2011, but re-emerges after American troops withdraw from Iraq.

2013 Seeing new opportunities for growth, I.S.I. enters Syria’s civil war and changes its name to reflect a new aim of establishing an Islamic religious state spanning Iraq and Syria. Its success in Syria bleeds over the border to Iraq.

2004-05 The group emerges as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Its goal is to provoke a civil war.

2006-07 The group’s February 2006 bombing of one of Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines ignites sectarian violence across the country. After merging with several other Sunni insurgent groups, it changes its name to the Islamic State of Iraq.

2008-10 I.S.I. claims responsibility for more than 200 attacks, many in densely-populated areas around Baghdad.

2011-12 The group is relatively quiet for most of 2011, but re-emerges after American troops withdraw from Iraq.

2013 Seeing new opportunities for growth, I.S.I. enters Syria’s civil war and changes its name to reflect a new aim of establishing an Islamic religious state spanning Iraq and Syria. Its success in Syria bleeds over the border to Iraq.

2004-05 The group emerges as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Its goal is to provoke a civil war.

2006-07 The group’s February 2006 bombing of one of Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines ignites sectarian violence across the country. After merging with several other Sunni insurgent groups, it changes its name to the Islamic State of Iraq.

2008-10 I.S.I. claims responsibility for more than 200 attacks, many in densely-populated areas around Baghdad.

2011-12 The group is relatively quiet for most of 2011, but re-emerges after American troops withdraw from Iraq.

2013 Seeing new opportunities for growth, I.S.I. enters Syria’s civil war and changes its name to reflect a new aim of establishing an Islamic religious state spanning Iraq and Syria. Its success in Syria bleeds over the border to Iraq.

2004-05 The group emerges as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Its goal is to provoke a civil war.

2006-07 The group’s February 2006 bombing of one of Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines ignites sectarian violence across the country. After merging with several other Sunni insurgent groups, it changes its name to the Islamic State of Iraq.

2008-10 I.S.I. claims responsibility for more than 200 attacks, many in densely-populated areas around Baghdad.

2011-12 The group is relatively quiet for most of 2011, but re-emerges after American troops withdraw from Iraq.

2013 Seeing new opportunities for growth, I.S.I. enters Syria’s civil war and changes its name to reflect a new aim of establishing an Islamic religious state spanning Iraq and Syria. Its success in Syria bleeds over the border to Iraq.

Note: Before 2011, less information was available on who was responsible for attacks, so the number of ISIS attacks from 2004 to 2010 may be undercounted.

Sources: Global Terrorism Database, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (attack data); Congressional Research Service; Council on Foreign Relations; Long War Journal; Institute for the Study of War

A Week of Rapid Advances After Taking Mosul

Updated June 14

After sweeping across the porous border from Syria to overrun Mosul, insurgents aligned with the jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria continued to press south down the main north-south highway toward Baghdad. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Mosul

Area of

detail

Tikrit

June 13

June 10

Mosul captured

Baghdad

Iraq

Jalawla

Kirkuk

Sadiyah

June 11

Tikrit

captured

Basra

June 12

Dhuluiya captured

June 11-12

Samarra

Tigris R.

About 110 miles

Attacks in

the days after

Mosul captured

30

June 11

Parts of Baiji

captured

20

30

Baghdad

Ishaki   Dujail

June 14

Taji

Lake Tharthar

Falluja

Ramadi

Euphrates R.

After capturing Mosul, Tikrit and parts of a refinery in Baiji, insurgents attacked Samarra, where Shiite militias helped pro-government forces. Then, they seized Jalawla and Sadiyah but were forced back by government troops backed by Kurdish forces. They continued their moves south by Ishaki and Dujail.

June 10

Mosul

captured

Area of

detail

Mosul

Tikrit

Iraq

Baghdad

Basra

About

110

miles

Kirkuk

Tigris R.

Attacks in

the days after

Mosul captured

June 11

Parts of Baiji

captured

30

June 11

Tikrit captured

June 13

Jalawla

30

June 11-12

Samarra attacked

June 12

Dhuluiya

captured

Sadiyah

20

June 14

Ishaki

Lake

Tharthar

Dujail

Taji

Euphrates R.

Ramadi

Baghdad

Falluja

June 10

Mosul

captured

June 11-12

Samarra

attacked

June 12

Dhuluiya

captured

June 13

Jalawla and

Sadiyah

attacked

June 14

Ishaki and

Dujail

attacked

June 11

Parts of

Baiji captured

June 11

Tikrit

captured

Kirkuk

Tigris R.

20

30

About 110 miles

30

Attacks in

the days after

Mosul captured

Baghdad

Taji

Falluja

Lake Tharthar

Mosul

Area of

detail

Ramadi

Tikrit

Euphrates R.

Baghdad

Iraq

Najaf

Basra

After capturing Mosul, Tikrit and parts of a refinery in Baiji, insurgents attacked Samarra, where Shiite militias helped pro-government forces. Then, they seized Jalawla and Sadiyah but were forced back by government troops backed by Kurdish forces. They continued their moves south by Ishaki and Dujail.

What the Militants Want: A Caliphate Across Syria and Iraq

Published June 13

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has vowed to establish a caliphate — a unified Islamic government ruled by a caliph, someone considered to be a successor to Muhammad’s political authority — stretching from western Syria across Iraq to the eastern border with Iran. This map shows the boundaries envisioned by ISIS. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Source: “The Islamic State in Iraq Returns to Diyala” by Jessica Lewis, Institute for the Study of War

turkey

Hasakah

Mosul

Erbil

Aleppo

Raqqa

Kirkuk

Deir al-Zour

iran

Baiji

syria

Tikrit

Homs

Jalawla

lebanon

Samarra

Dhuluiya

Damascus

iraq

Baghdad

israel

saudi

arabia

jordan

kuwait

turkey

Hasakah

Mosul

Aleppo

Kirkuk

syria

iran

Tikrit

Homs

leb.

Samarra

Damascus

Baghdad

iraq

israel

saudi

arabia

jordan

kuwait

Source: “The Islamic State in Iraq Returns to Diyala” by Jessica Lewis, Institute for the Study of War

Attacks Follow Sectarian Lines

Published June 12

The insurgents, originating in Syria, moved through Iraq's Sunni-dominated north and west, occupying cities and towns surrendered by Iraqi soldiers and police. They have largely avoided the Kurd-dominated northeast, but have threatened to march on to Baghdad and into the Shiite-dominated areas of the south. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Source: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project

Mosul

Kirkuk

Baiji

Tikrit

Dhuluiyah

Samarra

Ramadi

Baghdad

Iraq

Falluja

Tigris

Euphrates River

Basra

Predominant group

Sunni Arab

Shiite Arab

Kurd

50 miles

Source: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project

Iraqi Cities, Then and Now

Published June 13

Many of the Iraqi cities that have been attacked and occupied by militants in recent days were also the sites of battles and other major events during the Iraq War. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Mosul

Mosul Iraq

Then: American forces took control of Mosul in April 2003. What followed was a period of relative peace until mid-2004 when periodic insurgent attacks flared, resulting in a large-scale battle in November. The death toll reached dozens, including a number of Iraqi soldiers who were publicly beheaded. Related Article »

Now: In perhaps the most stunning recent development, Sunni militants drove Iraqi military forces out of Mosul on June 10, forcing a half-million residents to flee the city. Iraqi soldiers reportedly dropped their weapons and donned civilian clothing to escape ISIS insurgents.

Moises Saman for The New York Times

Falluja

Falluja Iraq

Then: Falluja played a pivotal role in the American invasion of Iraq. It was the site of a number of large-scale battles with insurgents. In April 2003, it became a hot bed for controversy when American soldiers opened fire on civilians after claiming they had been shot at. Incessant fighting left the city decimated, leveling a majority of its infrastructure and leaving about half its original population. Related Article »

Now: Sunni militants seized Falluja’s primary municipal buildings on Jan. 3. The takeover came as an early and significant victory for the group, initiating a slew of attacks south of the city.

Max Becherer for The New York Times

Tikrit

Tikrit Iraq

Then: The home of Saddam Hussein, Tikrit became the target of an early American military operation during the Iraq war. Securing it proved cumbersome, however, as insurgents mounted continued attacks on the city for years afterward. On Dec. 14, 2003, Hussein was found hiding in an eight-foot deep hole, just south of Tikrit. Related Article »

Now: Tikrit fell to ISIS insurgents on June 11, clearing a path for them to march on to Baiji, home to one of Iraq’s foremost oil-refining operations. After taking the city in less than a day, militants continued the fight just south, in Samarra.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Samarra

Samarra Iraq

Then: Samarra is home to the Askariya shrine, which was bombed in 2006, prompting an extended period of sectarian violence across the country. Related Article »

Now: After an initial attack on June 5, ISIS insurgents have now positioned themselves just miles away from Samarra. It is unclear whether they are capable of capturing the city in the coming days, but the Shiite shrine makes it a volatile target.

Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times

Video: Iraq’s Factions and Their Goals

Published June 13

A look at the goals of of the three main groups in Iraq — Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish — as the country threatens to split apart along sectarian lines. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Growing Humanitarian Crisis

Published June 12

The United Nations estimates that at least 500,000 Iraqis were displaced by the takeover of Mosul. Food supplies are low and there is limited fresh water and little electricity. An additional 430,000 people were displaced by fighting In Anbar Province, which insurgents have controlled for more than six months. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Safin Hamed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An Iraqi family, one of thousands who have fled Mosul for the autonomous Kurdish region, walks past tents at a temporary camp.

Video: Behind the Group That Took Mosul

Published June 10

Background on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Islamist group that appears to be in control of the second largest city in Iraq. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Reporting from Iraq and Jordan by TIM ARANGO, SUADAD AL-SALHY, C.J. CHIVERS, BEN HUBBARD, ROD NORDLAND and ALISSA RUBIN

By SARAH ALMUKHTAR, JEREMY ASHKENAS, MATTHEW ERICSON, BILL MARSH, HAEYOUN PARK, NILKANTH PATEL, ARCHIE TSE, TIM WALLACE, DEREK WATKINS, JEREMY WHITE and KAREN YOURISH

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Middle East | World Briefing

Bomb Kills 2 Lebanese Soldiers Near Border With Syria

By ANNE BARNARDSEPT. 19, 2014

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BEIRUT, Lebanon — Two Lebanese Army soldiers were killed and two were wounded on Friday when their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb outside the town of Arsal, near the border with Syria. The town was the scene of battles that erupted last month between the army and militants from the group Islamic State and the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda.

A Syrian refugee doctor said he had treated the wounded soldiers in a field clinic in Arsal.

The attack came a day after the army detained three men — two Syrians and one Lebanese — in connection with the beheading of two Lebanese soldiers who were among a group held prisoner by the militants since last month’s battles.

The Lebanese suspect, originally from Arsal, was accused of carrying out the second of the two beheadings, according to army officials. The army did not detail his role in its official news release in an effort to tamp down potential sectarian reactions: The slain soldier was a Shiite, and the accused is a Sunni.

On Friday, the Nusra Front said in a statement that it had killed a third soldier among its Lebanese captives.

Syrian refugees have tripled Arsal’s population during the war in Syria, which has inflamed Lebanon’s web of sectarian and political tensions.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Lebanon: 2 Soldiers Killed Near Syria. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Middle East | World Briefing

Yemen: Clashes Unsettle the Capital

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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Shiite rebels and Sunni militiamen clashed in Sana, the capital, for a second day on Friday in battles that have killed at least 120 people and forced thousands to flee their homes. In the past few months, the Shiite rebels, known as the Houthis, have surged from their stronghold in the north, taking a string of cities. They have tapped into discontent with the government, which this year lifted fuel subsidies and has been criticized as too slow to make political and economic changes. In recent weeks, Houthi protesters have set up sit-in encampments in Sana. Their main opponents have been Sunni Muslim militias and army units allied with the Muslim Brotherhood’s branch in Yemen, or tribal fighters sympathetic with the Brotherhood or Al Qaeda. On Friday, the Houthis attacked the headquarters of the state television network, witnesses said.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Yemen: Clashes Unsettle the Capital. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Asia Pacific

South Korea Says It Fired Warning Shots at Patrol Boat From North

By CHOE SANG-HUNSEPT. 19, 2014

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SEOUL, South Korea — A North Korean patrol boat crossed a disputed western sea border with South Korea on Friday and retreated after warning shots were fired by the South Korean Navy, according to the South’s military.

North Korea does not recognize the disputed sea border known as the Northern Limit Line, and its patrol ships have occasionally crossed it, often to prevent its own fishing boats from drifting across the line or to pursue Chinese fishing crews deemed to be operating illegally in the area. But in recent years, the North has also fired artillery shells or sent warships across the line, triggering naval skirmishes in what have been seen as attempts to bolster its claim to waters south of the disputed border.

The incident Friday took place on the same day South Korea announced that it would allow two civic groups to send humanitarian aid for malnourished infants to the impoverished North. The amount of aid to be sent was not disclosed.

The South Korean government ended its humanitarian assistance to the North after the sinking of a South Korean naval ship in 2010, which the South and its allies attributed to a North Korean torpedo attack. But the government has permitted small, private aid shipments, in hopes of encouraging the North to return to the negotiating table to discuss humanitarian issues.

One such issue is reunions of elderly family members who were separated by the Korean War six decades ago. The South has proposed high-level talks on resuming that program, but North Korea recently said that before such talks can begin, the South must stop Christian activists and North Korean defectors from sending balloons into the North bearing antigovernment propaganda messages.

South Korea has permitted more than $30 million in private aid shipments to the North since 2011. In August, the South promised to donate $13.3 million to help the World Food Program and the World Health Organization provide food, medicine and other urgent assistance for malnourished babies and nursing mothers in the North, which suffered famine during the 1990s and still experiences food shortages.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: South Korea: Warning Shots Fired. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Asia Pacific |NYT Now

Japan’s Premier Seeks Summit Meeting With South Korean President

By CHOE SANG-HUNSEPT. 19, 2014

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SEOUL, South Korea — The office of President Park Geun-hye said on Friday that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan had sent a letter proposing a summit meeting, a conciliatory gesture after years of tensions between America’s most important allies in Northeast Asia.

When a visiting former Japanese prime minister, Yoshiro Mori, met with Ms. Park on Friday, he delivered Mr. Abe’s letter, in which Mr. Abe suggested that he and Ms. Park meet on the sidelines of international conferences later this year, Ms. Park’s office said.

Both Ms. Park and Mr. Abe were scheduled to attend a United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York next week, though a summit meeting there is unlikely. But the two leaders were also expected to attend an Asia-Europe meeting of heads of state in Milan in October and an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting in Beijing in November.

Mr. Abe had previously expressed hope for his first summit meeting with Ms. Park, but his personal letter on Friday was his clearest expression yet of a desire to mend ties between Tokyo and Seoul.

While she has met with President Xi Jinping of China five times since becoming South Korea’s president early last year, Ms. Park has steadfastly refused to hold a summit meeting with Mr. Abe. Relations between South Korea and Japan under Ms. Park and Mr. Abe have been the chilliest in recent memory, as their countries’ bickering intensified over issues rooted in Japan’s colonial rule of Korea in the early 20th century, including a territorial dispute over a set of islets and the treatment of Korean women who were forced into front-line sexual slavery for Japan’s soldiers during World War II.

“We have challenges to overcome, and I hope that we can try to improve bilateral ties through repeated dialogue and make next year a good year for both nations,” Mr. Abe was quoted by Ms. Park’s office as saying in his letter.

On Friday, Ms. Park reiterated that a summit meeting should be preceded by “sincere efforts to heal the wounds of the past.” She urged Mr. Mori to help persuade Tokyo to embrace South Korea’s demand that Japan apologize and pay compensation to the former sex slaves. Tokyo has insisted that the issue was settled under a 1965 treaty that re-established relations between the nations.

But Ms. Park, too, hopes for a breakthrough in bilateral relations ahead of the 50th anniversary next year of the reopening of bilateral relations, her office said. Both governments have held several rounds of senior-level talks to narrow their gaps over historical issues enough to make a summit meeting possible.

Washington has urged its Asian allies to get along better to help the United States check North Korea and China. President Obama brought them together in a trilateral meeting on the sidelines of nuclear security talks in the Netherlands in March.

South Koreans are increasingly wary of what they consider to be Japan’s growing attempt under Mr. Abe to glorify its history of invasions. They also fear that the Americans are condoning what they consider to be a dangerous move by Japan to expand its military role in the region.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: South Korea: Japan Proposes a Meeting. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Americas | World Briefing |NYT Now

U.S. and Mexico Aid Tourists Stranded After Hurricane Odile

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLDSEPT. 19, 2014

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MEXICO CITY — Several days after a powerful hurricane hit one of Mexico’s most popular Pacific resorts, the American military, the State Department and the Mexican authorities continued to airlift stranded tourists from an area afflicted by looting and still lacking electricity and potable water.

The evacuations continued Friday in the Cabo San Lucas area as another storm, Tropical Storm Polo, moved north along Mexico’s Pacific Coast, threatening to bring more rain and wind this weekend to a region still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Odile, which hit the area on Sunday.

The State Department and the American military provided five evacuation flights, along with dozens by commercial airlines and the Mexican government that have transported more than 15,000 people to safety. Several hundred people were still waiting to leave, though the American Embassy said most United States citizens had departed the area. The hurricane caused few casualties, but it flooded roads, tore apart homes, shattered windows in hotels and closed the international airport at Los Cabos.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Mexico: Stranded Tourists Evacuated. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe | World Briefing

Russia: Investigative Agency Says Tycoon Remains Under House Arrest

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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A Russian billionaire’s company claimed that the tycoon had been freed from house arrest on Friday, an announcement that was welcomed by some top officials only to be rejected minutes later by the nation’s top criminal investigation agency. The confusion about the fate of the tycoon, Vladimir P. Yevtushenkov, reflected a high-stakes battle for some of the country’s most prized oil assets that reportedly involves the upper echelons of Russian officialdom. Russia’s Investigative Committee said Friday that Mr. Yevtushenkov remained under house arrest, dismissing the claim of his release issued by the conglomerate Sistema, of which he is the majority shareholder. Mr. Yevtushenkov’s arrest on Tuesday on money laundering charges sent shock waves through the country’s business community. The case against Mr. Yevtushenkov focused on his company’s purchase of the Bashneft oil company. Most market watchers see Mr. Yevtushenkov’s house arrest as part of efforts by state-controlled oil giant Rosneft to take control of Bashneft.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Russia: Investigative Agency Says Tycoon Remains Under House Arrest. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe |NYT Now

Debate on Independence Lingers in Scottish Homes

By KATRIN BENNHOLDSEPT. 19, 2014

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Fiona and Vincent Ivanski have been married 33 years. She voted for Scottish independence, and he voted against it. They are among countless family members on opposite sides of a debate.

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GLASGOW — Fiona Ivanski and her husband, Vincent, woke early the morning after the Scottish independence referendum, even though they had barely slept. Anxious to discover the verdict on Scotland’s future, they sat down on their living room couch at 6:08 a.m. Friday and turned on the television.

Dr. Ivanski’s face fell. “We didn’t make it,” she said.

“Thank God,” her husband replied, smiling.

Dr. Ivanski, a veterinary surgeon, had voted for Scottish independence. Her husband, a retired police officer, had voted against it. She said she was devastated that her country did not grab this “once-in-lifetime opportunity to break free.” He said he was relieved to retain the safety of the status quo, including the pound and his pension.

In homes across Scotland, a civil war of a very personal kind has been raging, pitting husband against wife, mother against son, and brother against brother. Like countless other families, the Ivanskis, married for 33 years, found themselves on opposite sides of a national rift opened by two years of intense debate about the most momentous decision their country has faced since joining the union with England over three centuries ago.

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Results by Region

Percentage Point Difference

-15

-10

-5

0

5

10

15%

Voted no

Voted yes

Scotland

Aberdeen

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Source: Scottish Independence Referendum

Fifty-five percent of Scots cast their ballots in favor of staying in that union. But 45 percent would rather leave. And after a high-energy pro-independence campaign that dominated cityscapes and was fueled by slogans of hope and positivity, the losing side may now collectively be feeling what Dr. Ivanski described as “a terrible emptiness.”

“We got so close, you could almost touch it,” Dr. Ivanski said.

“There is a split, it’s there now,” Mr. Ivanski said, taking his wife’s hand. “People voted for yes and no in about equal measures. How do you move on from that?”

On the commuter train outside Glasgow, crestfallen faces could be seen side by side with those discussing in hushed voices their delight at the outcome. On George Square, for weeks the hub of local pro-independence campaigners, unionists and nationalists briefly faced off, forcing the police to separate the two sides.

Politicians on both sides were quick to urge reconciliation. Before conceding defeat in the referendum and announcing that he would step down this year, Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish Parliament and the pro-independence Scottish National Party, changed his profile image on Twitter and Facebook from a “Yes” slogan to “One Scotland.”

Even Queen Elizabeth II addressed the issue. “For many in Scotland and elsewhere today, there will be strong feelings and contrasting emotions — among family, friends and neighbors,” she said in a statement from her Scottish estate at Balmoral. “Now, as we move forward, we should remember that despite the range of views that have been expressed, we have in common an enduring love of Scotland, which is one of the things that helps to unite us all.”

Halfway through the morning on Friday, Dr. Ivanski turned down the volume on her television. She paused, then smiled. “You have to take the positives from it, the turnout, the new powers they are promising,” she said. Her husband nodded. “This may be the beginning of something new anyway?”

The day before, the Ivanskis had driven to the polling station together in their black Volkswagen — she trying one last time to persuade him to change his mind — he trying to change the subject. But they were able to agree at least on one thing.

“Whatever the outcome, Scotland is better off for having had this referendum,” Mr. Ivanski said. “It’s been a kind of kick up the backside to Westminster, and in a way, I’m kind of proud and happy that it went this close. Scotland woke up and voiced an opinion.”

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Play Video|1:33

Europe Reacts to Scotland’s Vote

Europe Reacts to Scotland’s Vote Leaders from Britain, Scotland, Spain and the European Commission spoke after Scotland rejected independence from Britain in a referendum. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditAndrew Milligan/Press Association, via Associated Press

The debate had galvanized both of them early on. Mr. Ivanski, 56, had not voted since he was 18, having become disillusioned by politics. “But this was different,” he said. “This was a historic moment. It was too important to leave to other people to decide.”

“I was worried,” he said, “worried about the economy, the currency and companies leaving Scotland.”

Dr. Ivanski, 54, had had her own doubts, but one day in July, house-sitting for a friend, she found the white paper on independence on a coffee table. She read the chapter on economics and was won over.

“Read this,” she told her husband later that night. He refused, and they had a fight. “Nothing too serious,” she said, “but basically that day we agreed to disagree.”

Around them, similar debates were happening.

Dr. Ivanski’s brother voted no, while her sister voted yes. Three couples the Ivanskis socialize with are split the same way they are. Their son, Adam, 25, a yes voter like his mother, had sparred so much with his father in the run-up to the vote that they ended up banning the subject.

“In the end we avoided the conversation and just talked about football,” Mr. Ivanski said, adding: “Luckily we support the same club.”

At their home, outside Glasgow, both the “yes” and the “no” leaflets have gone into the trash. Not even Dr. Ivanski wants another referendum.

“This was the best shot we had,” she said.

Her son, Adam, disagreed. Pointing to a higher percentage of yes voters among young people, he said, “We will want another chance down the line.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Debate on Independence Lingers in Scottish Homes. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Asia Pacific

Hospitals in Kashmir Struggle After Flooding, Deepening a Health Crisis

By NIDA NAJAR and BETWA SHARMASEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

Residents on Friday cleaned a shop in Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which was hit by powerful flooding this month.

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

SRINAGAR, Kashmir — When the floodwaters of the Jhelum River rushed over the gates of the G. B. Pant Hospital, the top pediatric hospital here, on Sept. 6, the lights were the first to go. Half an hour later, the generators on the ground floor were drowned in water. Minutes after that, the oxygen tank that supplied air to the ventilators for newborns shut down.

Six infants died within 24 hours, said Nisar Ahmed Dar, 26, an orderly at the hospital who handed the children’s bodies, wrapped in blankets, to army rescuers through the second-story window. He then handed them 10 more newborns whose skin had turned blue from lack of oxygen. At least five of them later died.

“It was horrible,” Mr. Dar said. “I was handing down dead babies. I was thinking that if help didn’t come soon, I’d be handing down more.”

Nearly two weeks later, the hospital was a shell of what it had been — white sheets that had been tied together for trapped doctors and family members to escape still hung from the second-story window. Equipment has been irretrievably damaged, and more than half of the staff members are gone — some scattered to their hometowns to assess the damage there — and cellphone service in the Kashmir Valley is still so bad that it was difficult to reach them.

Continue reading the main story

Controlled by

Pakistan

JAMMU AND

KASHMIR

Controlled

by India

Srinagar

Jhelum River

Anantnag

CHINA

PAK.

Area of

detail

25 miles

INDIA

In the aftermath of the powerful floods that hit Kashmir early this month, the area is in the midst of a health crisis. Much of the region depends on the premier hospitals in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir State, but most were badly damaged by the water. In the aftermath of the floods, people are living in neighborhoods choked by putrid, infectious and in some spots impassable water.

Fifty-four bodies have been recovered from flooded neighborhoods in the valley, according to the Press Trust of India. In Srinagar, the inescapable water on many streets and the fact that many residents have stayed in their flooded homes to safeguard their belongings have magnified the risk of outbreaks of cholera, hepatitis A and typhoid, just as the valley has little ability to treat these deadly ailments.

“It is a crisis,” said Shafaq Hamid, a Kashmir-born anesthetist who traveled from Doha, Qatar, to help out after the floods and ended up working in the small private Ahmed Hospital, one of the only hospitals in a dry patch not hit by the floods. “Any place would be in a health crisis, because everything has been stripped away.”

This week, the state health minister, Taj Mohiuddin, outlined a plan to get hospitals and clinics working again and ward off an epidemic. He said he planned to send out mobile teams to pass out medicine and chlorine tablets, and hoped to get the main hospitals up and running in the next 10 days, though hospital administrators said it would take months before they were fully operational. Almost $25 million worth of equipment has been damaged, officials said.

“We will try everything — whatever we can do — to prevent such a disease to take the shape of an epidemic,” Mr. Mohiuddin said.

But the lack of medical care has already taken a toll, particularly for pregnant women and newborns who need specialized care.

One woman, Aasiya Sarebal, went into early labor on Monday morning, hours after dining on tea biscuits on the third floor of her father-in-law’s home, some distance from the water below. Just seven months pregnant, she was carried to a neighborhood hospital by neighbors and relatives, who lifted her over their heads when the water reached their chests. She cried in pain. By the time they reached the hospital, hours later, she was bleeding. When she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, they weighed about two and a half pounds each and needed urgent care.

But the hospital lacked ventilators for newborns, and by the time the babies were sent to the one major hospital still operating in Srinagar that has them, the girl was dead.

“If we had had access to G. B. Pant, we might have saved them,” said Dr. Waseem Rasool, a gynecologist who was helping out at Ahmed Hospital.

At a government hospital high on the hills of Srinagar near the sprawling homes of the chief minister and health minister, doctors have set up a makeshift pediatric clinic. Patients trickle in, some having walked three hours from central Srinagar. The children have chest infections, gastroenteritis and dysentery.

Photo

A girl in her damaged home in Srinagar. Floods left hundreds dead in Pakistan and Indian-controlled Kashmir. Officials say conditions could lead to outbreaks of cholera and other diseases.

Mushtaq Ahmed, 30, a laborer, drove for hours through waterlogged streets from the southern town of Anantnag with his 14-month-old daughter, who was suffering from measles. He walked from central Srinagar to the virtually deserted G. B. Pant Hospital, where someone told him to come to the makeshift clinic. After a consultation, he was told to buy the drugs his daughter needed elsewhere. He stormed out, frustrated by his futile journey.

“What is there to say?” he said angrily. “There are no doctors and there are no medicines.”

One of the biggest fears here is the mounting sanitation crisis on Srinagar’s streets amid the partial breakdown of state and municipal governments. This week, water still surrounded the green-roofed compound of the new secretariat, the massive stone High Court complex and white jeeps parked in front of the Police Headquarters. In one downtown neighborhood, there was a hand-scrawled sign in Urdu on the brick wall of a store: “You have to help yourself to clean your gullies. There is no municipality.”

In the Bemina area, where homes were built on marshlands years ago, people walk over roofs to reach work. Houses surround a cattle farm, where over 300 cow carcasses were rotting until Tuesday evening, when the authorities began removing them. Neighbors shut their doors and windows to block out the smell. Gulam Qaider Matta, a shopkeeper who lives with his children and grandchildren, said that although he boiled the water in his home, one granddaughter had been vomiting for days.

In a neighborhood nearby, Mehraj Din Mir climbed onto a makeshift raft bound for dry land. He was in search of disinfectant for his brother, who had undergone surgery two weeks before for a tumor on his abdomen.

“This water is a disease,” he said. “And when the waters came, nobody would help us.”

Cholera cases have not been reported in great numbers, but the one hospital in Srinagar that can test for the disease is inaccessible to those mired in floodwaters or cut off from roads because of protests against the government’s delayed response to the floods.

“In the second phase, we are expecting it,” said Rauf Rashid Kaul, an assistant professor of community health at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences in Srinagar.

Even as the floodwaters begin to recede, a new crisis is looming. Doctors anticipate droves of patients when the roads clear up.

Ms. Hamid, the anesthetist, sitting in the doctor’s lounge at Ahmed Hospital, said the government would be hard-pressed to respond to patients’ needs in the coming days.

“And for patients with complicated cases — God help them,” she said.

Sameer Yasir contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Hospitals in Kashmir Struggle After Flooding, Deepening a Health Crisis. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Asia Pacific |NYT Now

India and Pakistan Strain as Flooding Kills Hundreds

By NIDA NAJAR and SALMAN MASOODSEPT. 8, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|0:33

Pakistan’s Deadly Floods

Pakistan’s Deadly Floods Flooding in Pakistan left at least 190 people dead and thousands stranded in swamped towns and villages. Video Credit By Reuters on Publish Date September 8, 2014. Image CreditMani Rana/Reuters

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NEW DELHI — Relief operations struggled on Monday in the Indian-administered portion of Kashmir and in parts of Pakistan where six days of rain and flooding have left hundreds of people dead.

On the Pakistan side of the border, Ahmed Kamal, a spokesman for the National Disaster Management Authority, said more than 190 people had been killed — more than 60 in the Pakistani-administered part of Kashmir and about 130 in Punjab Province.

Severe damage was caused by the Jhelum and Chenab Rivers, which swelled after heavy monsoon rainfall last week, flooding hundreds of villages adjoining the rivers. Thousands of people were displaced, most of them living in tents and waiting for medical supplies and food. The Pakistani military was overseeing relief efforts. On Monday, 970 people were rescued in Punjab, according to a spokesman.

“We did not expect this kind of flood,” said Muhammad Hameed, 54, the head of a family of 13 people in the Chiniot district of Punjab. “We were sleeping at night when all of a sudden water came and we had to rush out of our home.”

Continue reading the main story

tajik.

100 MILES

CHINA

afghan.

GILGIT-BALTISTAN

Controlled

by Pakistan

Jammu and

kashmir

Controlled

by India

Srinagar

Bemina

Jhelum River

Punjab

India

Pakistan

The Jhelum River also breached its banks in Indian-administered Kashmir, in the summer state capital of Srinagar, where water levels rose to 15 to 18 feet at points, according to a statement from the Indian Army on Monday. At least 150 people died in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, according to the office of the divisional commissioner there.

The death toll in both countries was expected to rise as rescuers reached areas that had been inundated.

“For the next 48 hours our focus will remain on Srinagar and areas of south Kashmir because there are still a very large number of people stranded without food and water, and our idea is to pull them as quickly as possible,” Lt. Gen. D. S. Hooda, chief of the Indian Army’s Northern Command, said at a news conference in Udhampur on Monday afternoon.

Telephone networks in Srinagar were down for much of Monday, and the police, the army and the special police forces in the city could not be reached.

Shakeela Rahman, 34, spent the past few nights sleeping on a divider on a road that connects Bemina, where she lives, to Srinagar. She fled her home with her two small children early Friday morning, after water started flowing into houses there.

“We have not eaten anything, my kids are starving, and our house is completely submerged under water,” Ms. Rahman said. Nearby, a camp for the Central Reserve Police Force was also flooded, and its personnel had spent the evening sleeping in buses parked outside.

In the Karan Nagar neighborhood of Srinagar, where Ahmad Mujtaba, his wife and three children were trying to reach the higher parts of the city, the water level rose several feet on Sunday.

Photo

People awaiting help in Punjab Province in Pakistan on Monday. Thousands have been displaced by floods in parts of Pakistan and Indian-administered Kashmir.

“No one came to help us,” he said. “People are still trapped inside their buildings, children are dying and the government’s rescue operations have failed.”

O. P. Singh, an official with the Indian National Disaster Response Force, said that rescue efforts were slow in parts of Srinagar.

“We are facing some difficulty, and there is no communication with our rescue teams,” Mr. Singh said.

“It is practically impossible to go through the area with boats,” he said of parts of Srinagar. He said rescue operations in those areas had just begun, with Indian Air Force helicopters ferrying boats and rescue personnel between hard-to-reach areas of town, where they were collecting stranded people and bringing them to relatively safer areas.

The army has evacuated about 22,000 people, with 3,000 removed on Sunday, according to a statement. The army distributed food, water, tents and blankets on Monday.

Part of the army quarters in Srinagar was flooded, and 900 soldiers had to be evacuated. Hospitals in Srinagar were also submerged.

Aerial images on Indian news channels showed entire neighborhoods in the Kashmir Valley under water, with only roofs and treetops visible. People in Srinagar waded through muddy, hip-deep water, carrying children on their shoulders.

Photo

A damaged bridge across the Tawi River in the region of Jammu, where at least 140 people died in severe flooding.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday, calling the floods a national disaster. In a news release, he also expressed his “anguish at the loss that has been caused in neighboring areas in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.”

He said the government would provide $166 million to Jammu and Kashmir to supplement the state’s own disaster relief fund.

Mr. Modi also wrote to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan on Sunday. “I offer any assistance that you may need in the relief efforts that will be undertaken by the government of Pakistan,” he said. “Our resources are at your disposal wherever you need them.”

Mr. Sharif declined Mr. Modi’s offer. After surveying the damage in the Rawalakot district of Kashmir on Monday, he pledged assistance and called for “addressing the deeper causes of recurrent floods and strengthening the preparedness” of local communities, according to a statement issued by his office.

“I believe closer collaboration in disaster management should be a part of our agenda for peace and development in the region,” Mr. Sharif said.

Some Pakistanis have blamed India for suddenly releasing river water into Pakistan, violating an understanding of giving warning before opening dams. The disaster also put additional strain on the government of Mr. Sharif, who is grappling with a monthlong political crisis caused by opponents demanding his resignation.

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the leader of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, accused India of committing “water aggression,” local news media reported.

Relations between India and Pakistan were strained last month when India called off foreign-secretary-level talks with Pakistan after a Pakistani envoy met with Kashmiri separatist leaders in India.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Pakistan on Sunday expressed “deepest condolences over the loss of precious lives of our Kashmiri brethren on both sides of the Line of Control,” the contested border dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

As floodwater moved downstream, an emergency was declared in Baluchistan Province, according to government officials.

Nida Najar reported from New Delhi, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan. Reporting was contributed by Hari Kumar and Betwa Sharma from New Delhi; Sameer Yasir from Srinagar, Kashmir; and Waqar Gillani from Lahore, Pakistan.

A version of this article appears in print on September 9, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: India and Pakistan Strain as Flooding Kills Hundreds. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Middle East

At U.N., Kerry Thanks Other Nations for Their Support in Fighting Islamic State

By SOMINI SENGUPTASEPT. 19, 2014

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Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, left, greeted Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari of Iraq after speaking in support of Syria before the United Nations Security Council on Friday.

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UNITED NATIONS — Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday expressed gratitude to a host of allies for bolstering the American-led campaign against terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria, singling out the French for airstrikes and Saudi clerics for condemning the Islamic State as an “order of Satan.”

Then in an overture at once generous and vague, he said, “The fact is there is a role for nearly every country in the world to play, including Iran.”

Mr. Kerry, who was drumming up world support at a special session of the Security Council for the battle against the Islamic State, did not say what role Iran could play, though he said earlier this week that its leaders had no place at an international meeting held in Paris to discuss the fight against the Islamic State.

Any cooperation with Iran would complicate the United States’ relations with equally vital countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Iran, for its part, seized on the occasion to express support for Syria, its ally in the region, with its deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, warning that any strategy that undermined the Syrian government “will be a recipe for defeat.”

Continue reading the main story

Graphic

How ISIS Works

With oil revenues, arms and organization, the jihadist group controls vast stretches of Syria and Iraq and aspires to statehood.

OPEN Graphic

The exchange showed the difficulties of assembling a coalition against a widely reviled enemy. Regional powers used the meeting, which was ostensibly designed to support the beleaguered Iraqi government in its struggle against the Islamic State, to take swipes at one another — and Syria was the elephant in the room.

Turkey called the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad a “patron of extremism,” while Saudi Arabia blamed it for fueling the rise of the Islamic State.

“ISIL and the Syrian regime are but different sides of the same coin,” the Saudi ambassador, Abdallah Y. al-Mouallimi, told the Council, using another name for the Islamic State.

Bahrain took digs at its rivals in the region for not doing enough to cut off the flow of funds to terrorist groups, announcing that it would host a conference in November to develop ways to combat the financing.

The Syrian government’s most powerful backer, Russia, warned the coalition against expanding its military efforts to Syria. The Russian ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, bluntly asserted that any airstrikes without the consent of the Syrian government or a Security Council resolution would be illegal.

The United States has suggested that it is prepared to attack terrorist targets in Syria, though it has not spelled out under what circumstances or under what legal rationale.

The Council session on Friday, which Mr. Kerry led, was part of a concerted diplomatic effort to rally support for the fight against the Islamic State, which has ranged through Iraq and Syria, seized oil fields and murdered three Western hostages — two Americans and a Briton — along with countless Iraqi and Syrian civilians.

Mr. Kerry’s visit came in advance of a Security Council resolution, drafted by the United States, to stem the flow of foreign fighters into banned terrorist organizations operating in the region. The Council will take up that measure at a meeting next Thursday led by President Obama, who will also chair a Security Council session next week.

The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, huddled with Mr. Kerry before the meeting began. It was a marked contrast to the French-American dispute in 2003 over the question of invading Iraq.

“The throat cutters of Daesh must be fought and beaten,” Mr. Fabius said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. “Iraq and the region can only then find peace.”

The difficulties of a Syria strategy were evident in the remarks of the German foreign minister. Germany is supplying arms and training to Kurdish forces and Iraqi security forces. The minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said nothing, however, about whether his country would take part in possible military action in Syria.

“In Syria, Germany will continue to strengthen moderate voices and structures — they are the only alternative to dictatorship or terrorism,” he said.

Mr. Kerry took pains to thank a host of American allies for strengthening their domestic laws, devoting soldiers and warplanes to the effort against the Islamic State, and countering extremist propaganda.

“I’m convinced that the fact that so many countries are represented here from so many parts of the world really underscores the clear need for all of us to come together to welcome and to support the new, inclusive government in Iraq, and, of course, to put an end to ISIL’s unfettered barbarity.”

Earlier in the week, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, mocked the Arab states that Washington is gathering as a “coalition of the repentant,” because some of them had allowed the Islamic State to thrive.

A senior Western diplomat said it may be impossible to keep Iran out of the coalition forever.

“In the long run it will be difficult to find a solution without Iran.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: At U.N., Kerry Thanks Other Nations for Their Support in Fighting Islamic State. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Middle East |NYT Now

How ISIS Works

The jihadist group has oil revenues, arms and organization, controls vast stretches of Syria and Iraq and aspires to statehood. UPDATED September 16, 2014

Organization

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has a detailed structure that encompasses many functions and jurisdictions, according to ISIS documents seized by Iraqi forces and seen by American officials and Hashim Alhashimi, an Iraqi researcher. Many of its leaders are former officers from Saddam Hussein’s long-disbanded army who augmented their military training with terrorist techniques during years of fighting American troops.  Related article »

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of ISIS, has two deputies. One is responsible for Syria and the other for Iraq.

Leadership council

Mr. Baghdadi relies on a number of advisers with direct access to him. Members of this council help handle religious differences, order executions and ensure that policies conform to ISIS doctrine.

Cabinet

Managers oversee departments like finance, security, media, prisoners and recruitment.

Local leaders

At least a dozen deputies across Iraq and Syria report to the deputy of each country. Many of these officials were military officers during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of ISIS, has two deputies. One is responsible for Syria and the other for Iraq.

Leadership council

Mr. Baghdadi relies on a number of advisers with direct access to him. Members of this council help handle religious differences, order executions and ensure that policies conform to ISIS doctrine.

Cabinet

Managers oversee departments like finance, security, media, prisoners and recruitment.

Local leaders

At least a dozen deputies across Iraq and Syria report to the deputy of each country. Many of these officials were military officers during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of ISIS, has two deputies. One is responsible for Syria and the other for Iraq.

Leadership council

Mr. Baghdadi relies on a number of advisers with direct access to him. Members of this council help handle religious differences, order executions and ensure that policies conform to ISIS doctrine.

Cabinet

Managers oversee departments like finance, security, media, prisoners and recruitment.

Local leaders

At least a dozen deputies across Iraq and Syria report to the deputy of each country. Many of these officials were military officers during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Sources: Jasmine Opperman, Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium; Hisham Alhashimi. Photograph by The Associated Press.

Territory

ISIS has rapidly expanded its control over Iraq and Syria by seizing towns and cities near major supply routes, critical infrastructure and border crossings.

ISIS-controlled

places

Areas under

full control

Areas of

recurring attacks

Sparsely populated

areas

ISIS-controlled places

Areas under full control

Areas of recurring attacks

Sparsely populated areas

Sources: Caerus Associates; IHS Jane’s; Institute for the Study of War; Soufan Group; (control areas as of Sept. 9)

Over the summer, the group pressed deeper into Syria, regaining some territory it had lost to other rebel groups and capturing several government military bases. It is still trying to consolidate its control along the border between Iraq and Syria.

ISIS fighters experienced some setbacks in Iraq, where American airstrikes helped Iraqi and Kurdish forces reclaim the Mosul Dam and the Turkmen city of Amerli.

Financing

Millions of dollars in oil revenue have made ISIS one of the wealthiest terror groups in history. Experts estimate the value of the output from the dozen or so oil fields and refineries under its control in Iraq and Syria at $1 million to $2 million a day.  Related article »

Oil fields Oil fields controlled by ISIS

100 Miles

TURKEY

IRAQI

KURDISTAN

IRAN

Mosul

Raqqa

Erbil

Aleppo

Iraq-Turkey

pipeline

Kirkuk

Omar

oil field

Baniyas

Tartus

Baiji oil

refinery

Euphrates

Homs

Tigris

SYRIA

LEBANON

IRAQ

Damascus

Baghdad

Falluja

Rutba

ISRAEL

JORDAN

TURKEY

100 miles

IRAQI

KURDISTAN

IRAN

Mosul

Erbil

Raqqa

Aleppo

Iraq-Turkey

pipeline

Omar

oil field

Kirkuk

IRAQ

Baniyas

Tartus

Baiji oil

refinery

Euphrates

Homs

Tigris

SYRIA

LEBANON

Damascus

Baghdad

Falluja

Rutba

TURKEY

IRAN

100 miles

IRAQI

KURDISTAN

Aleppo

IRAQ

Homs

Tigris

SYRIA

Tigris

Euphrates

Baghdad

Damascus

Sources: Brookings Doha Center; Caerus Associates; Energy Information Administration; International Energy Agency; Iraq Oil Report; Platts

The group controls many of Syria’s eastern oil fields. In July, ISIS fighters took control of the country's largest oil field, Omar, which was producing about 30,000 barrels a day when it was fully functioning. Recently it was producing about a third of that or less.

ISIS expanded its attacks into Iraq’s oil-producing areas in June, and an August sweep into the Kurdish region gave it access to more of the country’s oil assets. Experts estimate that the Iraqi oil fields under ISIS control may produce 25,000 to 40,000 barrels of oil a day — worth a minimum of $1.2 million in the underground market.

Governing

When it seizes a city, ISIS keeps select services operating while using brute force to impose its vision of a fundamentalist Islamic state. Religious police make sure that shops close during Muslim prayers and that women cover their hair and faces in public. Public spaces are walled off with heavy metal fences topped with the black flags of ISIS. People accused of disobeying the law are punished by public executions or amputations. At the same time, ISIS keeps markets, bakeries and gas stations functioning.

Food distribution near Aleppo.

Distribution of cooking gas in Deir al-Zour.

Destruction of an unapproved religious site.

A member of the ISIS religious police.

Food distribution near Aleppo.

Distribution of cooking gas in Deir al-Zour.

Destruction of an unapproved religious site.

A member of the ISIS religious police.

Source: ISIS videos posted online

Military

The Central Intelligence Agency believes that ISIS has between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters in Iraq and Syria and estimates that 15,000 of the jihadists are foreign recruits.  Related article »

The origins of ISIS’s foreign recruits

Sweden

Russia

Britain

Canada

Germany

Ukraine

Kazakhstan

France

United

States

Turkey

Syria

China

Afghanistan

Tunisia

Iraq

Pakistan

Libya

Morocco

Egypt

Saudi

Arabia

Sudan

Somalia

KEY

Indonesia

50

100

500

1,500 fighters

Australia

Dotted lines represent the low end of a range.

Syria

Iraq

KEY

50

100

500

1,500 fighters

Dotted lines represent the low end of a range.

Sources: C.I.A.; Peter Neumann, King's College London; the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence; Soufan Group

The largest blocs of foreign fighters come from nearby Muslim countries, like Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. Smaller contingents come from countries as far away and disparate as Belgium, China, Russia and the United States.

Weapons

ISIS has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of weapons and equipment from Iraqi and Syrian military installations. It has also intercepted supplies en route to Syrian rebel groups from foreign governments. Conflict Armament Research, a private firm that investigates arms trafficking, has tracked small arms and rockets used by ISIS that appear to have been provided to other combatants by Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Among the weapons that Conflict Armament Research examined were M16 and M4 rifles stamped “Property of U.S. Govt.” Such weapons are also in the hands of irregular Shiite forces in Iraq, where the United States provided hundreds of thousands of small arms to supportive forces during its long occupation.

Conflict Armament Research found M79 antitank rockets from the former Yugoslavia that were identical to M79 rockets provided by Saudi Arabia to rebels in Syria.

Sources: Conflict Armament Research; IHS Jane's

Related Coverage »

- The Iraq-ISIS Conflict in Maps, Photos and Video

- A Rogue State Along Two Rivers

- Ukraine Crisis in Maps

- Assessing the Damage and Destruction in Gaza

Reporting from Iraq and Jordan by TIM ARANGO, SUADAD AL-SALHY, C.J. CHIVERS, BEN HUBBARD, ROD NORDLAND and ALISSA RUBIN

By Gregor Aisch, Joe Burgess, C. J. Chivers, Alicia Parlapiano, Sergio Peçanha, Archie Tse, Derek Watkins and Karen Yourish

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Europe |NYT Now

Weighing a Political Comeback, Sarkozy Says He Will Seek His Party’s Presidency

By SUZANNE DALEY and MAÏA de la BAUMESEPT. 19, 2014

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Former President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in March.

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PARIS — Former President Nicolas Sarkozy used his Facebook page on Friday to announce that he would seek the presidency of his party, a first step toward declaring his candidacy to run once again for the presidency of France in 2017.

Mr. Sarkozy has been openly flirting with a comeback for most of the year, and his announcement, at the end of a difficult week for President François Hollande and his Socialist Party, came as a surprise to virtually no one. Still, it was likely to add another volatile element to French politics at a troubling economic time and to be taken as a measure of the deeply unpopular president’s political vulnerability.

Within minutes of Mr. Sarkozy’s post, the letter to his “dear friends” had registered hundreds of comments both for and against him. In his letter, Mr. Sarkozy concluded that he needed to return to politics because it was a form of “abandonment to remain a spectator” when France’s politics were in such disarray.

He promised to completely revamp his party, the Union for a Popular Movement, though he gave few specifics. He made no mention of his recent legal troubles, including the 18 hours he spent under questioning by the police and investigators in July over accusations of corruption related to the financing of his 2007 campaign.

Mr. Sarkozy has denied wrongdoing and called the accusations against him grotesque and manipulated for political ends.

The French have a long history of embracing political comebacks, from Napoleon to former President Jacques Chirac, whose career had many ups and downs before he was able to come back and serve two terms as president starting in 1995.

More recently, Alain Juppé, a former prime minister who was convicted in 2004 of political chicanery, returned to be foreign minister under Mr. Sarkozy and is now considered a viable potential candidate for the presidency of the country.

But Mr. Sarkozy faces a number of problems. In addition to being associated with a half-dozen continuing corruption cases, his political party is deep in debt after having overspent during Mr. Sarkozy’s failed 2012 campaign. Mr. Sarkozy would also have to find a way to unify a party that has been riven by internal divisions.

Yves-Marie Cann, a director at the polling institute CSA, said Mr. Sarkozy would also have difficulty presenting himself as a new candidate to the larger public. “He has not managed to recast his image,” Mr. Cann said. “He remains a divisive figure.”

Recent polls have offered little good news for any of France’s traditional parties, left or right.

But the elections are a long way away, and much could happen to change the situation. The party primaries are not expected to take place until 2016. The presidential elections are set for 2017.

Until recently, Mr. Sarkozy did not seem to have the backing of many prominent members of the party, known as the U.M.P. But endorsements by other U.M.P. officials have come fast and furious in the French news media in the last few weeks, many of them lauding Mr. Sarkozy for his energy and intelligence. There seems little doubt that he will win the presidency of U.M.P. He is enormously popular in the party.

Some prominent Socialist officials concede that Mr. Sarkozy could make a formidable candidate. Still, Mr. Hollande won the 2012 campaign, at least in part by using Mr. Sarkozy’s record against him. In a speech on Thursday, Mr. Hollande returned to this strategy, highlighting unemployment figures from Mr. Sarkozy’s administration.

Carlos Da Silva, a Socialist member of Parliament, said Mr. Sarkozy would be a candidate who needed to be taken seriously. “He can be dangerous,” he said. “But we are ready to face him and his record.”

In his letter, Mr. Sarkozy ignored the investigation against him, focusing instead on his personal evolution since leaving office. He said he had been able to analyze his term, measure the vanity of certain feelings and talk to the French, without the weight of power distorting human relationships. He said he had found “despair, rejection and anger at the government rising, inexorably like a tide.”

While some of those who posted on his Facebook page applauded his return, others made clear they found Mr. Sarkozy’s letter ridiculous. One commenter, in a reference to former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, suggested that, “Our own Berlusconi is coming back to us!”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Weighing a Political Comeback, Sarkozy Says He Will Seek His Party’s Presidency. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe | Memo From France |NYT Now

Sarkozy, Plagued by Accusations, Sees Left-Wing Plot to Destroy Him

By DAN BILEFSKY and MAÏA de la BAUMEJULY 6, 2014

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PARIS — Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France who suffered the unprecedented indignity last week of being hauled before an investigative panel for 15 hours of questioning, has angrily denounced the inquiry and cast himself as the victim of a vast left-wing plot to destroy him.

“There are things that are being organized,” Mr. Sarkozy, a conservative who was France’s head of state from 2007 to 2012, hinted darkly. He called the allegations against him “preposterous.”

Does he have a case?

Many of his supporters and some legal experts say he does, and express suspicions about the unusually aggressive legal tactics used in the case as well as its timing, which could torpedo his possible run for the presidency in 2017.

The string of accusations against Mr. Sarkozy — garnered in part from secretly recorded conversations of the former president and his lawyer — include that he sought confidential information from an influential judge and financed his 2007 presidential campaign with $68 million in illegal funds from Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya. If charged and found guilty of the most serious charge, he could face up to 10 years behind bars.

The Socialist prime minister, Manuel Valls, has insisted that the government is not behind the case. But critics, not least of them Mr. Sarkozy, say that such claims ring hollow in a country where the internecine battles between right and left are virulent.

Mr. Sarkozy’s supporters argue that the timing of the case against Mr. Sarkozy is no coincidence. President François Hollande, a Socialist and longtime political foe of Mr. Sarkozy’s, is buffeted by record-low approval ratings, a sluggish economy and infighting among his party ranks. Sébastien Huyghe, a parliamentarian and member of Mr. Sarkozy’s rightist Union for a Popular Movement party, argued that Mr. Sarkozy’s misfortunes were calculated to revive Mr. Hollande’s own sagging political prospects.

“I think that people on the left are significantly concerned by Mr. Sarkozy’s political comeback,” he said. “They’ve named judges who don’t like Sarkozy, and it is very insidious. I am convinced that the president of the republic is deeply afraid of Mr. Sarkozy. His greatest fear is to run against him in 2017, and he will use any means possible to beat him.”

While there is no evidence of Mr. Hollande’s direct involvement in the case, some see a personal vendetta at work. The bitter rivalry between Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Hollande has sometimes boiled over into barely concealed hatred. During the 2012 presidential campaign, Mr. Sarkozy called Mr. Hollande “useless” and a liar, and said he had not achieved anything in 30 years of politics. Mr. Hollande, in turn, described Mr. Sarkozy as a “salopard,” or bastard.

The political timing of the case also raises questions, coming at a decidedly bad time for Mr. Sarkozy’s party, battered by a leadership crisis and adrift politically. Before the latest scandal, Mr. Sarkozy was viewed as a likely candidate to lead the party, which will choose a leader in November. Now that he is tainted, his prospects are significantly diminished.

Though evidence of a conspiracy is circumstantial at best, few disagree that Mr. Sarkozy is despised on the left. Both as a former interior minister, and then as president, he deeply infuriated the left by advocating free markets, espousing a zero-tolerance approach to crime and characterizing the judiciary as an insipid clique too soft on criminals.

Some political observers have suggested that his contempt for the judiciary is coming back to haunt him. Mr. Sarkozy sought last week to cast doubts on one of the judges on the case, Claire Thépaut, noting that she was a member of a leftist magistrate’s union. Others have observed that the newly established anticorruption prosecutor’s office pursuing the case against Mr. Sarkozy was established under a Socialist government in January.

Jean-Jérôme Bertolus, a leading commentator for the French broadcaster Itele, noted that in the Sarkozy camp, Ms. Thépaut was considered “a personal enemy.” Asked about Mr. Sarkozy’s election defeat in 2012 by a journalist for Mediapart, a news website, Ms. Thépaut replied, “What is certain is that we hope to return to calm, serenity and confidence.”

Though apparently no fan of the former president, she is not precluded from judging the case, and the French news media characterized Ms. Thépaut as a serious and respected judge. The magistrate’s union told Le Monde, the daily newspaper, that while Ms. Thépaut had been engaged with the union, she had never been a member, nor campaigned against Mr. Sarkozy. Françoise Martres, the president of the magistrate’s union, also rose to her defense, saying that “a judge without opinions doesn’t exist.”

For all the talk of conspiracy, many analysts see Mr. Sarkozy’s attempt to portray himself as a victim as a disingenuous tactic aimed at drawing attention away from the legal challenges that he faces. “It is hard to see this as a conspiracy when you have so many cases accumulated against Mr. Sarkozy,” said Érik Emptaz, editor in chief of Le Canard enchaîné, an influential satirical newspaper. “But it’s also true that the tactics used against him have been spectacularly aggressive.”

The case against Mr. Sarkozy hinges on whether he, with the help of his lawyer, Thierry Herzog, sought to obtain information from an influential appeals court judge, Gilbert Azibert, about a legal inquiry into the financing of his 2007 election campaign. At issue is whether Mr. Azibert fed Mr. Sarkozy information and whether in return he was promised a post in Monaco. But critics of the case note that Mr. Azibert never received any job in the principality, and had no direct links to any of the cases under scrutiny.

The tactics used by investigators could prove problematic in court, legal experts said. The bulk of the case against Mr. Sarkozy hinges on secret recordings of his private conversations with his lawyer that may breach lawyer-client privilege.

Pierre-Olivier Sur, president of the Paris bar association, told the right-leaning Le Figaro newspaper that under French law, secret recordings of private conversations made in 2013 were not admissible for a case dating from years earlier. “The attempt to use 2013 calls to shed light on facts that happened in 2006 creates doubts about the real goal of these wiretaps,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on July 7, 2014, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Sarkozy, Plagued by Accusations, Sees Left-Wing Plot to Destroy Him. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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After Sweep, Australia Adds Security at Parliament

By CHRIS BUCKLEYSEPT. 19, 2014

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HONG KONG — The Australian government intensified security at the national Parliament building on Friday, a day after the police detained 15 people in an operation that the prime minister said had been prompted by signs that militant Islamists were planning “demonstration executions.”

The security sweep involved some 800 police officers simultaneously raiding homes across western Sydney. By Friday, most of the people detained had been released without being charged. Two were charged: one with conspiring to prepare a terrorist attack, who was held in custody; the other on a weapons count, who was freed on bail.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and senior Australian police officials said that the investigation into suspected supporters of the Islamic State, a group promoting a vision of an unsparing caliphate at war with those it sees as unbelievers and heretics, was far from over and that serious risks remained of some kind of attack.

“There certainly has been chatter amongst the terrorist support networks of an attack on government and government people, and Parliament House has been specifically mentioned,” Mr. Abbott said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

He said that the Australian Federal Police would augment security at Parliament House, which opened in 1988 and sits semi-embedded in a hill in Canberra, the capital. Mr. Abbott and members of his government also said that the sweeping security raids were needed to thwart plans for attacks on unsuspecting citizens, similar to one in London last year, when an off-duty soldier was hacked to death on a street.

“It is a serious situation when all you need to do to carry out a terrorist attack is to have a knife, an iPhone and a victim,” Mr. Abbott said on Friday.

On Thursday, the police also staged similar raids in Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, which will host the Group of 20 summit meeting in November.

Australia has a relatively small population of Muslims and migrants from the Middle East. A census in 2011 found that there were fewer than 500,000 Muslims in a total population of 21.5 million people. But security services have become worried by evidence that a few Muslims, especially young, disaffected men, have embraced the Islamic State’s credo of ruthless religious militancy, and some have traveled to Syria to support the group, which is also known as ISIS.

Mr. Abbott told reporters that an Australian in Syria had been “sending very strong orders back to his networks of followers here in Australia — that is why the police acted swiftly and decisively.” Australian news reports have indicated that the prime minister was referring to Mohammed Ali Baryalei, a former Sydney bouncer now in Syria.

Australia is a close ally of the United States, and Mr. Abbott said last week that his conservative government would send 600 troops to the Middle East to help the effort to contain and extinguish the Islamic State. On Thursday night, protesters in a heavily Muslim suburb of Sydney denounced the police raids, and on Friday news reports said that a mosque in far northern Australia had been vandalized.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: After Sweep, Australia Adds Security at Parliament. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Britain Knew of 2 Suspects in the Killing of a Soldier

Flowers lay in the southeast London neighborhood of Woolwich.

By JOHN F. BURNS and ALAN COWELL

Published: May 23, 2013

LONDON — British security officials confirmed Thursday that both suspects in the hacking death of an off-duty British soldier were known to MI5, the domestic security agency, in the years before the attack, in which men drove their car into the soldier on a busy London street and then chopped at him with cleavers as he lay prone on the sidewalk.

Twenty-four hours after the attack, with Britain still reeling with shock at its sheer brutality, the victim was identified as a 25-year-old army bandsman and machine-gunner, Lee Rigby, who had served in Afghanistan and was the father of a 2-year-old boy. He had left his barracks in plainclothes to visit his mother, the authorities said.

Security officials said the suspects were radicalized British Muslim men with family origins in Nigeria. One was named by the BBC as Michael Adebolajo, 28, who it said had been raised in a Christian family in Romford, east of London. He converted to Islam in about 2001, and joined a radical Muslim group, Al Muhajiroun, that was banned in Britain in 2010 as an Islamic terrorist organization, notorious for having praised those who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. The other suspect was not identified.

The two suspects in the killing were under police guard in separate London hospitals, where they were being treated for gunshot wounds inflicted by the police when they were arrested, officials said.

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism unit mounted raids on Thursday on six residential addresses that were said to have been linked to the attackers, including one in Romford, one in the London suburb of Greenwich and a third in the Lincolnshire village of Saxilby, 150 miles north of London, where neighbors said some of Mr. Adebolajo’s family members were living in a large, modern home in a new subdivision. Scotland Yard said the raids had led to the arrests of a man and a woman, both 29, whom they would not name, who were suspected of conspiracy to commit murder.

New details of the attack in the southeast London neighborhood of Woolwich on Wednesday compounded the sense of outrage felt in Britain at its savagery.

The killers were described as having rained blows on the inert soldier before dragging his corpse into the street, roaming around and waving off would-be helpers with bloodied hands, cleavers still in their grasp, apparently intent on keeping the body on public display until the police arrived. One of the two men was caught on cellphone video warning bystanders that they would not be safe either until British soldiers were withdrawn from all Muslim lands.

One witness who spoke to the BBC said that the police had opened fire when one of the two attackers, cleaver still in hand, appeared to rush the officers.

The episode appeared to bear some of the hallmarks of “lone wolf” terrorist attacks like the one last month at the Boston Marathon. Involving low-tech weapons and a spontaneity aimed at foiling pre-emptive discovery, they have been propagated in recent years by an array of Islamic militant Web sites that Western security experts have linked to Al Qaeda.

Such attacks have been urged as a means of striking back at Western nations, particularly Britain and the United States, in the face of their success in disrupting terrorist networks with high-technology tools, including drones and satellite- and computer-aided surveillance systems.

After hurrying back to London overnight from a European tour, Prime Minister David Cameron suggested in a statement to reporters that the country should emulate the example of Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, 48, a French-born Cub Scout leader whose actions at the site of the killing earned her hero’s plaudits in the morning newspapers.

In broadcast interviews, Ms. Loyau-Kennett said she had gotten off a passing bus when she saw a body lying in the street, intending to offer first aid. Instead, she said, she came face to face with one of the killers, and kept him discussing motives in a successful bid to distract him until the police arrived.

“When told by the attacker that he wanted to start a war in London, she replied, ‘You’re going to lose. It’s only you versus many,’ ” Mr. Cameron said.

He added, “She spoke for us all.”

There was a growing concern that Britain’s security services, after a long chapter of success in disrupting more complex terrorist plots since the transit system bombings in London that killed 52 people and the four bombers on July 7, 2005, might have missed opportunities to head off the Woolwich attack.

In that sense, the Boston Marathon bombings again provided a point of reference. The older of the two brothers accused of that strike, and some of his associates, had drawn the attention of the F.B.I. and other American authorities beforehand, in part through their ties to Chechnya.

What British security officials knew about the two men held after the London attack remained unclear. But unidentified officials who spoke with British reporters said that both men had appeared on lists of people known to have been involved with Islamic militant groups that have been under surveillance by agencies, including MI5, that form the front line in Britain’s counterterrorist operations.

In his Downing Street statement, Mr. Cameron acknowledged that news coverage of the killing in Britain had included “the point that the two suspects in this horrific attack were known to the security services,” but he could not comment on the investigation. But he added that “in the normal practice in these sorts of cases,” the actions of the security agencies involved would be open to review by two bodies that have formal powers in such matters, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, in the case of Scotland Yard, and a parliamentary body, the Intelligence and Security Committee, in the case of MI5 and MI6, which is the foreign intelligence agency.

Security officials were quoted by the BBC as confirming that Mr. Adebolajo, one of the two suspects in the killing, had come under surveillance in recent years when he attended meetings of Al Muhajiroun, the militant group that was later banned.

The former leader of that group, Anjem Choudary, said in a BBC interview that Mr. Adebolajo had been a regular attendee — “very quiet, very unassuming, very nonviolent” — and that others at the meetings had known him by the pseudonym of Brother Mujahid, an Arabic term that means holy warrior.

He said Mr. Adebolajo had stopped attending meetings a few years ago, shortly before the group was banned.

British security experts noted that several of the militants involved in the 2005 transit bombings had been known to MI5 for years before the attacks, but that MI5 officers had reviewed their cases and decided that they were peripheral figures, apparently not involved in terrorist plotting.

The decision not to keep track of those men, the experts said, may prove to have been similar to the case of Mr. Adebolajo.

MI5 officials have said repeatedly that despite a substantial increase in the agency’s financing and staffing since 2005, it has the resources to actively monitor at any one time only a fraction of the militants who have drawn the agency’s attention.

John F. Burns reported from London, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

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U.S. |NYT Now

A Beltway Battle That’s a Bipartisan Dream: Washington-Baltimore World Series

By JENNIFER STEINHAUERSEPT. 19, 2014

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Washington Nationals players on Tuesday. “The Republican leader and I love watching baseball,” Senator Harry Reid said.

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WASHINGTON — Few words in America draw as much disdain as “the Beltway,” a roadway connoting political dysfunction, dowdy hemlines and general cultural remove.

But a season of regional baseball bliss has elevated the reputation of Washington and its environs, culminating this week when the Washington Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles clinched their divisions, leading to dreams of a “Beltway series.”

Pause only momentarily to note that the new appellation, coined by baseball announcers immediately after the two teams’ victories, is not really correct. Both cities are encircled by a beltway, but the two come nowhere close to touching, separated by more than 20 miles. Even so, the prospect of a battle between two teams in such proximity — something fans in other cities have long enjoyed — has animated the region.

Should the two teams make it through their league playoffs and meet in the World Series — admittedly, an optimistic chain of events — the choice of which team to support will cleave families and places of business.

Photo

Shirlene Ceballos and Alex Belano tried on hats at the Washington Nationals Clubhouse team store on Thursday.

“There is going to be a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth around my house,” said Mike Davis, a lawyer and Nationals fan who lives just over the District of Columbia line in Maryland. His son, Chris, loves the Orioles. “I am very disappointed in him,” he said, noting sheepishly that Chris is, um, 6.

The absence of a team in Washington after the departure of the Senators in 1971 meant that many local fans became loyal to the Orioles. But since 2005, when the Montreal Expos were transformed into the Nationals, alliances have grown stickier, pitting a once-formidable franchise with World Series rings against a sexy upstart. The Nationals and the Orioles made the playoffs in 2012, but their odds of meeting seemed more remote, and both lost in their division series.

In the Nationals, Washington finds both sporting and civic redemption. In recent years, its football team has been known less for its record (bad) and more for the controversy over whether to maintain the Redskins name. (Its owner has recently turned to an advertisement in which it is carefully explained that some Native Americans actually think the name is fantastic.)

Photo

Meredith Case Ellison ordered custom shoes with "Go Orioles" stitched into the side.

Further, the city’s reputation suffers from the cantankerous disposition of its part-time residents — members of Congress — who have managed to come together, at least a little bit, in their baseball joy.

“One thing that you never hear often enough is the Republican leader and I love watching baseball,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said on the Senate floor this week, referring to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky. “And we share often our views of the team, and how if we were there we may do things a little differently, but we still are a booster for the team.”

Mr. Reid also noted, for roughly the millionth time, that the Nationals’ manager, Matt Williams — who perhaps mulls what things, if he served in the Senate, he might do a little differently — and the outfielder Bryce Harper are both from his home state.

Photo

Baltimore Orioles fans celebrated after their team won the American League East earlier this week.

Mr. McConnell, with far less animation, conceded the point. “It is a pretty exciting development and has a lot of Nevada connections,” he said, and then moved on to trashing Mr. Reid’s agenda.

A generational struggle, this is not. Thousands of nonnative Washingtonians have spent their years here rooting for other teams. Many fill Nationals Park, marring the reigning Natitude with their loud hooting for the Phillies or the Braves or whatnot.

“Because no one grew up being a Nats fan, while there are a lot of die-hard fans, it is just not a longstanding rivalry,” said Lauren Case, 47, who grew up outside Baltimore a die-hard Orioles fan. “That is the difference between this and Mets versus the Yankees or Oakland versus the Giants,” added Ms. Case, who has graciously allowed her two children to pick their own loyalties. They chose hers.

Photo

The Washington Nationals won the National League East the same night.

Actually, there was ill will even before there were teams to be rivals. Peter G. Angelos, the principal owner of the Orioles, was overtly hostile to the notion of a baseball team in Washington, insisting that it would eat into his fan base, and worked hard to prevent it from happening.

He did not prevail, but the founding of the Nationals in 2005 hardly created an instant rivalry. The Orioles have mostly been in decline since the retirement of their superstar shortstop, Cal Ripken Jr., in 2001. The Nationals began their existence as mediocre transplants who seemed intent on continuing the tradition set by the Senators as perpetual losers and labored in the ramshackle old stadium made famous by the Redskins.

But over the past few years, the Orioles have been rebuilt, and attendance per game at Camden Yards this year has risen to its highest level since 2005. The Nationals have become winners by building around young stars like Mr. Harper and veterans like Denard Span and Jayson Werth. Since their move to their riverfront stadium in 2008, they have become the talk of Washington.

“This is a dream come true,” said Fred Malek, a Republican operative who led the charge to bring the Nationals to the capital but failed in his attempt to own the team. “What we have seen is what we anticipated all along, and that is that a good team that provided excitement to fans from either city would draw well.”

Both teams also have cool stadiums, accessible by public transportation. “If you work on the Hill or downtown, you can be at the game in an hour or less,” said Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Mr. Reid. “It is something people can do after work like a happy hour.” Noting that Congress will be out of session in October, he added, “There are going to be a lot of Hill staffers with time on their hands.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: This Beltway Battle? A Bipartisan Dream. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Politics |NYT Now

Obama Unveils Push for Young People to Do More Against Campus Assaults

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and ELENA SCHNEIDERSEPT. 19, 2014

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Obama Starts Campaign Against Assault

Obama Starts Campaign Against Assault President Obama announced a new nationwide public service campaign, “It’s on Us,” aimed at urging young people to do more to prevent campus sexual assaults. Publish Date September 19, 2014.

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WASHINGTON — President Obama has tried to use the power of his office to combat sexual assaults on college campuses. On Friday, he got some help.

In a speech from the East Room, the president announced “It’s on Us,” a nationwide public service campaign aimed at urging young people to do more to prevent campus sexual assaults. Mr. Obama called for a “fundamental shift in our culture” in the way women are treated and in the response to victims of sexual assault.

“From sports leagues to pop culture to politics, our society does not sufficiently value women,” Mr. Obama said. “We still don’t condemn sexual assault as loudly as we should.”

At the event, the administration debuted a 30-second video, which features celebrities including the actors Kerry Washington and Jon Hamm, the musician Questlove, and the N.B.A. star Kevin Love.

Officials said the celebrities involved would know how to get through to the millennial generation.

Mr. Love, who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Olivia Munn, an actress in the HBO series “The Newsroom,” attended the announcement.

Photo

Lilly Jay, a sexual assault victim, at the White House with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Mr. Obama also put a heavy emphasis on engaging men in the conversation.

“It is not just on parents of young women to caution them, it is on the parents of young men to teach them respect for women,” Mr. Obama said. “It is on grown men to set an example and be clear about what it means to be a man.”

While Mr. Obama did not specifically mention the recent problems the N.F.L. has had with domestic violence, he did acknowledge recent instances.

“We’ve been working on campus sexual assault for several years, but the issue of violence against women is now in the news every day,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re getting a better picture of what domestic violence is all about. People are talking about it. Victims are realizing they’re not alone.”

The campaign’s name, “It’s on Us,” is intended to send the message that everyone should feel a responsibility to confront the problem of sexual assault.

Mr. Obama’s White House has been aggressively seeking to fight the growing number of sexual assaults at the nation’s colleges. In April, after a series of highly publicized rapes on college campuses, the administration released guidelines aimed at pressing universities to do more.

A task force created by the White House is promoting the effort with an advertising campaign called “1 Is 2 Many,” driving home the zero-tolerance policy. The task force has also urged colleges to conduct surveys to document the extent of the problem on their campuses.

And in May, the Department of Education released the names of 55 colleges and universities that are being investigated for their handling of sexual assault complaints. The release of the information was intended as another pressure tactic.

The president also introduced an “It’s on Us” logo on Friday. Electronic Arts, a popular video game maker, has pledged to include the logo in many of its games. There is also a campaign website: itsonus.org.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama Unveils Push for Young People to Do More Against Campus Assaults. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

N.F.L. Domestic Violence Policy Toughened in Wake of Ray Rice Case

By KEN BELSONAUG. 28, 2014

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N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged in a letter to team owners that he made a mistake imposing only a two-game ban on the Ravens’ Ray Rice.

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In a rare mea culpa, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday that he had mishandled the Ray Rice case, in which the Baltimore Ravens running back was suspended for two games after being accused of assaulting his fiancée.

The suspension was announced late last month to an instant and furious uproar from women’s groups, organizations supporting victims of domestic violence and league players who felt the penalty was too light and inconsistent with punishments for other offenses.

“My disciplinary decision led the public to question our sincerity, our commitment and whether we understood the toll that domestic violence inflicts on so many families,” Goodell said in a letter to team owners. “I take responsibility both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn’t get it right. Simply put, we have to do better. And we will.”

Goodell said that effective immediately any N.F.L. employee — not only a player — who is found to have engaged in assault, battery, domestic violence or sexual assault that involved physical force will be suspended without pay for six games for a first offense. Second-time offenders will be banished from the league for at least one year.

Goodell said that second-time offenders could petition to be reinstated after one year, but that “there will be no presumption or assurance that the petition will be granted.”

The about-face by Goodell, the most powerful executive in American sports, was stunning in its earnestness and clarity. The commissioner wrote frequently in the first person and admitted that he had lost sight of not only the seriousness of domestic violence, but also the league’s role as a leader in the sports world. Coming a month after the suspension of Rice, Goodell’s decision appeared considered, not rushed.

But it is also one of the few times during his eight-year tenure that Goodell has publicly admitted to making such a mistake. Since becoming commissioner in 2006, he has grappled with one crisis after another, from players using guns to spying by teams to bullying and the use of homophobic and racist language by players. He has rarely backpedaled on his decisions even in the face of withering criticism.

Perhaps most significantly, Goodell has equivocated on the issue of concussions and their impact on the health of players. For years, Goodell and the league dismissed mounting evidence about the dangers of repeated head hits, including in front of members of Congress.

The league has since changed rules and pledged tens of millions of dollars to study the impact of concussions, but the commissioner has never acknowledged the league’s past role in trying to sidestep the issue.

That evasion may cost the league dearly. Frustration over the league’s stance is one reason nearly 5,000 retired players sued the N.F.L. and Riddell, a helmet manufacturer, for hiding from them the dangers of concussions. A federal judge has preliminarily approved a landmark 65-year settlement that would award millions of dollars to players with severe neurological disorders, and spend tens of millions more to monitor other players.

Unlike concussions, which have an impact on the game and the finances of the N.F.L., the league’s stance on domestic violence is not purely a financial issue. While the league has spent years courting female fans by, among other things, having its players wear pink cleats to raise awareness of breast cancer, Goodell also announced his new policy a week before the start of the regular season and ahead of a three-day weekend, when many people are on vacation.

Goodell initially defended the decision to suspend Rice for two games. He said he spoke directly to Rice and noted that he avoided a trial by entering a counseling program. “He is a young man that really understands the mistake he made and he is out and about and determined to make a positive difference,” Goodell said at the beginning of August.

But as blowback continued, he apparently recognized the issue was larger than just Rice. In his 2,000-word letter and memo, Goodell said that his decision was based as much on the obligation of the league to be held to a higher standard than other sports leagues and institutions.

“Much of the criticism stemmed from a fundamental recognition that the N.F.L. is a leader, that we do stand for important values, and that we can project those values in ways that have a positive impact beyond professional football,” he wrote.

Groups that criticized Goodell for being insensitive to the issue of domestic abuse applauded him for reversing course.

“This decision by N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell to change the league’s policy on how it disciplines players who beat their wives and girlfriends is a big win, not just for women, but for all N.F.L. players, staff and fans,” said Becky Bond, the political director of Credo, a women’s rights group.

The N.F.L. Players Association, which has often been at loggerheads with the commissioner over his penalties for players, did not publicly endorse Goodell’s tougher stance. In a statement, the union said only that it was informed of the N.F.L.’s decision and that “if we believe that players’ due process rights are infringed upon during the course of discipline, we will assert and defend our members’ rights.”

While other leagues employ an independent arbitrator to hear player appeals, the N.F.L. is essentially the judge and jury in disciplinary cases not covered by the collective bargaining agreement. This has led many commentators to compare Rice’s suspension over accusations that he assaulted his fiancée in an elevator to the four-game suspensions for players who violated the league’s drug policy.

On Wednesday, the league upheld its one-year suspension of Cleveland Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon for violating its substance-abuse policy. Afterward, Gordon criticized the league for not exercising “better discretion and judgment in my case.”

Still, Gordon’s penalty was based on guidelines agreed on between the league and the players union, not the commissioner. Goodell’s decision to more severely penalize those who commit domestic violence, on the other hand, has set a precedent.

“This is very rare,” said Marc Ganis, a consultant to several teams. “Goodell’s admission of having erred on something this important to society is very rare and speaks volumes about the confidence the N.F.L. has to admit its mistake.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 29, 2014, on page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: Goodell Admits He Was Wrong in Rice Case. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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55 Colleges Named in Federal Inquiry Into Handling of Sexual Assault Cases

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and DAVID S. JOACHIMMAY 1, 2014

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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Thursday released the names of 55 colleges and universities under investigation for their handling of sexual assault complaints, an unusual step meant to increase pressure on the institutions to crack down on the problem on their campuses.

It was the first time that the Department of Education had made public a comprehensive list of colleges under investigation for potential violations of federal antidiscrimination law under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The law prohibits gender discrimination at colleges that receive federal money.

The colleges under investigation include Ivy League institutions like Dartmouth, Harvard and Princeton; other private universities like Boston University, the University of Chicago, Swarthmore and the University of Southern California; and public universities including Florida State, the University of Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State. The list also included less well known institutions like the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine.

The list was made public three days after the White House released a report drafted by a sexual assault task force aimed at pressuring schools to better comply with federal law and prevent sexual attacks.

“We are making this list available in an effort to bring more transparency to our enforcement work and to foster better public awareness of civil rights,” Catherine E. Lhamon, the assistant education secretary for civil rights, said in a written statement.

The Education Department announced on Monday that Tufts University in Boston had failed to comply with the federal law by allowing a sexually hostile environment to persist at the institution. The finding, which was the result of an investigation by the department’s Office of Civil Rights into a 2010 complaint by a student who said she was sexually assaulted, determined that Tufts had “failed to provide a prompt and equitable response” to complaints of sexual harassment and violence as required by the Title IX law.

The Obama administration, which has stepped up enforcement of civil rights laws, zeroed in on colleges and universities after a series of highly publicized assaults on campuses. The problem has also been a focus on Capitol Hill as lawmakers have taken on sexual assault in the military, where similar cultural issues and institutional truculence have bedeviled the process.

“Today’s move by the Department of Education is an important, helpful step for students and their parents, who until today had no way of knowing whether their school was under investigation for Title IX violations,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, who plans to conduct a survey of 350 colleges and universities nationwide to monitor their handling of sexual assault cases. “We’ll continue working to help schools provide the highest level of responsiveness and protections for victims and to require the federal government to provide the highest level of transparency on compliance and enforcement.”

The White House task force found that nearly 20 percent of female college students have been assaulted, but that only 12 percent of cases are reported. It concluded that many women feared that their reports might become public, discouraging them from coming forward.

The task force recommended that colleges provide better assurance of confidentiality to those who report such crimes; conduct standardized, anonymous surveys on campus assaults; and replicate a program at the University of Kentucky and other colleges that train bystanders in how to intervene.

Since 2011, when the Education Department sent a letter to universities warning that they needed to better follow up on sexual assault complaints, an increasing number of students have won large damage awards in sexual assault cases filed against their colleges.

The letter emphasized that complaints could be successfully pursued through the department’s civil rights office, which victims say is less cumbersome than using lawyers to file complaints.

Universities have typically tried to keep the lawsuits quiet.

“Information is power,” said Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, who has taken a strong interest in sexual assault in the military and on college campuses. “Which is why I am such a staunch supporter of transparency which leads to accountability.”

The White House task force said that the Department of Education would post resolution agreements and compliance findings for these and recently settled cases. Erin E. Buzuvis, a Title IX expert and a law professor at Western New England University, said of the postings, “That will also be hugely valuable to motivate proactive compliance by universities and to provide more blueprints for compliance.”

Student activists have led the campaign for universities and the government to be more responsive to the problem of assault on campuses, and more victims have been willing to come forward and discuss episodes that previously tended to be kept quiet. In particular, many student groups are focusing on the legal definition of consent, which can guide universities as they try to adjudicate crimes.

“Using the social media site Tumblr, we uploaded photos giving voice to student reactions to laws and policies that take silence as consent,” Rory Gerberg, a Harvard graduate student who is a founder of a coalition of students to address the university’s sexual assault policy, said in an email. “The definition of consent is a core challenge in addressing campus sexual assault and the larger culture of sexism and gender-based violence that allow it to occur.”

Ms. Gerberg added: “Our task is to give voice to the daily forms of violence we too often accept as inevitable. This is precisely why student activism is so important. Since I’ve become a campus advocate numerous students have approached me with their stories.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 2, 2014, on page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: 55 Colleges Named in Federal Inquiry Into Handling of Sexual Assault Cases. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Taking Their Umbrage Where They Can Get It

Democrats Reprise 'War on Women' Case Against Republicans

By JOHN HARWOODSEPT. 19, 2014

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Like many candidates attacked over budgets, Thom Tillis, a Republican running for the Senate from North Carolina, responded in a recent debate by disputing his opponent’s numbers.

“Kay’s math just doesn’t add up,” he said. The Democratic incumbent, Senator Kay Hagan, seized on that small opening to claim personal offense. “I’m actually insulted,” she declared. “I understand math.”

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, counting heavily on women to turn out across the country, accused Mr. Tillis of “mansplaining” and “condescension” toward his female adversary. On anyone’s outrage meter, it was tame stuff compared with the incendiary comments about rape that hurt Republican candidates so badly two years ago.

But Democrats must wage “war on women” attacks against the opponents they have, not the ones they wish they had. The dearth of such ammunition this year is no accident. Republican strategists in Washington have worked to smother the most ideologically extreme candidacies and have girded themselves for attempts to cast the party as hostile to women.

“We’ve been preparing for this,” said Sara Fagen, a former aide to President George W. Bush. This week’s New York Times/CBS News poll brought her party encouraging news: Men said they planned to vote Republican by a double-digit margin, while Democrats’ one-point lead among women fell well within the poll’s margin of sampling error.

The longstanding partisan split between men and women is driven by divergent views over the role of the government, and on social programs, military spending, health care and other issues. Those disagreements will play the biggest role in this fall’s fight for control of the Senate.

But campaign operatives forage incessantly for material to stoke outrage, generating campaign cash and fueling turnout. In 2012, Democrats trumpeted Mitt Romney’s surreptitiously recorded “47 percent” remarks as proof that he scorned Americans receiving government assistance; Republicans exploited President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” riff to call him hostile to business.

In the struggle for female voters, 2012 Republican Senate candidates set the gold standard for outrage. Todd Akin of Missouri cast doubt on the occurrence of pregnancy in “a legitimate rape,” explaining that “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Richard Mourdock of Indiana later called pregnancy resulting from rape “something that God intended to happen.”

The defeat of both Republicans in conservative states helped Democrats keep and expand their Senate majority. This year, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee says on its website, “The Republican war on women is back, and it’s even more appalling than ever.”

So far, however, Republicans have declined to provide anything close to 2012-quality material, even as their male nominees oppose Democratic women in five battleground races. Democrats howled when a Republican campaign aide called Alison Lundergan Grimes, the opponent of the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, an “empty dress” — a gender-specific twist on the familiar “empty suit” attack used for years against male candidates.

They complained when Republicans sent out an editorial in a conservative newspaper that the Grimes campaign said “demeans women.” When an aide to Representative Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, circulated a picture of Senator Mary L. Landrieu, a Democrat, superimposed on an image of Mussolini, the Landrieu campaign called it “hurtful.”

When Scott P. Brown, the former Massachusetts Republican senator, challenged the Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s deputy executive director, Matt Canter, said on Twitter, “After making sexist remarks in past races, Scott Brown is yet again opting to take on a woman.”

Ms. Fagen said, “It’s a well-coordinated effort: the ‘war on women’ 2.0.” And she said “it’s coming” in some House races, too.

Last weekend, former President Bill Clinton cited “sexists” opposed to Iowa’s Third House District candidate, Staci Appel. Ms. Fagen, an adviser to Ms. Appel’s opponent, David Young, counsels Republican candidates: “Don’t let it sit out there for even 10 minutes.”

Democrats may not need Akin-caliber flubs to win battleground races. “They’ve nominated a slew of candidates that have other problems,” said Mr. Canter. One example: the so-called personhood amendment to the Constitution, which Democrats argue would outlaw some forms of contraception. Several Republican candidates, including Mr. Tillis, have endorsed the idea.

But the North Carolina debate illustrated how Democrats reach for additional weaponry. At times the encounter verged on friendly, as when Mr. Tillis said, “I want to thank Kay Hagan for her service,” and praised her and her husband as “good people.”

Even that gesture contained a form of address Democrats considered a problem. They complained that at various points Mr. Tillis referred to Ms. Hagan, his former colleague in the North Carolina legislature, as “Kay” rather than “Senator.”

The math reference that Democrats depicted as condescending is similarly debatable, considering its precedent in male-only races. In the 1980 Republican presidential primaries, for instance, George Bush derided Ronald Reagan for “voodoo economics”; in 2000, George W. Bush accused Al Gore of “fuzzy math.” Judging complaints about lines like that is “a subjective thing,” said Anita Dunn, a Democratic ad maker who used to serve as Mr. Obama’s communications director.

Her Republican counterpart, Kim Alfano, called Democratic tactics understandable, but a reach. “It used to be easy to do this to us because we offered up some icons,” Ms. Alfano said. This year, she said, “We don’t have that.”

“If anybody’s condescending to voters,” she concluded, “it would be Democrats for believing stuff like that works.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Taking Their Umbrage Where They Can Get It. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Senate Candidate Provokes Ire With ‘Legitimate Rape’ Comment

By JOHN ELIGON and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

Published: August 19, 2012

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In an effort to explain his stance on abortion, Representative Todd Akin, the Republican Senate nominee from Missouri, provoked ire across the political spectrum on Sunday by saying that in instances of what he called “legitimate rape,” women’s bodies somehow blocked an unwanted pregnancy.

Asked in an interview on a St. Louis television station about his views on abortion, Mr. Akin, a six-term member of Congress who is backed by Tea Party conservatives, made it clear that his opposition to the practice was nearly absolute, even in instances of rape.

“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Mr. Akin said of pregnancies from rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

The comments, made during an interview with KTVI-TV that was posted on Sunday on the station’s Web site, provoked howls of outrage from Democrats and women’s rights organizations. Senator Claire McCaskill, the Democrat who will face Mr. Akin in the November election, immediately took to Twitter with a blunt response. “As a woman & former prosecutor who handled 100s of rape cases,” she wrote, “I’m stunned by Rep Akin’s comments about victims this AM.”

Mr. Akin quickly backtracked from his taped comments, saying he “misspoke.”

“In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview, and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year,” Mr. Akin, who has a background in engineering and is a member of the House science committee, said in a statement. “I recognize that abortion, and particularly in the case of rape, is a very emotionally charged issue. But I believe deeply in the protection of all life, and I do not believe that harming another innocent victim is the right course of action.”

The Republican presidential ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan was quick to distance itself from Mr. Akin’s remarks.

“Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin’s statement,” the campaign said. “A Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape.”

Ms. McCaskill, who is seeking a second term in the Senate, is seen as one of the most politically vulnerable Democratic incumbents on the ballot this fall, beset by her ties to President Obama and tens of millions in dollars spent against her by outside advocacy groups.

Mr. Akin, 65, won the Senate Republican primary this month with strong support from Missouri’s religious conservatives. But he was also helped by Ms. McCaskill, whose campaign spent nearly $2 million on ads portraying Mr. Akin as ultraconservative. It was a clear attempt to bolster his candidacy among more conservative primary voters while gambling that the independents and moderate Republicans needed to win the election would be turned off by his views on social issues.

Political observers have said Ms. McCaskill’s best chance of defending her seat, and perhaps the Democrats’ majority in the Senate, is to paint her opponent as extreme.

“Claire McCaskill will certainly amplify this remark, make sure everybody’s heard it,” said Dave Robertson, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Mike Talboy, the Democratic minority leader in the Missouri Legislature, said that he had spoken to members of both parties about Mr. Akin’s comments and had found uniform outrage.

“Nobody has defended him,” Mr. Talboy said. “That, I think, is pretty telling.”

Brian Walsh, the communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, declined to address what impact Mr. Akin’s comments might have on the Senate race. But he wrote in an e-mail that “Congressman Akin did the right thing by quickly correcting the record and acknowledging that he misspoke.” He said the election would be a referendum on Ms. McCaskill’s voting record and support for the president’s agenda.

If this state is truly aligning itself with more conservative values, some believe that Mr. Akin’s comments might actually help him politically.

Jamie Tomek, president of the Missouri branch of the National Organization for Women, who lives in the county where Mr. Akin grew up and says she knows his parents, said she was not surprised by the statement and did not think it would cost him much ahead of the election.

“He is very far right and very likely to make those types of statements,” Ms. Tomek said.

John Eligon reported from Kansas City, and Michael Schwirtz from New York. Rebecca Berg contributed reporting from Washington.

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Republicans Switch Firm Handling Obama Suit

By ASHLEY PARKERSEPT. 19, 2014

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WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Friday replaced the firm handling their lawsuit against President Obama after the lawyer representing them pulled out over what was said to be political backlash among his colleagues at the firm, Baker Hostetler.

The lawyer, David B. Rivkin Jr., had taken the case on behalf of House Republicans in August, right after they voted to sue the president, accusing him of overstepping the powers of the presidency. Two people with knowledge of the situation said Mr. Rivkin withdrew from the case under pressure after facing criticism that he had taken on an overly partisan lawsuit. Some members of the firm feared the case against Mr. Obama could drive off potential clients and hurt Baker Hostetler’s credibility, according to one of the people with knowledge of the case. Both people said they were prohibited from publicly discussing such a delicate case.

With Mr. Rivkin’s withdrawal, the House Administration Committee signed a new contract on Friday with William A. Burck, co-head of the Washington office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. Mr. Burck had served as outside counsel for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform when House Republicans sued Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to produce documents related to the botched gunrunning investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious.

He also represented Maureen McDonnell, the wife of former Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, in the corruption trial that ended this month with her conviction on nine counts.

Neither Mr. Burck nor representatives for Baker Hostetler returned calls for comment.

After Mr. Rivkin took the case, Baker Hostetler was parodied by Jimmy Fallon on the “Tonight Show,” which broadcast a fake commercial in which an ambulance-chasing lawyer tries to come up with Obama lawsuits and urges viewers to call a toll-free number.

“At Baker Hostetler, we specialize in one thing — suing the president,” the faux infomercial says. “For instance, have you ever been forced to pass Obamacare, even though you didn’t like it? We can help you waste thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to fight for what you sort of believe in.”

The measure to sue the president — which passed 225 to 201 along party lines — authorized the House to move forward with a lawsuit against Mr. Obama for his application of the Affordable Care Act, which they argued had been selective and intended to delay the law’s most undesirable aspects.

“No member of this body needs to be reminded about what the Constitution states about the president’s obligation to faithfully execute the laws of our nation,” Speaker John A. Boehner said from the House floor. “Are you willing to let any president choose what laws to execute and what laws to change? Are you willing to let anyone tear apart what our founders have built?”

One House Democrat, Louise M. Slaughter of New York, called it “a sorry spectacle of legislative malpractice” and “political theater.”

The lawsuit was Mr. Boehner’s way to send a signal that Republicans would fight the president’s efforts to revise laws Congress had passed while not going as far as impeachment, as many on the right would like.

Still, the lawsuit has done little to appease some of the most right wing members of his party. Sarah Palin, for one, responded by calling for Mr. Obama’s impeachment, stirring up the kind of intraparty fight that Mr. Boehner had hoped to avoid.

But other prominent conservatives ridiculed the lawsuit. Erick Erickson, the blogger and pundit, also called it “political theater” that wasted taxpayer dollars. Mark Levin, the popular radio host and former Reagan administration official, called it a “foolish move” that made him cringe.

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Republicans Switch Firm Handling Obama Suit. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Politics |NYT Now

House Votes to Sue Obama for Overstepping Powers

By JEREMY W. PETERSJULY 30, 2014

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How the House Decided to Sue Obama

How the House Decided to Sue Obama Ahead of a summer break, House Republicans have moved forward with plans to sue President Obama. Video Credit By Carrie Halperin on Publish Date July 30, 2014. Image CreditJ. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

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WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to sue President Obama for overstepping the powers of the presidency — a move that has angered conservatives who call it insufficient, emboldened Democrats who say Republicans are being vengeful, and further eroded much of what is left of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill.

In a 225-to-201 party-line vote, Republicans authorized the House to move forward with a lawsuit against Mr. Obama for his application of the Affordable Care Act, which they argue has been selective and intended to delay the law’s most undesirable aspects.

During a pointed, impassioned hourlong debate, Republicans accused the president of flouting the law and breaking a solemn constitutional oath. They summoned lessons from the American Revolution and the Bible.

Speaker John A. Boehner all but accused Mr. Obama of leaving the Constitution in tatters. “No member of this body needs to be reminded about what the Constitution states about the president’s obligation to faithfully execute the laws of our nation,” Mr. Boehner said from the House floor. “Are you willing to let any president choose what laws to execute and what laws to change? Are you willing to let anyone tear apart what our founders have built?”

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Speaker John A. Boehner headed for a vote on Wednesday in which Republicans authorized the House of Representatives to sue President Obama for his application of the Affordable Care Act.

Democrats pointed to a litany of bills that Mr. Boehner had kept from reaching the floor for a vote this year — legislation to raise the minimum wage, extend unemployment insurance and overhaul the immigration system — and accused Republicans of wasting time and money.

“A sorry spectacle of legislative malpractice,” said Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York. “The majority of the American people recognize this for what it is: political theater.”

The lawsuit was Mr. Boehner’s version of what might be termed impeachment-light — a way to send a signal that Republicans would fight the president’s efforts to revise laws Congress had passed while not going as far as many on the right would like.

But, as the speaker has found with other efforts to appease the right wing of his party, he was not well received. Sarah Palin responded by calling for Mr. Obama’s impeachment, stirring up the kind of intraparty fight that Mr. Boehner had hoped to avoid. (Five Republicans voted no on Wednesday: Paul Broun of Georgia; Scott Garrett of New Jersey; Walter B. Jones of North Carolina; Thomas Massie of Kentucky; and Steve Stockman of Texas.)

Other prominent conservatives ridiculed the lawsuit. Erick Erickson, the blogger and pundit, also called it “political theater” that wasted taxpayer dollars. Mark Levin, the popular radio host and former Reagan administration official, called it a “foolish move” that made him cringe.

On this point, Democrats agree.

In a speech in Kansas City on Wednesday, Mr. Obama’s mere mention of the lawsuit drew boos from the crowd. “Everybody recognizes this is a political stunt,” he said. “But it’s worse than that, because every vote they’re taking like that means a vote they’re not taking to actually help you.”

And he offered Republicans some advice: “Stop just hating all the time. Come on. Let’s get some work done together.”

Democrats have turned the lawsuit and rumblings of impeachment into a financial boon. The party claimed to have raised $1 million on Monday alone. “Don’t let this stand,” read one fund-raising email sent this week by the Democratic National Committee. “Chip in $10 or more before Thursday’s deadline to fight back.”

Representative Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said, “When they decide to obsess on suing the president, they shouldn’t be surprised that our base is as energized as they’ve become.”

Recent polling shows that Republicans overwhelmingly favor impeaching the president. A Fox News poll released last week found that 56 percent of Republicans believe that Mr. Obama should be impeached. That compares with just 36 percent of all registered voters. CNN found nearly identical numbers in a poll of its own last week.

Since the president threatened in his State of the Union address this year to use his executive powers to change policy when Congress would not act, Republicans have been increasingly vocal in criticizing the president as imperial, particularly with regard to his signing of executive orders to implement new regulations on politically divisive issues like gun control and pollution.

This was a dominant theme in Republican speeches before the vote on Wednesday.

Representative Tom Rice of South Carolina drew comparisons to the tyranny of King George III (Mr. Obama) and the revolt by the American colonies (House Republicans). “At the end of the bloody revolution, the last thing that they wanted was another king; they wanted freedom,” he said, dismissing concerns about the lawsuit’s costs as a small price to pay for a worthy cause.

“My friends across the aisle worry about the price of a lawsuit to protect our freedom,” Mr. Rice said. “Our forefathers paid dearly for that freedom.”

He added, “We cannot stand by and watch the president shred our Constitution.”

Representative Jeff Duncan of South Carolina summoned the story of Adam and Eve in explaining how men, because of their inherent fallibility, could not be trusted with too much power, something he said the Founding Fathers understood. “As Christian men of the day, they understood that since the Garden of Eden, man has fallen,” he said, urging Mr. Obama, a former constitutional lawyer, to read up on the federal government’s founding document. “Our Constitution does not say the president gets to write his own laws,” Mr. Duncan said.

Statistics show that as of last week, the Obama White House had issued a total of 183 executive orders, the vast majority in his first term. George W. Bush, by comparison, issued 291 in his eight years in office. Bill Clinton issued 364; Ronald Reagan 381. Executive orders do, however, vary in scope and significance.

House Republicans, in fact, are not the only ones in Congress who have sued the Obama administration this year. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, filed suit challenging the government’s ability to provide money so members of Congress and their staff could buy health care through the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. A federal judge tossed out that suit this month.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, has sued Mr. Obama and the leaders of several intelligence agencies to challenge the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone data.

Legal scholars have questioned whether any member of Congress can prove injury by the president and therefore prevail in court. (This was the reason Mr. Johnson’s suit was dismissed.)

Perhaps the most impassioned speech of the day came from Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, who called the Republicans’ resolution “a shame and a disgrace.”

“It has no place on this floor,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on July 31, 2014, on page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: House Votes to Sue Obama for Overstepping Powers. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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U.S. |NYT Now

Former Governor in Virginia Guilty in Bribery Case

By TRIP GABRIELSEPT. 4, 2014

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The former governor left court on Thursday in Richmond, Va., with family members, including his son Bobby, right.

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RICHMOND, Va. — Former Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia and his wife, Maureen, were convicted of corruption in federal court on Thursday, after a trial that shattered the political career of the onetime Republican star and peeled back the couple’s private life to the bone.

As he was pronounced guilty on 11 counts of conspiracy, bribery and extortion, Mr. McDonnell covered his face with his hands and his head fell nearly to the defense table. His wife, convicted on nine counts, looked straight ahead. There were sobs from the seats behind them where their five adult children and other family members sat.

The seven-man, five-woman jury returned its findings on the third day of deliberations here in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Both McDonnells, who now face years in prison, were acquitted of lesser charges of making false statements on loan applications, while Ms. McDonnell was convicted on a charge she alone faced, of obstructing a grand jury investigation by trying to make a gift of $20,000 worth of designer dresses and shoes appear to have been a loan.

The verdict provided an emphatic coda to a trial that began with an investigation of the McDonnells’ acceptance of a Rolex, Armani clothing, free trips and other luxuries, and turned into a cringe-inducing, tabloid drama of marital strife.

“This is a difficult, disappointing day for the Commonwealth,” said Dana J. Boente, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “When public officials turn to financial gain for official actions, we have little choice but to prosecute the case.”

Asked if Mr. McDonnell would appeal, one of his lawyers, Henry W. Asbill, said, “Of course.”

Over the nearly six-week trial, Mr. McDonnell, 60, offered a few upbeat words as he entered and left the courthouse each day, expressing faith in God and the jury system, or on Thursday detailing his exercise routine, all of which gave the impression that he was optimistic about an acquittal. His reaction upon the first utterance of “guilty” around 3 p.m. suggested he was stunned.

The McDonnells were indicted on a total of 14 counts stemming from what prosecutors said was a scheme to sell the office of governor for $177,000 in gifts and cash from a dietary supplements executive.

Limited by law to one term as governor, Mr. McDonnell, who left office in January, was in the mix as a possible running mate for Mitt Romney in 2012 and was highly popular in Virginia until his career cratered with the corruption investigation. The case rattled the state’s political class, which had never had a governor indicted and prided itself on “the Virginia way,” an acceptance of loose ethics laws in the belief that officials would not put private interests above the public good.

“At this point the public is so suspicious of politicians, cutting a politician slack is nothing they can rely on,” said Thomas M. Davis, a former Virginia congressman and a friend of Mr. McDonnell’s. “This is, of course, a tragedy for the family, but it’s a tragedy for the state.”

Mr. McDonnell’s former lieutenant governor, Bill Bolling, wrote on his Facebook page, “The public’s trust is hard to gain and easy to lose.”

Although other governors around the country have faced corruption charges in recent years, none of those cases unfolded in the national glare like the McDonnell melodrama. That glare was magnified because the unexpected defense of the former governor — elected as a social conservative and an exemplar of traditional family values — was that his picture-perfect marriage had, in fact, been Photoshopped.

Mr. McDonnell, who carried his wife over the threshold of the Executive Mansion the day of his inauguration, portrayed her in his testimony as a harridan whose yelling left him “spiritually and mentally exhausted,” and who was so cold that she did not reply to an email pleading to save their marriage.

The defense used the self-debasing portrait to argue that the McDonnells were too estranged to conspire criminally to trade favors with the vitamin executive, Jonnie R. Williams Sr.

The jury, which heard from 67 witnesses, had to decide whether gifts from Mr. Williams and Mr. McDonnell’s actions on his behalf over two years added up to bribery and extortion.

At issue was whether the McDonnells accepted the largess with corrupt intent. They were not forbidden under Virginia ethics laws from taking $120,000 in undocumented loans from Mr. Williams, nor the gifts he bestowed — such as a custom golf bag for the governor, Louis Vuitton shoes for the first lady, and a $15,000 check for their daughter’s wedding at a time the first couple owed $31,000 on their credit cards and were hemorrhaging money on beachfront property.

The defense argued that actions Mr. McDonnell took on behalf of Mr. Williams’s company, Star Scientific, the maker of the supplement Anatabloc, were mere political courtesies. The former governor testified that he had given Mr. Williams “the bare, basic, routine access to government and nothing more.”

But prosecutors argued that Mr. McDonnell’s actions followed so closely after Mr. Williams’s gifts that they were strong circumstantial evidence of a corrupt bargain. At one point, Mr. McDonnell emailed an aide to see him about “Anatabloc issues” just six minutes after discussing a $50,000 loan with Mr. Williams.

The McDonnells were shown to have used Mr. Williams like an A.T.M. In May 2012, Mr. McDonnell texted the executive, suggesting, “per voice mail, would like to see if you could extend another 20k loan.” Mr. Williams replied within minutes: “Done.”

The government dismissed the defense strategy of portraying the McDonnell marriage as broken and Ms. McDonnell as a “nutbag” who was smitten with Mr. Williams. The former governor was trying to “throw his wife under the bus,” Michael S. Dry, a prosecutor, said in closing statements.

But for the McDonnells, the humiliating portrayal was meant to sow doubt about a criminal bargain by giving jurors an alternate reason for why Ms. McDonnell took Mr. Williams’s gifts. She was “gaga” for the rich executive, her lead lawyer told jurors. They exchanged 1,200 texts and phone calls. Through Mr. Williams, she found emotional solace and a way to spite her penny-pinching husband, her lawyers said.

“To Maureen, this was about getting away from Bob,” her lawyer, William A. Burck, told jurors. “You might find the mild obsession with Jonnie a little weird,” he added. “But weird is not a crime.”

In the end, jurors did not buy it.

The government relied heavily on the testimony of Mr. Williams. On the stand his version of conversations he had with the McDonnells seemed to dot the I’s and cross the T’s on the legal definition of a corrupt, quid pro quo deal. He said, for example, that before he handed over checks for $65,000 in 2011, Ms. McDonnell told him, “The governor says it’s O.K. for me to help you, but I need you to help me with this financial situation.”

Mr. Williams said he had reached out to the governor to confirm the arrangement because the governor was “the breadwinner” in the family. Mr. McDonnell, he said, thanked him for his help.

When Mr. McDonnell took the stand, he denied that interaction and much else in Mr. Williams’s testimony. He said that he had no advance knowledge of a $50,000 check from Mr. Williams to his wife in 2011, and that he was too beaten down by their marital rows to demand she return the money. “I just needed to pick the battles with my wife,” he said wearily on the stand.

Mr. McDonnell apologized for bad judgment in accepting Mr. Williams’s cash in loans he negotiated himself a year later, as well as numerous $300 golf rounds for himself and his sons. But he insisted he had not sold his office. “No, sir, we do not make decisions based on money,” Mr. McDonnell snapped at a prosecutor at one point during cross-examination.

To discredit Mr. Williams, the defense hammered on the fact that he was testifying under a promise that he would not be prosecuted. Defense lawyers portrayed him as a super-salesman who had conned the McDonnells and was now trying to con jurors. During cross-examination, a defense lawyer allowed Mr. Williams to ramble on without interruption for 45 minutes about his business career, in which he grandiosely claimed that Anatabloc was a medical breakthrough on a par with penicillin. (It has been withdrawn from the market after a Food and Drug Administration warning.)

As suggested in their body language at the defense table, where they never interacted, and in their comings and goings from the courthouse, the McDonnells now move in separate spheres. He said he was living with a Roman Catholic priest, a frequent supporter in court, for the duration of the trial. Their children would hug each parent in the courthouse corridor, or drape arms around their father as he pushed through TV cameras.

Leaving court Tuesday after deliberations began, Mr. McDonnell said that the past 18 months had been tough on his family, but that he drew strength from his 38 years of marriage and his children.

After the verdicts, the couple got into separate cars that sped away from the courthouse.

Correction: September 4, 2014

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of counts on which Maureen McDonnell was convicted. She was convicted on nine counts, not eight.

A version of this article appears in print on September 5, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Former Governor in Virginia Guilty in Bribery Case. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Women Allege Harassment and Abuse on Forest Service Firefighting Crews

By RON NIXONSEPT. 19, 2014

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Alicia Dabney, in Sequoia National Forest in 2010, said she was fired after reporting harassment.

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WASHINGTON — Current and former female firefighters of the United States Forest Service have filed a complaint with the Department of Agriculture alleging that they suffered job discrimination, harassment and sexual abuse at the hands of male co-workers and that top agency officials failed to stop it.

The women said the complaint, the first step in a potential class-action lawsuit, was filed late last month on behalf of hundreds of women who worked in the Forest Service’s Region 5, which encompasses more than 20 million acres in 18 national forests in California. The seven women who are the lead complainants said they faced retaliation when they reported the offenses to superiors.

The complaint was the latest in a number of race and gender disputes in the Agriculture Department, the parent agency of the Forest Service. In recent years the department has settled a class-action suit brought by Native American farmers, offered payments to Hispanic and female farmers who alleged discrimination and approved a $1.15 billion settlement with black farmers, decades after the farmers said that they were denied loans and subject to racial discrimination in agriculture programs.

In response to the firefighters, a Forest Service official said the agency would review the complaint and was focused on correcting any problems. “The Forest Service takes these and all allegations of civil rights violations very seriously and is committed to providing a work environment that is free of harassment and discrimination,” said Lenise Lago, the Forest Service’s deputy chief of business operations.

But advocates for past complainants said problems remain.

“There is something about the culture at the agency, maybe because so many of its programs are in rural areas, where most of the offices are staffed by white men who think this is acceptable behavior,” said John Boyd, a Virginia farmer and president of the National Black Farmers Association, who led the fight for black farmer compensation. “The Obama administration has tried its best to deal with this issue, but it’s entrenched because the bureaucrats outlast administrations.”

One of the current complainants, Alicia Dabney, a former firefighter in the Sequoia National Forest in Centerville, Calif., said in an interview that she was the subject of repeated verbal abuse and physical taunts. “It was a frat boy atmosphere,” said Ms. Dabney, who was usually the only woman on her 20-person crew. “You are often isolated because where you work is so remote.”

Ms. Dabney said that her supervisor, who is still employed by the Forest Service, put her in a chokehold and tried to rape her in 2012. In another instance, she said, fliers with the words “Alicia Dabney is a whore” were left on the floor of the fire station.

She said that after she reported the harassment, the Forest Service fired her in 2012, citing what her superiors said was her failure to disclose her past criminal record on her job application. Ms. Dabney said that the agency had long known about her record and that “this was dredged up after I complained.”

Darlene Hall, another complainant, who is a still a Forest Service firefighter, said that she had been subjected to abusive language from some of the men she supervised. “I had one instance where a man who worked under me came into my office and just started cursing at me,” she said. “He was threatening, and I was afraid because you’re out there alone.” Ms. Hall said that she reported the incident to supervisors but that nothing was done and she was denied promotions as a result.

Asked to respond to the allegations of Ms. Dabney and Ms. Hall, the Forest Service said that it was reviewing their complaints.

Agency officials acknowledged that there had been past discrimination problems in Region 5 but said they had eased in recent years. Discrimination findings fell from 12 last year to one so far this year, they said.

The current gender discrimination complaint is similar to ones filed in the 1970s and 1990s by female workers in Region 5 who said they were denied promotions and harassed by male co-workers. As part of the settlements stemming from those complaints, the Agriculture Department required the Forest Service in California to hire more women and to put in place civil rights enforcement programs, sensitivity training and a unit to investigate and resolve sexual harassment and hostile environment claims.

According to the agency, women now represent about 12 percent of the fire service in Region 5 and nearly 24 percent of the fire leadership positions. Four of nine regional fire directors are women, including the director for Region 5.

The complaint filed with the Agriculture Department is the first step in what could be a long process. The department has 180 days to investigate and potentially settle the claim, but if there is no resolution it will go to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for another investigation and potential settlement. If there is no resolution at the commission, the complaint could go to federal court.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Women Allege Harassment and Abuse on Forest Service Firefighting Crews. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Politics | National Briefing | Washington

Intruder Gets Through White House Doors Before Arrest

By STEVE KENNYSEPT. 20, 2014

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A Texas man who jumped the White House fence made it through the North Portico doors on Friday night before being apprehended, the Secret Service said. The intruder, Omar J. Gonzalez, 42, of Copperas Cove, Tex., was arrested and taken to George Washington University Hospital after complaining of chest pains, said Ed Donovan, a Secret Service spokesman. None of the Obamas were home when the security breach occurred, about 7:20 p.m., but White House staff members were evacuated as a precaution, Mr. Donovan said. Mr. Gonzalez was not armed, he added, and the incident was being reviewed.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Intruder Gets to White House Doors Before Arrest. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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U.S. | National Briefing | South

Georgia: 3 Found Guilty Over ’09 Salmonella Outbreak

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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A federal jury convicted the owner of a peanut plant and two others on Friday in a salmonella outbreak that prompted one of the largest food recalls in the nation, that sickened hundreds and that was linked to nine deaths. The former owner of the Peanut Corporation of America, Stewart Parnell, was convicted on counts including conspiracy, wire fraud and obstruction of justice related to shipping tainted peanut butter to customers and faking results of laboratory tests to screen for salmonella. His brother, Michael Parnell, was found guilty on charges related to the false test results, but was acquitted of shipping tainted food. Mary Wilkerson, the plant’s quality assurance manager, was convicted of one of two obstruction of justice counts for hiding information.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Georgia: 3 Found Guilty Over ’09 Salmonella Outbreak. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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U.S. | National Briefing | West

California: Wildfire’s Progress Slowed by Humidity

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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Higher humidity on Friday helped slow the growth of a large wildfire in Northern California that the authorities said was set deliberately and had forced about 2,800 people to evacuate. The wildfire 60 miles east of Sacramento has burned through nearly 120 square miles of timber and vegetation and is 10 percent contained. Wayne Huntsman, 37, the man suspected of starting the blaze, pleaded not guilty to arson.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: California: Wildfire’s Progress Slowed by Humidity. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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U.S. | National Briefing | Southwest

Texas: Deputy Swept by Flood Is Found Dead

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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Divers found the body of a missing Central Texas sheriff’s deputy on Friday, a day after her patrol car was found swamped by floodwaters minutes after she radioed for help while checking flooded low-water crossings. The deputy, Jessica Hollis, 35, a seven-year veteran of the Travis County Sheriff’s Department, was found in Lake Austin.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Texas: Deputy Swept by Flood Is Found Dead. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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U.S. | National Briefing | Midwest

Michigan: Detroit Debt Deal Clears More Hurdles

By REUTERSSEPT. 19, 2014

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The Detroit City Council on Friday approved the creation of a regional water authority, pushing forward an integral part of the city’s plan to exit bankruptcy. A deal Detroit reached last week with Oakland, Wayne and Macomb Counties creates a regional authority, but allows Detroit to maintain control of its local system. The authority must now be approved by at least one of the counties. The Council also approved another part of the plan, in which the bond insurer Syncora Guarantee will receive options to acquire six vacant lots, take control of a public parking garage and extend its lease on a tunnel to Canada.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Michigan: Detroit Debt Deal Clears More Hurdles. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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- Guinter Kahn, Inventor of Baldness Remedy, Dies at 80

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Business Day

Guinter Kahn, Inventor of Baldness Remedy, Dies at 80

By DOUGLAS MARTINSEPT. 19, 2014

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Guinter Kahn was allergic to his own discovery.

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Guinter Kahn liked to say that there had always been three things in history that could never get a patent: a divining rod, a perpetual motion machine and anything to grow hair. He was wrong about the last one.

In 1986, the United States Patent and Trademark Office added Dr. Kahn’s name to the first patent ever granted for a baldness remedy, minoxidil, which is sold under the brand name Rogaine. It was an achievement for which hundreds of inventors over many years had filed patent applications, none successfully.

Minoxidil, which is applied directly to bald spots, was the only hair-raising drug ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration until 1977, when the agency approved finasteride, which is taken as a pill and sold under the brand names Proscar and Propecia.

Dr. Kahn, a rich, philanthropic, partly bald dermatologist — he was allergic to his own discovery — died on Wednesday in Miami, his daughter, Michelle Kahn, said. He had a stroke in 2006 and had been in a nursing home. He was 80.

Minoxidil had its drawbacks: It works best on earlier stages of baldness, and has to be applied twice a day to keep hair growing.

“But for its time, the treatment was revolutionary,” the American Hair Loss Association said on its website.

Dr. Kahn won recognition for his achievement only after a long, fierce legal battle.

The effort began in the late 1950s, when the Upjohn Company developed a chemical compound in pursuit of a new ulcer treatment. In trials using dogs, the compound did not help ulcers, but it did lower blood pressure. Upjohn synthesized more than 200 variations of the compound, including the one it made in 1963 and named minoxidil.

The company then requested, and received, permission from the F.D.A. to test the new drug as medicine for hypertension. It asked one of its consultants, Charles A. Chidsey, to study minoxidil at the University of Colorado’s medical school in Denver, where he was a professor.

In early 1971, Dr. Chidsey observed hair growth on patients who had taken the drug for hypertension. He asked the advice of a colleague at the school, Dr. Kahn, and Dr. Kahn’s medical resident, Dr. Paul J. Grant.

Dr. Kahn and Dr. Grant began examining the patients, including a woman who was sprouting hair all over her body. When they administered minoxidil to others, hair sprouted on their bodies.

“Right off the bat,” Dr. Grant told The Miami Herald in 1988, referring to Dr. Kahn, “he said, ‘Boy, this would be great stuff if we could apply it to the top of heads.’ ”

So they set about blending minoxidil in a solution that could be applied topically, and they hit on just the right formula.

“We were lucky that we chose the appropriate solution to put the minoxidil in,” Dr. Grant told The Herald. “We were lucky that we chose the correct percentage of minoxidil to put in the solution. Too much and we may have had negative side effects. Too little and we may have had no result.”

On Dec. 10, 1971, Dr. Kahn and Dr. Grant went to Upjohn’s headquarters in Kalamazoo, Mich., where they briefed scientists and executives. Dr. Kahn told them that the drug was a potential “gold mine,” Dr. Grant recalled.

They also made a demand: a 2 to 4 percent stake in the sale of all Upjohn products that included a topical minoxidil, according to a history prepared by the company. The executives did not directly answer them.

On Dec. 29, Upjohn, today a unit of Pfizer, filed a formal patent application for minoxidil as a hair-growing drug, naming Dr. Chidsey as the sole inventor. (He had been the first to report the growth of hair in conjunction with the drug.)

Upjohn then notified the F.D.A. that Dr. Kahn and Dr. Grant had experimented with minoxidil without the proper approvals from the agency. Upjohn did not tell the researchers about the patent application, but it did give them $6,000 to do more research on animals, an amount Dr. Kahn ridiculed as measly.

On their own, Dr. Kahn and Dr. Grant experimented on a balding person for the first time in 1973. The drug worked wonderfully, they found, and they filed a patent application the next year, only to find that an application for the same drug and the same use had already been filed. They said that they had told Dr. Chidsey about their successes before the Upjohn application, with only his name on it, had been filed.

The upshot was that they agreed to a proceeding in which the patent office would decide the issue. In the meantime they settled the financial aspects of the dispute, with Dr. Chidsey, Dr. Kahn and Dr. Grant all receiving substantial royalties.

In 1986, the patent office added Dr. Kahn’s name to Dr. Chidsey’s. Dr. Grant’s name was left off. But he told The Herald, “I’d be much more upset if they took my name off the royalties.”

In a 1987 interview with the British newspaper The Daily Mail, Dr. Chidsey accused Dr. Kahn and Dr. Grant of pilfering the drugs they had used in their tests, of not getting proper permission from Upjohn and federal regulators, and of putting money ahead of medicine. “It was cheap,” he said. “It was tacky.”

Upjohn went on to spend $100 million developing Rogaine, which the F.D.A. approved in 1988. In 1996, its patent expired, allowing the product to be sold over the counter under other brand names.

Dr. Kahn was born in Trier, Germany, on May 11, 1934. His family, which was Jewish, fled Germany in 1938 to escape the Nazi terror and immigrated to the United States. The family settled in Omaha. Despite knowing little English at first, he graduated from high school in three years. He then graduated from what is now the University of Nebraska at Omaha in three years.

Dr. Kahn earned his medical degree from what is now the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 1958. He was an Army emergency room doctor in Germany in 1959-60. After training at the University of Miami’s medical school, he became acting head of the University of Colorado’s dermatology department.

In 1989, the Intellectual Property Owners Foundation named Dr. Kahn and Dr. Chidsey “distinguished inventors.”

Dr. Kahn later maintained a private dermatology practice in Miami. His philanthropy included financing a new addition to the library at the University of Nebraska. He also lectured in the United States and Europe about the part doctors had played in the Holocaust.

In addition to his daughter, Dr. Kahn, who was divorced, is survived by his companion, Judy Felsenstein; his son, Bruce; his brother, Marcel; and two grandchildren.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Guinter Kahn, Inventor of Baldness Remedy, Dies at 80. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Business Day

Jack Wayman, Impresario of Consumer Electronics Show, Dies at 92

By PAUL VITELLOSEPT. 17, 2014

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Jack Wayman started the Consumer Electronics Association in 1963 to promote the growing demand for consumer products.

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Jack Wayman, a sales executive who saw the future and said it was consumer electronics, organized the industry’s first trade show in the era of black-and-white television and fought Hollywood’s endeavor to smother the videocassette-recorder business, died on Aug. 30 in Boulder, Colo. He was 92.

His death was confirmed by the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry trade group he established in 1963 to promote what he saw as a growing demand for consumer-size products from electronics manufacturers.

Mr. Wayman’s title when he founded the group was senior vice president for consumer sales of the manufacturers’ Electronic Industries Association. In practice, he was the industry’s top salesman and chief carnival barker during a sea change in consumer culture.

He organized the first Consumer Electronics Show in 1967, in New York. At the time, the industry’s product line consisted of televisions, radios and phonographs for the most part. By 2012, when he attended his last show at 90, riding in a golf cart, the wares had become a virtual universe of gadgetry capable (theoretically) of connecting everyone on the planet.

Mr. Wayman became widely known to the public in the mid-1970s, when VCRs became popular. He appeared in hundreds of television and newspaper interviews — first as the industry spokesman armed with the soaring sales figures, then as a defender of VCR technology against claims by the film industry that its use violated federal copyright laws.

In the seminal battle that unfolded, Mr. Wayman was the face of VCR-makers, often sparring with Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America. He testified at congressional hearings in defense of Americans’ right to tape television shows. And in 1984, when the Supreme Court ruled that consumers violated no copyright laws by taping programs for their personal use, he predicted that film studios would reap a windfall in home videocassette sales. He was proved correct.

Norman Jack Wayman was born in Miami on May 12, 1922, the only child of Dora and Jesse Wayman, a prominent Miami developer. He graduated from Davidson College near Charlotte, N.C., and served in Europe during World War II as a combat infantry company commander. The recipient of many medals and two Presidential Citations, he was inducted last year into the French Legion of Honor for service from the Normandy landings until the German surrender.

After the war, Mr. Wayman began taking classes at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, then changed career plans. “Guy sitting behind me says: ‘My father’s opening a TV store. Let’s change our classes,’ ” he told The Chicago Tribune in 1992. “I did. That’s when it hit me — electronics fever!”

He was sales manager for a chain of 12 electronics stores and spent 10 years as head of the RCA distributorship in five states around Washington before he was hired in 1962 by the Electronic Industries Association.

Mr. Wayman, who was divorced, is survived by four daughters, Patricia Ann Saunders, Jessica Young, Johanna Philo and Ariana Barth; one son, Norman Jack Wayman Jr.; 13 grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.

Mr. Wayman moved the trade show to Chicago in 1971. By 1989, too big for any one convention center, it had been split into two events — a summer show in Chicago and a winter show in Las Vegas.

He was a tireless salesman. Traveling the country, he gave by his own account 500 interviews a year to trade and general interest publications, ready with facts, figures, bons mots, pronouncements and a tip on the next big thing.

“We’re moving toward wall-size television screens,” he told The Washington Post in 1982.

He plugged products that made it (car stereos, cordless phones, answering machines, VCRs and personal computers) and those that didn’t (3-D stereo binoculars, hand-held electronic encyclopedias and wristwatch televisions); and apparently posed with them all without fear or favor.

“Cellular phone at my ear?” he asked a photographer at the 1992 show. “Camcorder at my eye? Mickey Mouse talking watch on my wrist? How about a language translator in my breast pocket?”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Jack Wayman, 92; Loved Selling Electronics. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Angus Lennie, Actor in ‘The Great Escape,’ Dies at 84

By BRUCE WEBERSEPT. 19, 2014

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Angus Lennie, center, with Gordon Jackson in a scene from “The Great Escape” (1963), set in a German P.O.W. camp.

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Angus Lennie, a diminutive Scottish actor who played the persistent but ultimately despairing “tunnel man” known as the Mole in the 1963 prison-camp movie “The Great Escape,” died on Sunday in London. He was 84.

His death was confirmed by the Acton Care Center, a nursing home, where he died.

Mr. Lennie, who was not quite five and a half feet tall, was born in Glasgow on April 18, 1930, and began his career in show business as a dancer and a stand-up comedian. As an actor he was known in Britain for his appearances in numerous television series, but especially as Shughie McFee, a self-inflating chef in the kitchen of the motel that was the central setting of a long-running soap opera, “Crossroads.”

In shows broadcast in the United States Mr. Lennie was seen in episodes of “Rumpole of the Bailey,” “The Saint” and “Doctor Who.” But American audiences are most familiar with him as Archibald Ives, a. k. a. the Mole, a captive in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II who has made many escape attempts and who befriends Capt. Virgil Hilts, the iconoclastic American flier played by Steve McQueen.

The two men are caught trying to tunnel out of the camp, and after spending time quarantined from other prisoners, Ives comes to a bad end. In a pivotal sequence in the film, desperate to escape and despondent at the Germans’ discovery of another tunnel, he races to the camp’s barbed-wire enclosure in full view of the guards and is gunned down as he tries to climb over it. The sight of his friend hanging from the wire is motivation for Hilts to join the escape plot being hatched by the other prisoners.

Mr. Lennie’s other film credits include “Oh! What a Lovely War” (1969), directed by Richard Attenborough, who was in the cast of “The Great Escape,” and “One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing” (1975), a comedy-adventure that starred Peter Ustinov and Helen Hayes.

Information about Mr. Lennie’s survivors was unavailable.

Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura contributed reporting from London.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Angus Lennie, 84, Actor in ‘The Great Escape’. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Editorial |NYT Now

Scotland’s Pro-Unity Vote

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDSEPT. 19, 2014

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In the end, Scottish voters stepped back from breaking with the rest of Britain. The decision to maintain the 307-year-old union was the right one. Scotland already enjoys a significant degree of autonomy, and Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, has promised more. Besides, separation would have been a plunge into a dangerous unknown. But this will not be the end of the dream of independence — not for the Scots, nor for the Catalans, Flemish, Basques and other people who nurture the dream.

The reason the no ballots prevailed despite polls that showed the ayes, who were more passionate and visible, gathering momentum in the final weeks, is not hard to understand. For the cautious majority, the allure of self-rule failed to quell the real advantages of union.

Untangling 300 years of joint institutions — military, diplomatic, commercial, cultural, social — would have been messy and contentious. It would have meant finding a new home for Britain’s nuclear-armed Trident submarines, which are based in western Scotland, and finding a way for Scotland to continue using the pound as its currency. A chorus of economists had warned that breaking out of the United Kingdom would hurt Scotland, and a parade of British politicians like Mr. Cameron had made impassioned pleas to the Scots not to break away.

Yet all these facts and difficulties were well known to voters, and did not prevent 45 percent of them — more than 1,617,900 — from voting for independence. The Scots demonstrated that even in countries where there is no ostensible suppression of national culture on a continent that is supposed to be in the process of forming a more perfect union, a people with a shared history and identity can still be swayed by powerful longings for full self-rule.

If Quebec is any guide, losing one referendum will not put an end to the dream. Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish independence movement, announced after the vote that he would resign as first minister of the regional government and as head of the Scottish National Party, but he also declared that “for Scotland, the campaign continues and the dream shall never die.”

Even with unity, though, much will have to change. The passionate debates in the months before Thursday’s referendum have altered how the Scots see themselves and their place in Britain. On the other side, many members of Mr. Cameron’s Conservative Party are chafing at the promises of greater autonomy for Scotland that the prime minister and other British political leaders made in the final days of the campaign, and voices are rising for appropriate similar privileges for England.

For the foreseeable future, however, Scotland remains in the United Kingdom, and the British who could not believe that their country stood on the brink of being broken apart can breathe more easily. Above all, there is cause to celebrate that so impassioned a debate took place in so peaceful and democratic a manner.

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A version of this editorial appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Scotland’s Pro-Unity Vote. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe |NYT Now

After Losing Scottish Independence Vote, Alex Salmond Will Resign

By ALAN COWELL and STEPHEN CASTLESEPT. 19, 2014

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Slide Show|15 Photos

Voting in Scotland’s Independence Referendum

Voting in Scotland’s Independence Referendum

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EDINBURGH — Alex Salmond, who led Scotland’s failed bid for independence, announced on Friday that he would step down as first minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party later this year.

The unexpected announcement came the day after voters spurned the vision of Scottish sovereignty that had propelled his political career for decades, and voted decisively in a referendum to continue Scotland’s 307-year-old union with Britain. Mr. Salmond was by far the most prominent casualty of the defeat.

The independence campaign that he led sent shock waves through Britain’s political elite, energized Scottish politics as rarely before and appeared to open the way for a looser, more federal Britain. After starting far behind in the polls, the independence campaign appeared to close the gap in the increasingly suspenseful final weeks, and in some surveys it even seemed to take a slight lead.

But when the ballots from all 32 voting districts were tallied early Friday, the “no” campaign had won 55.3 percent of the vote.

Photo

Alex Salmond in Edinburgh on Friday.

Referring to the seats of the British and Scottish Parliaments, Mr. Salmond said in a statement, “Today the point is this: The real guardians of progress are not the politicians at Westminster, or even at Holyrood, but the energized activism of tens of thousands of people who I predict will refuse meekly to go back into the political shadows.”

“For me right now, therefore, there is a decision as to who is best placed to lead this process forward politically,” he continued. “I believe that in this new exciting situation, redolent with possibility, party, Parliament and country would benefit from new leadership.”

Therefore, Mr. Salmond said, he will not stand for re-election as leader at his party’s annual conference in November, and then will resign as first minister “to allow the new leader to be elected by due parliamentary process.”

“We lost the referendum vote, but can still carry the political initiative,” he said. “More importantly, Scotland can still emerge as the real winner.”

His decision to resign reflected the deep disappointment on Friday within the vocal, enthusiastic pro-independence movement, which saw the referendum as a rare opportunity to make a centuries-old nationalist dream a reality.

At a news conference in Edinburgh, Mr. Salmond, who was ebullient, feisty and sometimes pugnacious during the campaign, seemed to turn wistful. “For me as leader, my time is nearly over,” he told reporters, “but for Scotland the campaign continues, and the dream shall never die.”

Mr. Salmond did not identify a successor, but political analysts said his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, who played a central role in the campaign, was likely to be a strong contender.

Continue reading the main story

Results by Region

Percentage Point Difference

-15

-10

-5

0

5

10

15%

Voted no

Voted yes

Scotland

Aberdeen

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Source: Scottish Independence Referendum

British political leaders promised on Friday to heal the wounds opened by the referendum and begin work on sweeping changes to give new decision-making powers to Scotland and other parts of the country — changes that the three main British political parties promised in the panicky last days before the referendum, though they have yet to agree on specifics.

Negotiations on those changes are likely to be tortuous, and not just between London and the Scots.

“The old union we know is dead,” said Carwyn Jones, the first minister of Wales. “We need to forge a new one. But no more committees, no more messing about, no more panicky deals — it’s time to sit together, all of us as four nations, and work this through.” Northern Ireland is the fourth component of the United Kingdom, along with England, Scotland and Wales.

Among the outstanding issues is whether England should continue to be ruled solely by the national Parliament in Westminster, which includes Scottish, Irish and Welsh members, or be given some form of regional government as well, akin to those in Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

In Edinburgh, Mr. Salmond said earlier in the day that the 1.6 million votes cast for separation showed the depth of the desire for greater decision-making powers in Scotland. “Today of all days, as we bring Scotland together, let us not dwell on the distance we have fallen short, let us dwell on the distance we have traveled,” he said.

For Prime Minister David Cameron, whose job would have been on the line had the Scots voted to break away, the referendum results were an evident relief, though one tempered with an awareness that it may have won by his late promise of new powers for Scotland, which already controls health and education within its borders.

Mr. Cameron said Friday morning that there could be “no disputes, no reruns,” and that the referendum had settled the independence debate “for a generation.”

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|1:33

Europe Reacts to Scotland’s Vote

Europe Reacts to Scotland’s Vote Leaders from Britain, Scotland, Spain and the European Commission spoke after Scotland rejected independence from Britain in a referendum. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditAndrew Milligan/Press Association, via Associated Press

Queen Elizabeth II, who is precluded from intervening in politics, urged Scots on Friday to seek unity and work together in the wake of the vote. “For many in Scotland and elsewhere today, there will be strong feelings and contrasting emotions – among family, friends and neighbors,” she said in a statement from her Scottish castle at Balmoral. “Now, as we move forward, we should remember that, despite the range of views that have been expressed, we have in common an enduring love of Scotland, which is one of the things that helps to unite us all.”

All told, 2,001,926 “no” votes were cast in the referendum, compared with 1,617,989 “yes” votes, according to Mary Pitcaithly, the chief counting officer. Nearly 85 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

With its appeal for a fresh start, the “yes” campaign seemed to capture the imagination of a large section of Scottish electorate that was bitterly disillusioned with London politics. By contrast, the “no” side stressed the economic risks of a breakaway, and was accused of running a negative campaign.

On Friday the result was welcomed by the Confederation of British Industry, a leading business lobby group. “This is a momentous day for our United Kingdom, and this result will be greeted by a collective sigh of relief across the business community,” said John Cridland, the organization’s director general.

The outcome was no less welcome in Washington, where President Obama had made little secret of his desire that Britain remain intact, not least because of Mr. Salmond’s promise to evict British nuclear submarine bases from an independent Scotland.

“We have no closer ally than the United Kingdom, and we look forward to continuing our strong and special relationship with all the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as we address the challenges facing the world today,” Mr. Obama said in a statement.

The NATO alliance and the European Commission, the executive body of the 28-nation European Union, also welcomed the rejection of a referendum that had already encouraged separatists in other parts of Europe, including the Catalonia region of Spain.

In Madrid, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called the Scottish vote “the most favorable option for everyone — for themselves, for all of Britain and for the rest of Europe.”

But Artur Mas, the head of Catalonia’s regional government, drew a different interpretation, saying that Scotland had provided “a great lesson in democracy” and urging Mr. Rajoy to follow Mr. Cameron’s example and permit a similar referendum there.

“To think you can shut up a Catalan society that wants to vote isn’t going to work in a democracy of the 21st century,” Mr. Mas said in Barcelona.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Edinburgh; Raphael Minder from Madrid; and Michael D. Shear from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on September 19, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Scottish Leader, Alex Salmond, to Resign After Losing Vote on Independence. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Editorial

One Big Unhappy Economy

Report on G-20 Labor Markets Finds Too Few Jobs Worldwide

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDSEPT. 19, 2014

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Unhappy economies, it turns out, are all unhappy in the same way. A recent report on job markets globally showed that too few jobs are being created worldwide, and even fewer good jobs are. Wages are flat or falling in all major economies as corporate profits claim an increasing share of productivity gains.

The report, prepared by the World Bank, the United Nations’ labor agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, notes that poor job creation and stagnant wages, if unchanged, will result in permanently lower living standards for most people amid widening inequality. It also states that the situation will not repair itself — and, actually, is self-reinforcing.

In the advanced economies of the Group of 20, including the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the European Union, a lack of good jobs at good pay is stifling growth by undermining consumption and investment. In the group’s emerging economies, including India, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia, underemployment and off-the-books jobs are mostly to blame for undermining output and productivity in the long term.

The report calls for action by the G-20 to break those negative feedback loops, including more government spending to bolster consumption, higher minimum wages to raise pay, and renewed commitment to social safety nets. What the report does not say is that none of that is likely to happen on the needed scale, individually or collectively, unless governments change their priorities.

When the United States and other advanced economies bailed out global banks, they were betting, wrongly, that a restored financial system would foster broad prosperity. When they turned their policy focus toward austerity measures and deficit reduction, and away from fiscal stimulus, they doubled down on that bad bet. The result has been prosperity for the few, at the expense of the many.

The report is clear that when consumption and investment wane, government is supposed to make up the shortfall to revitalize the economy. But governments in the grip of poisoned politics and misguided ideology have largely abdicated their role. Even the Federal Reserve, which has as part of its mandate the maintenance of full employment, has come under pressure to raise interest rates in the near term. That would be a mistake, akin to the premature removal of fiscal support.

The evidence in the report presents a global economy that remains weak and fragile. To be strong and resilient, it needs growth that, in the words of the report, is “job-rich and inclusive.” Theoretically, such growth is possible. Politically, it is still out of reach.

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A version of this editorial appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: One Big Unhappy Economy. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Editorial

The Met Opera Stands Firm

‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ Must Go On

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDSEPT. 19, 2014

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True to its artistic mission, the Metropolitan Opera remains firmly committed to presenting “The Death of Klinghoffer,” the widely praised opera that has drawn the scorn of protesters who plan to demonstrate outside the Met’s season opening on Monday at Lincoln Center. The Met’s board of directors and Peter Gelb, its general manager, are entirely correct in insisting the opera must proceed as planned next month.

Protesting groups are demanding that the production be scrapped, contending the opera is anti-Semitic in depicting the 1985 murder of Leon Klinghoffer by Palestinian terrorists who seized a Mediterranean cruise ship and threw Mr. Klinghoffer and his wheelchair overboard after shooting him.

Music critics and opera lovers have found the opera, by John Adams, moving and nuanced in imagining a tragedy that gives voice to all sides, from the ruthless and aggrieved terrorists to Mr. Klinghoffer, an innocent Jewish-American who makes some of the opera’s most powerful points in denouncing violence as a political tool.

The Met should not have yielded to its critics, including Mr. Klinghoffer’s daughters, earlier this year when Mr. Gelb canceled live broadcasts of the opera in movie theaters around the world because of what he saw as “rising anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe.”

But now, as protesters plan to press further, the Met and Mr. Gelb are properly firm in defending both the opera and the principle of artistic freedom in a world rife with political pressures. Viewers may have different reactions and responses to such an ambitious and painfully contemporary work, but the arts can only be harmed by retreating from controversy.

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The Opinion Pages | Editorial Notebook

Hurricane Watch in the Rockaways

By FRANCIS X. CLINESSEPT. 19, 2014

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Midway through the hurricane season, an interesting breed of aquatic New Yorkers — surfers — are religiously scrolling apps for the most promising waves. They could not resist dropping by Rockaway Beach this week to ride the remnants of Hurricane Edouard pounding the Atlantic beachfront of Queens. “We’re rooting for Edouard — up to a point,” said Conrad Karl, an obsessive surfer who is happy to frolic at a hurricane’s farther edges.

Like so many in the surfing community flourishing along the Rockaways, Mr. Karl had to repair his flooded house two years ago after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. He accepted that as a fair price for staying, a demonstration of New York’s post-Sandy resilience.

“It’s love of the ocean and surfing that has us here,” said Mr. Karl, while others arrived near Beach 92nd Street to try the waves. His 8-year-old daughter, Maya, increasingly figures in his devotion to the family-centered surfing community where she has won some competitions for riding the “swell,” as they call it.

Commuting surfers and inexperienced “hipsters” (resented for clunking about the waves more than mastering them) take the A train from deep in the city to face a splendid ocean horizon that never stops promising a challenging wave. But it is the dedicated resident surfers who define and bolster Rockaway’s attraction for surfing.

Bronzed and eager as they head down to the sea from stores like Boarders Surf Shop, they seem pleased with the upside of the hurricane season. Two years ago, as Sandy chewed up beaches, boardwalks and homes, the Rockaway Beach Surf Club instantly became more than a hobbyists’ hangout, serving as a relief center where volunteers were dispatched to demolition and cleanup jobs at hundreds of homes, according to the local newspaper The Wave.

“We call it surfonomics — one thing leads to another,” said Mr. Karl, who gambled that the battered Rockaways would rebound enough to welcome the restaurant he decided to open nine months after Sandy. It’s called Uma’s after his wife, Umida, the founding chef, who also gambled that the Rockaways would like the taste of her native Uzbek cuisine.

It became a post-Sandy favorite for locals, notably surfers hungry for vegetable-centric Uzbek dishes like bichaki. Uma’s has a surfboard rack outside for diners and a host who stays up to the minute about the ocean dynamics just down the block. “They’re here for the swell,” Mr. Karl says of his regulars.

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Getting It Wrong

Roger Goodell Speaks for the N.F.L. and Says Nothing

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Joe Nocera

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I turned on ESPN about 15 minutes before Roger Goodell’s Friday afternoon news conference. There was a round table of analysts and reporters, led by Bob Ley, the journalist who covers the serious side of sports for the network. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought they were prepping for a coming news conference by a politician in trouble rather than the commissioner of the National Football League.

“What do we need to hear from Goodell?” Ley pressed the panel.

“He has to say concretely that this is what we are going to do,” replied Bill Polian, the former president and general manager of the Indianapolis Colts (and now an ESPN analyst).

The screen was split between Ley’s panel and the empty lectern that Goodell would soon step behind. At one point before the news conference, the network switched to a shot in Baltimore of Ravens fans standing in line to trade in their Ray Rice jerseys for a free jersey of a different Ravens player — one who hadn’t been seen in a video cold-cocking someone who was then his fiancée. The wait was several hours long.

Goodell’s news conference came at the end of one of the worst weeks in the history of professional football, a week that ranks right up there with the time Pete Rozelle, the commissioner then, instructed the league to play its games the weekend after President Kennedy was shot.

To recap quickly: The Carolina Panthers, who planned to allow Greg Hardy to play in last week’s home opener, despite his conviction for domestic assault, instead deactivated the defensive end 90 minutes before kickoff and then put him on the “exempt list.” The Minnesota Vikings reactivated their star running back Adrian Peterson after he sat out a game when he was indicted on a charge of child abuse. Then, after a furor that included the loss of a sponsor, the Radisson hotel chain, Peterson was relieved of his duties again. Incredibly, the Vikings’ management then patted themselves on the back for “getting it right.”

In Arizona, the Cardinals benched a player named Jonathan Dwyer, who had just posted $25,000 bond after being arrested on charges of aggravated assault against his wife and 17-month-old son. And last Friday, the league acknowledged that one in three players would develop debilitating brain conditions.

Meanwhile, reporters and sports columnists were accusing Goodell of hiding in his bunker — he hadn’t talked to the press since one very shaky CBS interview on Sept. 10 — even as one shoe dropped after another. Far scarier for the league, a raft of sponsors were issuing statements denouncing the N.F.L.’s handling of domestic violence. One sponsor, Procter & Gamble, pulled out of a major on-field initiative for the N.F.L.’s annual Breast Cancer Awareness Month (which, it’s worth noting, is part of the league’s effort to draw more female fans). This was serious: The N.F.L.’s vaunted business model was suddenly showing cracks.

When he arrived at the podium, Goodell made a short statement in which he said ... nothing. Maybe that is a little unfair, but not by much. He was sorry he had initially botched the Ray Rice case by giving him just a two-game suspension. He was going to do better. The league was going to “get it right.” He was going to bring in experts to help the league rewrite its rules about player conduct. Everyone in the league would be getting training on domestic violence and sexual abuse. He was going to establish a conduct committee to “ensure that we are always living with the best practices.” And so on.

You would have thought that if Goodell were going to hold a news conference he would have something more to say than that he was sorry and that he was going to consult experts — things he has said before. Stunningly, he didn’t, which became even clearer when reporters started asking questions.

My former Times colleague Judy Battista, who now works for the NFL Network — and thus is effectively an employee of Goodell’s — asked him bluntly what Ray Rice had initially told him and how that contrasted to what he saw months later on the video. He wouldn’t say.

“Why do you feel like you should be able to continue in this role?” he was asked. “Because I acknowledged my mistake” was his answer.

A CNBC reporter asked him to comment on the loss of the Procter & Gamble sponsorship. He answered in vague platitudes. “We’re going to clean up our house, we’re going to get this straight, and we’re going to make a difference.”

And when asked how he could conceivably have given Ray Rice that original two-game suspension, he replied that the league’s policies “had fallen behind.” Yes, that must be it. It was all the fault of the “policy.”

The truth is that the N.F.L. has had a domestic violence problem for years, which Goodell and the league have largely tolerated. The Ray Rice video put that tolerance on vivid display. That is the fact that Goodell can’t say out loud — and why instead he says nothing at all.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Getting It Wrong. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist |NYT Now

Exercising the Right to Rant

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Gail Collins

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Congress is gone. But not forgotten.

O.K., to be honest, they’re totally forgotten. The members of the House and Senate have been out of session for about a day and the nation has already totally wiped them from the memory bank.

Oh, America’s Legislature, we hardly knew ye.

Before decamping to go home and run for re-election, our elected representatives voted to fund the government and go to war. Pretty much ran the table on their constitutional responsibilities. Normally, that sort of thing would draw attention. “Before I came here I imagined that when war was discussed, everybody would be at their desk,” complained Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, to a rather vacant chamber.

To be fair, Congress actually just gave a vague grunt of acceptance to one part of President Obama’s strategy to combat ISIS. (It could have gone further, but you know how much these guys like leaving everything up to the president.) And it averted a government shutdown by decreeing that we will keep on spending whatever it is we’ve been spending for a couple more months.

“You don’t get perfect,” said Representative Steny Hoyer, the House minority whip.

We were all actually aware of that.

On the plus side — bipartisan! Republicans and Democrats joined together in what was the legislative version of a deep, depressive sigh.

“The bill before us is an imperfect bill.”

“I don’t think we have a better option.”

They were very possibly right. In theory, Congress is supposed to figure out how much money every federal department needs, and then pass some spending bills. However, the system’s been collapsing under partisan pressures for years. The last time it was normal to start every fiscal year with the money plan totally under control, air travel was glamorous.

And when it came to the Obama plans for Syria and Iraq, the members were faced with a rather distressing series of options: A) Give up on the whole idea of doing something about ISIS. B) Come up with their own idea for doing something about ISIS. Or C) Just stay in Washington and keep talking.

While the stay-and-talk option might have been the most honorable path, I think I speak for many Americans in saying that I cannot imagine them coming up with anything helpful. But we should at least reserve the right to rant. They went home! Early!

Let’s discuss, just for the heck of it, a couple of the things Congress did not feel constrained to do before they went back to meet the voters.

What about corporate inversion — the growing tendency of American companies to magically transform themselves into foreign entities in order to avoid paying American taxes? The White House asked Congress to pass a fairly simple plan to deal with that. No dice. Defending his members on Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner said that fixing inversion is way too low a bar and what they should really do is reform “the whole tax code.”

People, how many of you think Congress is going to fix the whole tax code? It’s like saying you aren’t going to open a door because the public really deserves to see the house levitated.

Speaking of the House, its Ways and Means Committee, which is run by Boehner’s very own party, did come up with a sweeping plan for tax reform this year. The speaker promptly made fun of it. (“Blah, blah, blah, blah.”) Having completely and thoroughly slammed the door on any discussion of the bill, he told reporters this week that he was “shocked at how little I have heard about it.”

Then there’s political intelligence. (I know, I know. Stop snickering.) Reformers want to avert the possibility that congressional insiders might pass on insider information to research firms that counsel investors. For instance, imagine there’s a change coming in government payment rates for health insurers. If, say, a Senate staffer leaked that information, it might cause the stock in said firms to soar before the world is informed of the new policy. Which actually happened last year.

Congress had tackled the problem as part of a bill barring members from insider trading that passed in 2012. The House majority leader, Eric Cantor, stripped the provision out at the last minute. Perhaps you remember Eric Cantor. He was the guy who got tossed out of office in a primary in which his totally unknown opponent claimed Cantor was a creature of crony capitalism.

A bipartisan trio of House members is now trying to revive the idea. Louise Slaughter of New York, one of the sponsors, says a bill’s been introduced. But although there is no end to the marvelous achievements people are predicting for the after-election lame-duck session. Congress reforming itself is not one of them.

“Not a snowball’s chance in hell,” said Slaughter.

Cantor is now a brand-new member of the investment banking industry. With $1.4 million in signing bonuses.

O.K., that was the rant. I feel much better.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Exercising the Right to Rant. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor |NYT Now

Science’s Sexual Assault Problem

By A. HOPE JAHRENSEPT. 18, 2014

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AS, Norway

I AM a scientist who studies plants. I like plants. I think about plants almost every hour of the day, and several hours of the night as well. I respect plants and I know there’s more to them than meets the eye, because I’ve been measuring their responses for 20 years. But it is rocks that were my first love and that continue to hold my heart captive. I love rocks with the unconditional love that you lavish upon a newborn baby.

I was a promising graduate student. I landed a position as a professor before I even started to write my dissertation. While I prepared to start my new job, I decided that I would begin by studying the brine that bleeds sideways within the rocks that underlie the inner Aegean region of Turkey. I dreamed of an ocean of hot water underneath Denizli Province, an ocean that occasionally sloshes out onto the surface to form ice-blue thermal springs. I had seen photographs, but I wanted to be there, to take samples and make measurements, to make it “my” field site. I was trying to find an intellectual home.

I was careful to do everything right. I started out modestly and cautiously, in the summer of 1996, with simple reconnaissance. I booked a spot within a chaperoned group tour and stayed in prearranged hotel rooms and ate bland meals with the 10 or so elderly Australian tourists who were my travel companions. We rode in an air-conditioned bus for days while I stared out the window and scribbled notes about the roads and cataloged photos of the landscape. I covered my head with a scarf and averted my eyes toward the sidewalk.

And then, one day in the Mediterranean resort town of Antalya, instead of going to the marketplace with the group, I sat in a cafe to study some maps. It was broad daylight when I began walking back to the hotel, and a stranger pulled me into a stairwell — and then did some other things. Perhaps an hour later I staggered out with his blood under my fingernails. I cannot describe what happened in a way you will understand, because I still do not understand it myself. I have been trying to understand it for almost 20 years.

My story is not unique. In July, Kathryn B. H. Clancy and her co-authors Robin G. Nelson, Julienne N. Rutherford and Katie Hinde published a survey of 666 field-based scientists in the journal PLoS One and reported that 26 percent of the female scientists surveyed had been sexually assaulted during fieldwork. Most of these women encountered this abuse very early in their careers, as trainees. The travel inherent to scientific fieldwork increases vulnerability as one struggles to work within unfamiliar and unpredictable conditions, but male respondents reported significantly less assault (6 percent).

I know several women with stories like mine, but more often it is the men of one’s own field team, one’s co-workers, who violate their female colleagues. The women surveyed by Dr. Clancy’s team stated that their “perpetrators were predominantly senior to them professionally within the research team.”

I suppose that I am writing this because I am still looking for someone to tell. It was no one’s job at my university to hear or care what had happened to me and I did not conceptualize it as a workplace issue, but rather as a personal one cloaked in fear, shame and silence. Dr. Clancy’s study also considers the availability of mechanisms by which to report incidents. The study found that only 18 percent of respondents who experienced assault said that they were aware of a way to report the assault.

I took my chances with the local police, and to be honest, I don’t know if it made matters better or worse. Each scientific field excursion needs an authority figure who has been clearly designated as someone whom women can tell.

I still love rocks and I still dream of the ancient Aegean seas, but for the better part of my career I’ve sealed myself into a locked laboratory, a small well-lit world that I can control. I still do fieldwork, but I do it in “safe” countries like Canada and Ireland — where similar things still happen. Where would I have ended up had I been the first person to report the isotope chemistry of the aquifers that underlie the ancient city of Hierapolis? I’ll never know, because I’ll never go back. I’ll take my chances elsewhere and let my male colleagues study the travertine deposits of the Menderes River Valley. I will continue to do everything right, and it will continue to keep me inadequately safe.

There is a fundamental and culturally learned power imbalance between men and women, and it follows us into the workplace. The violence born of this imbalance follows us also. We would like to believe that it stops short of following us into the laboratory and into the field — but it does not. I listen to my colleagues talk endlessly about recruiting more women into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines, and postulate what the barriers might be. Sexual assault is a pernicious and formidable barrier to women in science, partly because we have consistently gifted to it our silence. I have given it 18 years of my silence and I will not give it one day more.

In August, Lego began selling a set called “Research Institute” that features three female scientist minifigures: a paleontologist, an astronomer and a chemist. I am well qualified in two of those fields, and I am here to say that playing with a different set of dolls will not adequately prepare your daughters for a career in science. You must teach them, rather, to manage their dreams. They need to know that daring to act upon their dreams of science can be both a beautiful and a dangerous thing.

A. Hope Jahren is a professor of geobiology at the University of Hawaii and the author of a forthcoming memoir about her experience as a woman in science.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Science’s Sexual Assault Problem. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

To Save the Planet, Don’t Plant Trees

By NADINE UNGERSEPT. 19, 2014

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NEW HAVEN — AS international leaders gather in New York next week for a United Nations climate summit, they will be preoccupied with how to tackle the rising rate of carbon emissions. To mitigate the crisis, one measure they are likely to promote is reducing deforestation and planting trees.

A landmark deal to support sustainable forestry was a heralded success story of the last international climate talks, in Warsaw last year. Western nations, including the United States, Britain and Norway, handed over millions of dollars to developing countries to kick-start programs to reduce tropical deforestation. More funds are promised.

Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. The assumption is that planting trees and avoiding further deforestation provides a convenient carbon capture and storage facility on the land.

That is the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is wrong.

In reality, the cycling of carbon, energy and water between the land and the atmosphere is much more complex. Considering all the interactions, large-scale increases in forest cover can actually make global warming worse.

Of course, this is counterintuitive. We all learn in school how trees effortlessly perform the marvel of photosynthesis: They take up carbon dioxide from the air and make oxygen. This process provides us with life, food, water, shelter, fiber and soil. The earth’s forests generously mop up about a quarter of the world’s fossil-fuel carbon emissions every year.

So it’s understandable that we’d expect trees to save us from rising temperatures, but climate science tells a different story. Besides the amount of greenhouse gases in the air, another important switch on the planetary thermostat is how much of the sun’s energy is taken up by the earth’s surface, compared to how much is reflected back to space. The dark color of trees means that they absorb more of the sun’s energy and raise the planet’s surface temperature.

Climate scientists have calculated the effect of increasing forest cover on surface temperature. Their conclusion is that planting trees in the tropics would lead to cooling, but in colder regions, it would cause warming.

In order to grow food, humans have changed about 50 percent of the earth’s surface area from native forests and grasslands to crops, pasture and wood harvest. Unfortunately, there is no scientific consensus on whether this land use has caused overall global warming or cooling. Since we don’t know that, we can’t reliably predict whether large-scale forestation would help to control the earth’s rising temperatures.

Worse, trees emit reactive volatile gases that contribute to air pollution and are hazardous to human health. These emissions are crucial to trees — to protect themselves from environmental stresses like sweltering heat and bug infestations. In summer, the eastern United States is the world’s major hot spot for volatile organic compounds (V.O.C.s) from trees.

As these compounds mix with fossil-fuel pollution from cars and industry, an even more harmful cocktail of airborne toxic chemicals is created. President Ronald Reagan was widely ridiculed in 1981 when he said, “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.” He was wrong on the science — but less wrong than many assumed.

Chemical reactions involving tree V.O.C.s produce methane and ozone, two powerful greenhouse gases, and form particles that can affect the condensation of clouds. Research by my group at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and by other laboratories, suggests that changes in tree V.O.C.s affect the climate on a scale similar to changes in the earth’s surface color and carbon storage capacity.

While trees provide carbon storage, forestry is not a permanent solution because trees and soil also “breathe” — that is, burn oxygen and release carbon dioxide back into the air. Eventually, all of the carbon finds its way back into the atmosphere when trees die or burn.

Moreover, it is a myth that photosynthesis controls the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. Even if all photosynthesis on the planet were shut down, the atmosphere’s oxygen content would change by less than 1 percent.

The Amazon rain forest is often perceived as the lungs of the planet. In fact, almost all the oxygen the Amazon produces during the day remains there and is reabsorbed by the forest at night. In other words, the Amazon rain forest is a closed system that uses all its own oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Planting trees and avoiding deforestation do offer unambiguous benefits to biodiversity and many forms of life. But relying on forestry to slow or reverse global warming is another matter entirely.

The science says that spending precious dollars for climate change mitigation on forestry is high-risk: We don’t know that it would cool the planet, and we have good reason to fear it might have precisely the opposite effect. More funding for forestry might seem like a tempting easy win for the world leaders at the United Nations, but it’s a bad bet.

Nadine Unger is an assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at Yale.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: To Save the Planet, Don’t Plant Trees. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Letters

The Scots’ Decision: Let’s Stay British

SEPT. 19, 2014

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To the Editor:

Re “Scots Reject Independence From Britain” (front page, Sept. 19):

In one important sense, all of Scotland won in an impressive show of democracy. There was a spirited and passionate but peaceful debate on both sides, with a graceful, peaceful acceptance of the verdict by the losers despite what must have been a bitter defeat for many. And an 85 percent turnout! Congratulations to Scotland for its example to the world.

DART THALMAN

Peacham, Vt., Sept. 19, 2014

To the Editor:

In the end this might be the best possible outcome for all Scots. I liked the “yes” campaign’s boldness, but I think with its rather shaky foundation Scotland might have turned into another economic disaster.

Although the “yes” campaign did not get what it wanted, it has shown London and the world that Scots won’t tolerate being messed with any longer. British leaders promised considerable improvements if the Scots stayed in. With so many people disappointed with the result of the vote, the British had better start delivering, because if they don’t, London will soon have to face all Scots’ fury.

ANDRÉ HEEGER

Hamburg, Germany, Sept. 19, 2014

To the Editor:

Today is a sad day in Scottish history. Acceptance of subordination has won out over self-determination. It seems that “Project Fear” did the job it was intended to do.

Still, I am heartened that many of my fellow Scots stood up for themselves and their country by voting “yes.” For the “yes” campaign this wasn’t about turning Scotland into some utopia, nor was it about animosity toward the English.

Rather, there is a genuine interest among many Scots in taking full responsibility for the difficult choices that every nation must make in today’s tumultuous world, choices that politicians in Westminster seem less and less capable of making.

Now let us see how long it takes David Cameron, the British prime minister, to deliver on his promises of greater devolution. If some good can come of this defeat, it will be the decentralization of power away from London and back into the hands of the people of Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

MICHAEL CLARO

Glasgow, Sept. 19, 2014

To the Editor:

The most important aspect of this dispute over Scottish independence is that it is being settled with civility and peaceably. In other parts of Europe and the world at large, the quest for independence has devolved into bloody civil wars, destroying nations.

PETER MELZER

Charlottesville, Va., Sept. 19, 2014

To the Editor:

The Scottish people have spoken loud and clear. Sometimes security, tradition and predictability are more precious than independence. Though independence may sound great, there are a lot of uncertainties and unknowns associated with change, in addition to added responsibilities and financial costs.

The traveled path is often easier and less treacherous than the untraveled one.

KENNETH L. ZIMMERMAN

Huntington Beach, Calif., Sept. 19, 2014

To the Editor:

I feel that a pivotal moment for the independence vote was an impassioned speech by Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister and a Scot, on Wednesday urging Scotland to remain part of Britain and touching on some fundamental socialist values.

We must hope that the people of Scotland are not let down by Westminster politicians. Fear made many voters accept the status quo. The Scottish Parliament must grasp its existing and new powers and try to right the social injustices and make Scotland an even greater nation.

CHRISTINE WARD

Allanton, Scotland, Sept. 19, 2014

To the Editor:

While solid figures are not available yet, total spending on this referendum appears to have been less than $15 million. J. K. Rowling contributed $1.5 million, which caused quite a stir. Everyone else who made big donations also disclosed their names. Corporate contributions were minimal.

The total spent by the two sides on the referendum is comparable to what has been spent on Rhode Island’s gubernatorial primaries. Based on what I have read, there were no big donations from anyone benefiting financially from the result, and little cynicism about big business or anybody else unduly influencing the results.

STEVE WINERIP

Phoenix, Sept. 19, 2014

To the Editor:

With reference to your article about Scotland’s rejection of independence, I can’t help thinking of the prescience of these lines from “Macbeth” :

Macduff. Stands Scotland where it did?

Ross. Alas, poor country! Almost afraid to know itself.

DAVID HILDITCH

Washington, Sept. 19, 2014

A version of this letter appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: The Scots’ Decision: Let’s Stay British. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe |NYT Now

After Losing Scottish Independence Vote, Alex Salmond Will Resign

By ALAN COWELL and STEPHEN CASTLESEPT. 19, 2014

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Voting in Scotland’s Independence Referendum

Voting in Scotland’s Independence Referendum

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EDINBURGH — Alex Salmond, who led Scotland’s failed bid for independence, announced on Friday that he would step down as first minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party later this year.

The unexpected announcement came the day after voters spurned the vision of Scottish sovereignty that had propelled his political career for decades, and voted decisively in a referendum to continue Scotland’s 307-year-old union with Britain. Mr. Salmond was by far the most prominent casualty of the defeat.

The independence campaign that he led sent shock waves through Britain’s political elite, energized Scottish politics as rarely before and appeared to open the way for a looser, more federal Britain. After starting far behind in the polls, the independence campaign appeared to close the gap in the increasingly suspenseful final weeks, and in some surveys it even seemed to take a slight lead.

But when the ballots from all 32 voting districts were tallied early Friday, the “no” campaign had won 55.3 percent of the vote.

Photo

Alex Salmond in Edinburgh on Friday.

Referring to the seats of the British and Scottish Parliaments, Mr. Salmond said in a statement, “Today the point is this: The real guardians of progress are not the politicians at Westminster, or even at Holyrood, but the energized activism of tens of thousands of people who I predict will refuse meekly to go back into the political shadows.”

“For me right now, therefore, there is a decision as to who is best placed to lead this process forward politically,” he continued. “I believe that in this new exciting situation, redolent with possibility, party, Parliament and country would benefit from new leadership.”

Therefore, Mr. Salmond said, he will not stand for re-election as leader at his party’s annual conference in November, and then will resign as first minister “to allow the new leader to be elected by due parliamentary process.”

“We lost the referendum vote, but can still carry the political initiative,” he said. “More importantly, Scotland can still emerge as the real winner.”

His decision to resign reflected the deep disappointment on Friday within the vocal, enthusiastic pro-independence movement, which saw the referendum as a rare opportunity to make a centuries-old nationalist dream a reality.

At a news conference in Edinburgh, Mr. Salmond, who was ebullient, feisty and sometimes pugnacious during the campaign, seemed to turn wistful. “For me as leader, my time is nearly over,” he told reporters, “but for Scotland the campaign continues, and the dream shall never die.”

Mr. Salmond did not identify a successor, but political analysts said his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, who played a central role in the campaign, was likely to be a strong contender.

Continue reading the main story

Results by Region

Percentage Point Difference

-15

-10

-5

0

5

10

15%

Voted no

Voted yes

Scotland

Aberdeen

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Source: Scottish Independence Referendum

British political leaders promised on Friday to heal the wounds opened by the referendum and begin work on sweeping changes to give new decision-making powers to Scotland and other parts of the country — changes that the three main British political parties promised in the panicky last days before the referendum, though they have yet to agree on specifics.

Negotiations on those changes are likely to be tortuous, and not just between London and the Scots.

“The old union we know is dead,” said Carwyn Jones, the first minister of Wales. “We need to forge a new one. But no more committees, no more messing about, no more panicky deals — it’s time to sit together, all of us as four nations, and work this through.” Northern Ireland is the fourth component of the United Kingdom, along with England, Scotland and Wales.

Among the outstanding issues is whether England should continue to be ruled solely by the national Parliament in Westminster, which includes Scottish, Irish and Welsh members, or be given some form of regional government as well, akin to those in Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

In Edinburgh, Mr. Salmond said earlier in the day that the 1.6 million votes cast for separation showed the depth of the desire for greater decision-making powers in Scotland. “Today of all days, as we bring Scotland together, let us not dwell on the distance we have fallen short, let us dwell on the distance we have traveled,” he said.

For Prime Minister David Cameron, whose job would have been on the line had the Scots voted to break away, the referendum results were an evident relief, though one tempered with an awareness that it may have won by his late promise of new powers for Scotland, which already controls health and education within its borders.

Mr. Cameron said Friday morning that there could be “no disputes, no reruns,” and that the referendum had settled the independence debate “for a generation.”

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|1:33

Europe Reacts to Scotland’s Vote

Europe Reacts to Scotland’s Vote Leaders from Britain, Scotland, Spain and the European Commission spoke after Scotland rejected independence from Britain in a referendum. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditAndrew Milligan/Press Association, via Associated Press

Queen Elizabeth II, who is precluded from intervening in politics, urged Scots on Friday to seek unity and work together in the wake of the vote. “For many in Scotland and elsewhere today, there will be strong feelings and contrasting emotions – among family, friends and neighbors,” she said in a statement from her Scottish castle at Balmoral. “Now, as we move forward, we should remember that, despite the range of views that have been expressed, we have in common an enduring love of Scotland, which is one of the things that helps to unite us all.”

All told, 2,001,926 “no” votes were cast in the referendum, compared with 1,617,989 “yes” votes, according to Mary Pitcaithly, the chief counting officer. Nearly 85 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

With its appeal for a fresh start, the “yes” campaign seemed to capture the imagination of a large section of Scottish electorate that was bitterly disillusioned with London politics. By contrast, the “no” side stressed the economic risks of a breakaway, and was accused of running a negative campaign.

On Friday the result was welcomed by the Confederation of British Industry, a leading business lobby group. “This is a momentous day for our United Kingdom, and this result will be greeted by a collective sigh of relief across the business community,” said John Cridland, the organization’s director general.

The outcome was no less welcome in Washington, where President Obama had made little secret of his desire that Britain remain intact, not least because of Mr. Salmond’s promise to evict British nuclear submarine bases from an independent Scotland.

“We have no closer ally than the United Kingdom, and we look forward to continuing our strong and special relationship with all the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as we address the challenges facing the world today,” Mr. Obama said in a statement.

The NATO alliance and the European Commission, the executive body of the 28-nation European Union, also welcomed the rejection of a referendum that had already encouraged separatists in other parts of Europe, including the Catalonia region of Spain.

In Madrid, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called the Scottish vote “the most favorable option for everyone — for themselves, for all of Britain and for the rest of Europe.”

But Artur Mas, the head of Catalonia’s regional government, drew a different interpretation, saying that Scotland had provided “a great lesson in democracy” and urging Mr. Rajoy to follow Mr. Cameron’s example and permit a similar referendum there.

“To think you can shut up a Catalan society that wants to vote isn’t going to work in a democracy of the 21st century,” Mr. Mas said in Barcelona.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Edinburgh; Raphael Minder from Madrid; and Michael D. Shear from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on September 19, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Scottish Leader, Alex Salmond, to Resign After Losing Vote on Independence. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Letters

On Raising Children Outside of Marriage

SEPT. 19, 2014

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To the Editor:

Re “Beyond Marriage,” by Isabel V. Sawhill (Sunday Review, Sept. 14):

One key component of this discussion is missing.

I lecture on these issues semester after semester. One common theme that arises is that many young poor women are choosing to have babies as a means to creating a future — the only future they can see as an option — to replicate what they knew growing up.

For many of them having a baby is a means to collecting an array of social welfare benefits (falsely believing that those benefits will support them), and a way of having someone to love and of possibly getting a guy at least somewhat invested in their lives.

My students regularly suggest that what is needed is for these young women to have some hope for their future that does not involve becoming a mother at a young age. What if these women had a more affordable option for higher educational opportunities?

What if there were great guidance counselors or school social workers willing to discuss family planning with teenagers? Until young poor girls have a broader array of future possibilities, I don’t think that increased access to IUD’s will make much of a difference.

LEAANNE DeRIGNE

Boca Raton, Fla., Sept. 14, 2014

The writer is an assistant professor of social work, Florida Atlantic University.

To the Editor:

As an obstetrician-gynecologist, I applaud Isabel V. Sawhill’s appeal to increase access to the most effective forms of birth control: IUDs and the implant. Even when women choose those methods, there are frequently additional barriers they have to overcome.

Ideally, women should be able to have the IUD placed the same day they make the decision to use it, but the high upfront cost and limited access prove to be continuing impediments for many women. Even women with insurance coverage often have to pay for it first, or wait for their doctor to order it.

IUDs and the implant are not right for every woman, but many women want them and cannot get them. Increasing access to all methods by eliminating barriers of cost and access will ultimately empower women to make the best decision for themselves and their families.

KATHLEEN MORRELL

New York, Sept. 15, 2014

The writer is a reproductive health advocacy fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health in New York.

To the Editor:

Isabel V. Sawhill ponders options about how to raise children outside of marriage. There are three options she didn’t mention:

First, be like Sweden has been since the 1950s. Instead of hoping that the parents will figure out how to struggle on their own, the government gives a subsidy to each child, every month, from the time of conception until 18.

Second, have financial disincentives to having many children and financial incentives to waiting to have children.

And third, encourage the poor to have an education to lift themselves out of poverty by providing an affordable method for attending college. For the poor, that means free — with obligations. For example, after high school, if graduates work for two years or so in areas in which the government needs help, then they get college paid for.

JUDY EINZIG

San Francisco, Sept. 14, 2014

To the Editor:

There have been so many changes in the structure of the economy, the structure of the family and the politics of the nation that it is hard to believe that more effective contraception is the answer to child poverty and “irresponsible parenthood.” Is it lack of effective contraception that has increased economic inequality so greatly, or is it the unequal distribution of wealth?

There was a time, not too long ago, when one parent (the man) supported the family and the family enjoyed economic upward mobility. Why can’t a single parent support a family today? Is it because that single parent is a woman, often earning less than minimum wage, often working fewer than 40 hours a week (not by choice) and often earning less than a man?

Yes, contraception is important. But there is no reason a single woman cannot support her family if she earns a living wage, has supportive child care and health care, and lives in an environment that doesn’t consider her a bad parent.

MARCIA BOK

Hartford, Sept. 15, 2014

The writer is professor emeritus of social work at the University of Connecticut.

To the Editor:

Isabel V. Sawhill provided timely information on the vital role and efficacy of various methods of family planning available to the American public.

Effective contraception, if made easily available and affordable to all adolescent girls and women, along with solid education through schools, physicians’ offices, clinics and other agencies that serve the public, would to a large extent render the fraught debate about abortion less relevant, while significantly improving the life prospects of millions of children and their families.

The actions of politicians, including Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, to reduce funding for Planned Parenthood and the drop in federal funding for contraception in overseas programs are counterproductive at best.

NANCY T. BLOCK

Berkeley Heights, N.J., Sept. 15, 2014

The writer is a psychiatrist.

A version of this letter appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: On Raising Children Outside of Marriage. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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SundayReview | Opinion

Beyond Marriage

By ISABEL V. SAWHILLSEPT. 13, 2014

Inside

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MARRIAGE is disappearing. More than 40 percent of new mothers are unmarried. Many young adults drift into parenthood unintentionally. They may be cohabiting at the time of their child’s birth, but about half of these couples will have split up by the time their child is 5 years old. College-educated young adults are still marrying before having children and planning their families more intentionally. The rest of America, about two-thirds of the population, is not.

We’ve been worrying about these trends for years, and wondering: Can marriage be restored as the standard way to raise children? As much as we might welcome a revival, I doubt that it will happen. The genie is out of the bottle. What we need instead is a new ethic of responsible parenthood. If we combine an updated social norm with greater reliance on the most effective forms of birth control, we can transform drifters into planners and improve children’s life prospects.

The drifters need better educational and job opportunities, but unless we come to grips with what is happening to marriage and parenting, progress will be limited. For every child lifted out of poverty by a social program, another one is entering poverty as a result of the continued breakdown of the American family. If we could turn back the marriage clock to 1970, before the sharp rise in divorce and single parenthood began, the child poverty rate would be 20 percent lower than it is now. Even some of our biggest social programs, like food stamps, do not reduce child poverty as much as unmarried parenthood has increased it.

Continue reading the main story

Graphic

How Likely Is It That Birth Control Could Let You Down?

Charts of probabilities of unintended pregnancy while using different contraception methods, for up to 10 years.

OPEN Graphic

The decline in marriage and the growth of childbearing outside of marriage is partly a result of the limited economic prospects of those at the bottom. We should provide more education and job opportunities for unskilled men in particular, but the evidence that these policies will restore stable families is sketchy. For one thing, although less-educated men are struggling, they still earn more than their female counterparts, and moneywise two incomes in a household are always better than one.

Even if economics played a key role initially, it has propelled a huge shift in social norms that is by now deeply embedded in our culture. Not only are single-parent families far more common and socially acceptable than they were in the past, but scholars studying low-income or working-class communities have discovered that the women in these communities no longer think it is realistic to depend on the men in their lives. They have seen or experienced too much divorce, infidelity, substance abuse and other bad behavior to trust or fully rely on their partners.

Liberals argue that we should accept the new reality and support single parents by providing more child care, health care, food and cash assistance. These efforts help, but with one-third of all children now living in families like this, and child poverty rates in these families four times as high as they are in two-parent families, this is a hugely expensive proposition. It is also inconsistent with a public ethic that values self-sufficiency over dependency.

Conservatives, for their part, believe that the problem is cultural and that restoration of marriage is not only possible but the best route to reducing poverty and inequality. As Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, put it, “the greatest tool to lift children and families from poverty is one that decreases the probability of child poverty by 82 percent. But it isn’t a government spending program. It’s called marriage.”

Conservatives, however, have never explained how to restore marriage. Everything they have tried — from marriage-education programs to changes in the way marriage is treated in tax and benefit programs — has had little or no effect.

The debate between these two camps has been going on for a long time with no resolution. I first encountered it when I wrote a book on the growth of single-parent families in the wake of the controversy spawned by the 1965 report by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, which argued that the breakdown of the black family was the cause of most social pathologies in inner city communities. Now single parenthood is as common among whites as it was among blacks in the mid-60s. (At that time, the proportion of black children living in single-parent families was 22 percent. It has subsequently risen to 72 percent.)

I encountered the debate again during the administration of President Bill Clinton when, as an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the president’s welfare-reform task force, I heard the argument that providing unconditional assistance to women raising children on their own was a major reason for the proliferation of such families. Although any evidence of such an effect was weak at best, I supported Mr. Clinton’s effort in 1996 to make welfare conditional on work. I hoped this would at least make women think twice before having a child on their own. But the growth of births outside of marriage has continued almost unabated.

Not only are 40 percent of all children born outside marriage (50 percent among mothers under 30), but 60 percent of these births were unplanned. New parents often come to accept and love the baby, but it is not an auspicious beginning. Research I did with Quentin Karpilow and Joanna Venator at the Brookings Institution shows that unplanned births affect children’s development, including their chances of graduating from college and earning a middle-class income.

Such high rates of unplanned pregnancies may seem surprising given the ready availability of many forms of contraception. But it turns out that most people are not very good at using contraception consistently. Condoms, a popular contraceptive choice among young unmarried adults, have especially high failure rates. Among typical users, 63 percent will have experienced a pregnancy at the end of five years (40 percent will go on to have an abortion).

Long-acting reversible contraceptives (known in the field as LARCs and including implants and IUDs), could transform this landscape. The reason for high rates of unplanned pregnancies and births is not that young adults don’t understand that becoming a parent is challenging; it’s because they, like all of us, are prone to making mistakes and are often ambivalent about their intentions. If these or other new forms of contraception were more accessible and less costly, and if more people understood how effective and convenient they are, unplanned pregnancies would decline.

The reason is simple. LARCs change the default from having to do something difficult (reach for a condom or remember to take a pill every day) to not having to do anything until one is ready to be a parent. Becoming pregnant requires a very deliberate decision to have the IUD or implant removed. For this reason, IUDs are 17.8 percentage points more effective than condoms and 8.8 percentage points more effective than the pill at preventing pregnancy (although all of them are far better than using no protection at all, and condoms are still needed to protect against sexually transmitted infections). Despite a bad rap based on an earlier history associated with the dangerous Dalkon Shield, LARCs are also safe, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

A Washington University study of nearly 10,000 demographically representative women in the St. Louis region found that among those who were offered free contraception along with good counseling about the most effective methods, 75 percent chose a long-acting reversible contraceptive, and there was “an 80 percent reduction in teen births and a 75 percent reduction in abortions among women in the cohort compared to national statistics.” A similar program in Colorado, in which private funding was provided to 28 clinics to offer LARCs at little or no cost to women, also had great success, reducing births to high-risk, mostly poor young women, ages 15 to 24, by 27 percent between 2009 and 2011.

The upfront cost of this type of contraceptive can be high, as much as $1,000, but over a woman’s reproductive life it is cheaper than the pill. Research by my former Brookings colleagues Adam Thomas and Emily Monea shows that for every dollar invested in birth control, taxpayers save roughly five dollars on Medicaid-supported births and on social welfare payments for the mother and child. If these accidental births could be avoided, these 20-somethings might reach an age at which stable relationships are finally possible, unencumbered by a child from a previous relationship. And whether a woman finds a partner or not, by waiting she would be better prepared to raise a child by herself. Because the conversation has focused so heavily on marriage, we have lost sight of the fact that it is the quality of parenting that really matters, not just the structure of the family.

It is in this context that any efforts, like the Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby to curtail access to the most effective forms of birth control, are misguided. If we could make the most effective forms of birth control available to all women with no co-payment, we would not only have healthier children and lower child poverty rates, we would limit the extent of government assistance people need in the process.

The Affordable Care Act required most insurance plans to cover all forms of contraception approved by the Food and Drug Administration, while also expanding Medicaid and community health centers. But the full implementation of these provisions is far from guaranteed. Current court challenges to the contraceptive coverage provision, the unwillingness of some states to expand Medicaid, and a lack of clinics and of doctors knowledgeable about and trained in the provision of LARCs are all impediments to an era of more responsible parenthood

But greater access to the most effective forms of contraception is not enough. We also need a new ethic of responsible parenthood. That means not having a child before you and your partner really want one and have thought about how you will care for that child. Those from less privileged backgrounds may worry that they will never be able to afford a child. But two full-time $10-an-hour jobs bring in roughly $40,000 a year, hardly a princely sum yet enough to support a family well above the poverty line, even after child care and other expenses. These families should be receiving child-care subsidies and other forms of help. I can even imagine making certain benefits conditional on greater responsibility on their part, but think that might be too great a threat to individual rights. Softer nudges toward more responsible behavior can work just as well.

SOCIAL norms do evolve. Fewer people now smoke and more of them wear seatbelts. Attitudes toward gays and women have shifted dramatically. Teenage pregnancy and birthrates have declined sharply in recent decades, partly because of new media messages (like the TV show “16 and Pregnant”) and an emerging consensus that it is simply not a good idea to have a child as a teenager. The problem of unintended births has moved up the age scale; a similar consensus could eventually emerge here too. Government or foundation-funded social marketing campaigns can change attitudes. Campaigns devoted to reducing teenage smoking and drunken driving have succeeded. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (on whose board I serve) has pioneered efforts of this kind to reduce pregnancy.

We need more (and better quality) child care and a higher minimum wage, as well as serious education and training for those who are struggling to care for their families. But government alone can’t solve this problem. Younger people must begin to take greater responsibility for their choices. The old social norm was, “Don’t have a child outside of marriage.” The new norm needs to be, “Don’t have a child until you and your partner are ready to be parents.” Whether or not it was a realistic norm in the past, it is now — precisely because newer forms of contraception make planning a family so much easier.

Well-functioning democracies are built on the premise that government has an obligation to promote the general welfare. But so do citizens. More support for those who are drifting is in order, but less drifting is also essential.

Isabel V. Sawhill is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author, most recently, of “Generation Unbound: Drifting Into Sex and Parenthood Without Marriage.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 14, 2014, on page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline: Beyond Marriage. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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In Brooklyn Park, Chants Extol Full Moon as Thefts Empty Bike Shed

SEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

Giovanni Bailey, 19, at the Brooklyn Bike Park in Havemeyer Park in Williamsburg, where 17 mountain bikes were stolen from a storage container this month.

Crime Scene

By MICHAEL WILSON

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A friend’s email to Andrew Kluger arrived on a cloudy afternoon two Mondays ago.

“Andrew, you have to come out of your apartment,” it read. “We’re having a sound bath in honor of the full moon.”

Excited, Mr. Kluger, 26, a photographer and actor, hurried to the appointed location: Havemeyer Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, across Kent Avenue from the old Domino Sugar refinery. Specifically, he approached a patch of grass at the east end of the park, where there sat a tall, white tepee. He and about 20 others took off their shoes, stooped and entered the small opening, he recalled this week. Some brought tools for the sound bath, including a didgeridoo and a Tibetan singing bowl, to accompany the chants.

The sun set. Meanwhile that night, one or more other people went to the park with their own tools, including bolt cutters or a crowbar. The person or group made off with 17 mountain bikes stored at the Brooklyn Bike Park, inside Havemeyer Park.

Much has been said about the transformation of Williamsburg, and the bumping-up that takes place between the old and the new. And to that chorus, add the events of that night. It is quite possible that meditative chanting and the drones of a didgeridoo from inside a tepee may have drowned out the banging and clanging of the bicycle thieves.

Photo

The lock that was broken in the crime.

The dirt bike park opened in 2013 and operates on a shoestring. A $5 donation is suggested at the gate. More lucrative is the rental service, in which bicycles stored in a cargo container behind the tiny office go for $5 to $15, depending on the age group of the rider. The park’s main feature is its pump track — rings of hills and berms and twisting “rollers.”

“Brooklyn Bike Park is Brooklyn’s first legal, off-road riding opportunity,” said Christopher Trombley, 31, its founder. It is also, for many children, the setting for a milestone.

“So many kids have learned to ride their bikes here and overcome that fear,” said Carrie Salter, 56, a volunteer in another corner of Havemeyer Park.

The bike park is technically closed on Mondays, but it is open to friends of those who work there, like Giovanni Bailey, 19 — Gio to his friends. Mr. Bailey said about four of his friends were biking on the pump track that Monday, Sept. 8, and promised to lock the gate on their way out at 8 p.m.

In hindsight, “they might have left it open,” he said this week. Either way, the gate was unlocked on Tuesday at noon, when Mr. Bailey showed up to open the bike park. He thought a co-worker had arrived before him, until he noticed the door to the storage container. The padlock had been broken.

“Turns out the lock was actually a cheap lock,” Mr. Trombley said. “It broke at the seam when they pried on it.”

The locker had been jammed with bikes — children’s sizes as well as the adult Cannondale, GT and Giant models. Almost all the adult bikes were gone. Mr. Bailey called the police, and officers came and took a report and said they would review neighborhood video. There have been no updates in the case.

But Mr. Bailey also works as a security guard at the construction site across the street, where the Domino Sugar refinery is being torn down for apartments. He had access to a camera that more or less pointed at the bike park. He watched the night’s feed.

Shortly past 8 p.m., after his friends had left the park, a group of “over seven guys” stopped on the nearby corner for a minute, then left. That is all Mr. Bailey saw; the video was too dark to tell when the container was broken into, he said.

After those who had been in the tepee found out about the theft, they realized it might have occurred during their ceremony, which lasted a couple of hours.

“Theft and self-reliance and acquisition,” said Mr. Kluger, who helped build the park, offended that this crime occurred so close to what he called the openness of the sound bath.

“You start to fall asleep and wake up to see someone playing a Tibetan prayer bowl over your heart,” he said. “This is the energy.”

The thefts have dampened the big finale to the summer and to the park itself. The park’s lease with Two Trees Management Company, the developer building luxury housing on the site, ends Sept. 28, Mr. Trombley said. The berms of the pump track will be flattened. The bike park plans to move directly across the street with a five-year lease.

There are several large locks on the storage container now, but with only two responses to a call for bike donations, not much inside to lock up.

Email: crimescene@nytimes.com

Twitter: @mwilsonnyt

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: In One Park, Chants Extol a Full Moon as Thefts Empty a Bike Shed. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Luxury Apartments? Later. For Now, They Burn Sage.

A Tepee Flourishes, Temporarily, in Brooklyn

By SARA BECKJUNE 19, 2014

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A Temporary Tepee on a Brooklyn Shore

A Temporary Tepee on a Brooklyn Shore

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The increasingly glassy Williamsburg waterfront seems an unlikely place for a sacred site. Yet among mirrored high-rises and a manicured shoreline, near the decaying remains of the Domino Sugar refinery in Brooklyn, there sits on a shaggy patch of grass a 30-foot-tall white tepee, the smoke flap open to the sky, the door positioned east (toward the rising sun) and the poles lashed together, stretching out to infinity.

It is a peace flag, of sorts, in the recent battles between protesting groups like Save Domino and the developer Two Trees Management Company, which plans to turn the site into more luxury housing.

In 2012, Two Trees bought the 11 acres of the Domino Sugar refinery, a stretch of land that hugs the East River from Grand Street to South Fifth. In the midst of local opposition, the developer, known for the renovation of Dumbo’s waterfront, made a conciliatory gesture: It offered 55,000 square feet of overgrown, trash-strewn parking lot to be used freely until it began construction. Proposals for the use of the land were submitted, and a pop-up park was born.

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Site of planned

development

Brooklyn

Williamsburg

Former site of

Domino Sugar

refinery

East R.

Havemeyer

Park

“This was not meant as a Band-Aid or a diversion,” said Marina Trejo, a Two Trees project manager. “If people don’t like our project, a temporary park won’t change that.”

In fact, throughout last summer, while locals enjoyed an urban farm, a dirt bike park and newly planted grass on which they could walk barefoot, the protests continued. This was when Denise Cermanski stumbled upon the blooming Havemeyer Park.

“I was confused,” said Ms. Cermanski, 31, who for many years has lived just a few blocks away from the site. “As far as I knew, this spot was an abandoned parking lot. When had it become a park?”

Her vision appeared as she gazed at the Domino site: A tepee could be raised here, a place of connection for people of all kinds.

“It’s this remarkable structure that was built with beauty, practicality and wisdom,” Ms. Cermanski said. Not that she had much prior knowledge of tepees. Ms. Cermanski, who is the deputy director of Art Start, a nonprofit organization that offers creative workshops for marginalized youth, had never been inside a tepee. In fact, she had only ever seen one once, years ago, in a park in the Bronx. She wasn’t allowed to enter then, she recalled, because a woman was inside giving birth.

Two Trees was accepting new proposals for the summer of 2014, and Ms. Cermanski scrambled to put one together. It was accepted, and the Tipi Project came to be. Organized by Ms. Cermanski in conjunction with Golden Drum, a Brooklyn cultural center that celebrates indigenous practices from around the world, it offers events and workshops intended to bring people together in appreciation for the land.

The events planned for the summer sound exactly like what you’d imagine to be held in a Williamsburg tepee: laughter yoga, Native American weaving classes, full-moon ceremonies and didgeridoo workshops, for example.

“We hoped the tepee would call people off the pavement and onto the grass,” said Kyra Rogowska, a founder of Golden Drum. “To inspire them to feel the earth, to remember that we’re part of a universe that includes trees, stars, planets, animals, wind and grass.”

Its service, however, will be brief.

The park will close on Sept. 1. Soon after, everything on the lot will be bulldozed to make room for apartments and commercial space.

But those who have occupied the land always knew it was a temporary arrangement, and still it was too good to pass up.

“We have an entire acre in Brooklyn!” said Henry Sweets, 32, of North Brooklyn Farms, a nonprofit group that converts vacant lots to vegetable gardens. “That’s a vast wilderness!”

Mr. Sweets was among the first to clear the lot, in 2013, and from the beginning the project seemed charmed, he said. People showed up just as they were needed, like the skilled masons who helped with tricky terracing, or the former Domino employees who stopped by to encourage the volunteers with pictures and stories from the old days. Then there was an afternoon when the place filled with thousands of dragonflies, iridescent in the sun.

“We have this brief, kind of magical moment here,” Mr. Sweets said. “When we leave, change will happen, but maybe we’ll start a chain reaction of inspiration.”

The tepee, like the park, is a temporary space, a structure that can be disassembled in a few hours. On May 29, just after the tepee was raised, Tony Pasquariella, a Mohawk elder, blessed it with prayers and sacred plants, including tobacco and sage.

“The whole idea was to get rid of bad energy that might be there,” explained Mr. Pasquariella, 58, who is the son of a Mohawk woman and an Italian man, and who grew up in Brooklyn. “Then you create a bubble that envelops the tepee. Everyone who passes through will leave negativity outside, and when they come inside they will feel an overwhelming sense of peace.”

He admitted that the Mohawk people, native to New York state, never actually lived in tepees, but rather in longhouses.

“I really have no connection with the tepee,” said his daughter, Ali Pasquariella, 21, who helped lead the June full-moon ceremony. “But compared to the average hipster who wears a Native American on the front of their T-shirt? Yeah, it might be more special to me.”

It doesn’t bother her or her father that Brooklynites have adopted the rituals of indigenous people.

“Everyone, whether they realize it or not, has ancestors that lived in a traditional way with dances, medicines, songs, stories,” Mr. Pasquariella said.

“We’re always trying to find that again, those original ways,” he added.

For all its idyllic intent, the Sioux-style tepee is still in a factory’s parking lot. At a full-moon ceremony, the trains from the J-M-Z subway line rumbled overhead every few minutes. And during a recent music hour, as two blond 2-year-olds danced in the tepee, jackhammers blared outside.

“The last time I saw a tepee was in a kids’ store, for something like $300,” said Shai Zagury, a father who sat cross-legged at the tepee’s edge.

Ordered from the Colorado Yurt Company, this particular model cost more than $3,000. A reasonable facsimile of a Great Plains tepee, with a few contemporary adjustments, it is covered in canvas instead of buffalo hide and is lit by votive candles rather than a central fire. Attached to the chief pole is a turkey feather, a local substitute for the hard-to-find traditional eagle feather.

One recent evening, a group of about 15 laughter-yoga participants lay in a circle, heads toward the center, and gazed at the sky. They called out the names of those they wished would laugh more.

“My mother-in-law!” one participant exclaimed.

“The developers of this land!” shouted another. Everyone laughed in agreement.

Ms. Cermanski said that when she tells visitors to the tepee that an apartment complex is coming, their response is the same.

“People say, ‘What a shame!’ ” she said. “But how amazing that this is happening now?”

Rain clouds obscured the June full moon, but 30 participants gathered for the ceremony anyway, burning sage and offering thanks.

With only two more moon cycles before the park closes and construction begins, Ms. Cermanski is dreaming about where to move the tepee next. She acknowledged that change cannot be stopped.

“Still, if you look at the tepee poles, you’ll see that they don’t really end,” she said. “They keep going, all the way to infinity.”

Correction: June 22, 2014

A cover story in some editions this weekend about a tepee that has been erected at a temporary park at the former Domino Sugar refinery site in Brooklyn misstates the nature of a development that is planned there. It is to be a mix of luxury apartments, affordable housing and commercial space; it will not include condominiums. The error was repeated in the headline.

A version of this article appears in print on June 22, 2014, on page MB1 of the New York edition with the headline: Condos? Later. For Now, Sage.. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Astorino Forces Encounter With Cuomo as They Court Business Leaders

By THOMAS KAPLANSEPT. 19, 2014

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Rob Astorino, the Westchester County executive, awaiting the arrival of Mr. Cuomo.

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BOLTON LANDING, N.Y. — After sparring through commercials and news releases, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Rob Astorino came face to face here on Friday.

Mr. Astorino, a Republican who is the Westchester County executive, showed up unannounced for a speech by Mr. Cuomo to a statewide business group, staking out the entrance of a hotel ballroom in an effort to force a handshake upon the governor.

The governor, a Democrat, returned the favor during his remarks, denouncing the high property taxes in Westchester, as Mr. Astorino stood at the side of the room, an impassive look on his face.

The uneven playing field between Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Astorino was palpable here as the Business Council of New York State convened for its annual meeting. Business leaders, a natural constituency for an aspiring Republican politician, showered Mr. Cuomo with approval. Mr. Astorino spoke to the group on Thursday night, pleading with attendees to rethink their fondness for the governor.

Mr. Astorino called his speech a “reality check.” The crowd cheered longer for Mr. Cuomo.

Photo

In a fleeting interaction, Mr. Astorino, right, asked the governor, "You ready to debate?"

The race for governor hinges in large part on how voters perceive New York’s economic fortunes. Mr. Astorino is spending his time railing against oppressive taxes that he says are driving businesses and residents to flee; Mr. Cuomo, seeking a second term, is showcasing his record of turning an imposing deficit into an impressive surplus, and cutting taxes along the way.

Though the back-and-forth between the two candidates has focused in recent days on frivolities like football allegiances and unicorn killings — the subjects of recent advertisements on both sides — the race took a step toward substance as the candidates courted business leaders at the meeting, which was held at the Sagamore, a resort on Lake George.

In a pair of speeches that offered a comparison of their economic views, Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Astorino sounded as if they were discussing different states.

Flipping through a slide presentation filled with numbers and charts, Mr. Cuomo pointed to the private-sector jobs created during his time in office and upgrades to the state’s credit rating. He offered plans for dividing up billions of dollars in surplus revenue, suggesting it go toward areas like aid for upstate economic development and incentives to encourage local governments to consolidate. He highlighted some of his marquee programs, including regional councils to help dole out economic development grants around the state, as well as the creation of tax-free zones at college campuses that are meant to attract new businesses. He predicted the tax-free program, Start-Up NY, would be “the greatest economic savior for upstate New York.”

“Over all,” Mr. Cuomo said, “the state economy is night and day from where we started.”

The governor, whom some liberal activists have accused of favoring the state’s corporate class, proudly invoked what he called “the battle I’ve had with the teachers’ union over the past four years,” and bragged that he had reduced the state work force to its smallest size in more than 50 years.

Still, Mr. Cuomo has drawn some recent trepidation from business leaders because of a deal he struck to receive the backing of the Working Families Party, a group of labor unions and liberal activists. The governor agreed to push for Democratic control of the State Senate, and to advance a number of causes favored by liberals, including raising the minimum wage.

The Business Council endorsed Mr. Cuomo in 2010, but has not made a decision about whether it will make a choice in the race this year.

Mr. Astorino has spent months bemoaning the state’s economic climate. In his speech, he cited rankings showing New York at the bottom of the heap compared with other states, and questioned why business executives were not complaining as loudly as he was.

Photo

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo spoke on Friday at the annual meeting of the Business Council of New York State at the Sagamore, a resort on Lake George in Bolton Landing, N.Y.

“You have the clout — the power — to demand better, yet you reward leaders who, at best, are managing the steady decline of New York,” Mr. Astorino said.

“Whoever gets elected gets the business community’s support in New York, and rarely your criticism,” he added. “Everyone is afraid to offend the governor’s office, state legislative leaders, City Hall. In elections, as soon as it looks like a winner is emerging from the pack, the money pours in to that candidate — regardless of the candidate’s economic views.”

The fleeting interaction between the two candidates on Friday was a small triumph for Mr. Astorino, who seemed to delight in crowding the spotlight of a governor whose public appearances are meticulously planned to avoid exactly this kind of spontaneous encounter.

Mr. Astorino, grinning, positioned himself inside the entrance to the ballroom where Mr. Cuomo was set to speak, ensuring the governor would run into him.

About 10 minutes passed as Mr. Astorino waited, along with a crowd of journalists.

When Mr. Cuomo finally entered, he shook hands with Mr. Astorino, who asked, “You ready to debate?”

Mr. Cuomo responded affirmatively, patted him on the shoulder and continued walking.

“Tell me when,” Mr. Astorino said.

The entire interaction was over in five seconds. (Mr. Astorino at least fared better than Zephyr Teachout, the governor’s top opponent in the Democratic primary, whom his aides physically blocked from greeting him at a parade this month.)

Afterward, Mr. Cuomo was asked about Mr. Astorino’s decision to show up to his speech.

“I hope he enjoyed it,” the governor said.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Astorino Forces Encounter With Cuomo as They Court Business Leaders. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Ad Duel in Governor’s Race Turns Toward the Trivial

By THOMAS KAPLANSEPT. 17, 2014

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Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s supporters chided his Republican opponent, Rob Astorino, for rooting for the wrong football team.

Mr. Astorino responded by accusing the governor, a Democrat, of murdering unicorns.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates, these are not.

As New York’s leading candidates for governor intensify their attacks on one another, the back-and-forth has become increasingly colorful — or frivolous, depending on who is assessing the situation.

Mr. Astorino, the Westchester County executive, lags far behind Mr. Cuomo in public opinion polls and fund-raising. As a result, he is trying to attract as much attention as possible, even if doing so means invoking mythical creatures or enlisting his 11-year-old son as a campaign surrogate.

That effort reached a new high, or low, on Wednesday, when the Astorino campaign released an ad that begins with a narrator declaring, “Andrew Cuomo: Unicorn Killer,” while showing a young girl holding a stuffed purple unicorn.

The commercial also accuses Mr. Cuomo of locking Santa Claus in a chimney and pushing Humpty Dumpty off his wall.

“He’s the worst man in the world,” a young girl declares, standing in front of a chalkboard with a sketch of Mr. Cuomo and a caption that reads, “Meanie!”

“New Yorkers need jobs and tax relief, Governor Cuomo,” the ad concludes. “How about talking issues for a change?”

The ad was meant to poke fun at a barrage of commercials broadcast by the state’s Democratic Party in recent months attacking Mr. Astorino. Jessica Proud, a spokeswoman for Mr. Astorino, said the ad had not yet been shown on television, but was quite likely to soon.

A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo’s campaign, Matt Wing, was not impressed.

“You know a campaign has no ideas and nothing real to say when they start talking about unicorns,” he said.

While Mr. Cuomo has been unwilling to be seen as treating Mr. Astorino as a formidable opponent, the governor’s camp has been aggressive in trying to brand Mr. Astorino as “ultraconservative” and to question his integrity. (One of the Democratic ads challenging Mr. Astorino’s ethics prompted the Astorino campaign to ask television stations not to run it; the state Democratic Party defended the spot.)

A particularly unusual attack ad appeared this past weekend in western New York, where the Buffalo Bills hosted a division rival, the Miami Dolphins, on Sunday. It informed viewers that Mr. Astorino was a Dolphins fan and showed a photograph of him taken at one of the team’s games a few years ago.

“So this November,” the commercial concluded, “when Rob Astorino comes asking for your vote, let’s remember who was on our team.”

Mr. Astorino, who grew up in Westchester, is a lifelong Dolphins fan, Ms. Proud said. But he did not appreciate the ad, in which the photograph was digitally altered to remove Mr. Astorino’s son, Sean, who was 7 at the time it was taken.

Sean Astorino, now 11, sat down to record a video that his father’s campaign circulated on Tuesday.

“Do you really like chopping up Astorino family photos?” Sean asked, adding, “While I’ve got you, stop telling lies about my dad on TV.”

The Erie County Democratic Committee, which paid for the ad, defended the alteration. “It is illegal to use the image of a child in an ad without the parent’s permission,” Erich Weyant, its executive director, said. “We simply followed the law.”

Mr. Cuomo dismissed the football debate as “silliness,” but he has been cautious on the topic of his own loyalties. Asked to name the governor’s favorite team, Mr. Wing, the campaign spokesman, said Mr. Cuomo favored the Bills, the Jets and the Giants.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Ad Duel in Governor’s Race Turns Toward the Trivial. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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N.Y. / Region

Cuomo Secures Support of Working Families Party

By JESSE McKINLEYJUNE 1, 2014

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Activists at the Working Families Party convention hold signs against endorsing Governor Andrew M. Cuomo.

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ALBANY — Defusing a tense and potentially campaign-changing challenge from the left, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo secured the endorsement of the Working Families Party on Saturday night, easing the popular Democrat’s path as he runs for re-election and solidifying his broader political prospects.

After weeks of negotiations and last-minute tribulations, Mr. Cuomo was able to mend rifts created by some of his centrist policies and ease the concerns of Working Families, a small but influential group of labor unions and liberal activists. In doing so, the governor — a savvy politician with rumored presidential ambitions — simplified a re-election campaign in which he hopes to win by a large, message-sending margin.

But the Working Families blessing was hard won, involving a full-court press by his political aides as well as Mayor Bill de Blasio, a fellow Democrat who lobbied on the governor’s behalf despite the two men’s often fraught relationship.

Mr. Cuomo reached out to the party on Saturday night with a video and a subsequent phone call, promising to pursue a raft of progressive goals, most critically changing the political dynamic in the State Senate, where Republicans share leadership with a five-member group of breakaway Democrats known as the Independent Democratic Conference.

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Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham University, speaks to reporters during the Working Families Party convention.

The governor, who previously refused to support a Democratic takeover of the Senate leadership, promised to undo that arrangement, saying the group’s members should come back to the mainstream party or “face primaries this year from a unified Democratic coalition.”

“To make this agenda a reality, we must change the Senate leadership,” the governor said.

In his remarks, Mr. Cuomo also suggested that he would work on a variety of other policy goals, including campaign finance reform; a higher minimum wage; and passage of the Dream Act, which would allow college students who are in the country illegally and meet certain criteria to access state financial aid.

The case for Mr. Cuomo was also made by Mr. de Blasio, a darling of the left, who came to the party’s convention just outside Albany to speak. He told a rapturous crowd that he — and presumably, the governor — would deliver on reforms that have long eluded progressives in the state.

“Tonight that is changing,” the mayor said, adding that he believed that giving Mr. Cuomo the party’s line was a “transcendent moment,” and that he trusted the governor. “I believe he is fully committed to taking back the Senate,” Mr. de Blasio said.

But the fight over the endorsement also appeared to be a rare moment of conciliation and political peril for Mr. Cuomo, whose administration has been noted for its canny — and sometimes cudgel-like — approach to governance, winning deals with little worry about making enemies.

There was no doubt that the Working Families rank and file were angry.

Mr. Cuomo has made a series of legislative agreements, with the help of Republicans, that have alienated many on the left, including tax cuts for corporations and reduced pension benefits for newly hired state employees. Activists have also been disappointed by the governor’s unfulfilled promises to revamp campaign finance laws and bolster women’s rights, as well as a decision this year to dismantle a high-profile anti-corruption panel with little notice.

The governor’s name was loudly booed several times during Saturday night’s meeting of party members, even as a potential challenger for Working Families’s endorsement — Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham law professor — was loudly cheered during her speech.

“This debate is not about some skinny kid with a funny name,” Ms. Teachout said. “This is about our collective dreams.”

And while few, if any, political observers suspected Ms. Teachout could win, a poll of state voters conducted this month by Quinnipiac University showed a much more competitive race in a hypothetical matchup with an unnamed Working Families Party candidate in the mix.

A version of this article appears in print on June 1, 2014, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Cuomo Secures Support of Working Families Party. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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N.Y. / Region

Handshakes and Hugs, Hallmarks of the Stump, Are Rare With Cuomo

By THOMAS KAPLANAUG. 29, 2014

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Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo this month at the Dominican Day Parade in Manhattan, where he shook hands with spectators only once.

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Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had no time for tortellini. Marching in a parade on Staten Island recently, he paused to pose for a picture with Vincent J. D’Antuono, the owner of Pastosa Ravioli, an Italian specialty shop, who proudly invited the governor to step inside for a look around.

Mr. Cuomo did not respond. Instead, he bounded back into the flow of the parade. “I don’t know if he heard me,” Mr. D’Antuono said later.

The fleeting interaction was, by the governor’s standards, a lengthy one. In his nearly four years in office, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who is seeking a second term, has crisscrossed New York marching in parades, cutting ribbons, handing out oversize checks and giving speeches and slide presentations on all manner of topics.

But judging from dozens of such events, one fundamental rule almost always holds: Unscripted moments are kept to a minimum.

While some politicians feed off handshakes, hugs and high-fives, Mr. Cuomo seems to avoid them. When he speaks to an audience, listeners are rarely invited to speak to him. And when he finishes, he tends to leave immediately, often ducking quickly behind a curtain hung for the occasion, then out the door.

As he runs for re-election — he faces a long-shot primary challenger on Sept. 9 — he has shown no further eagerness to meet and greet. Indeed, he is not even holding public campaign events.

Mr. Cuomo’s seeming diffidence stands in contrast to his forceful image as a tactician in Albany, and sticks out in a region where politicians are not known for holding back.

The contrast could not be sharper, for one, with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who poses for photos on the Jersey Shore and holds frequent town-hall Q. and A. sessions at which his banter and bellicosity with voters have become as common as chair-throwing in professional wrestling.

Even former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who did not hide his disdain for pandering politicians, grew more comfortable working a rope line.

In his travels, Mr. Cuomo is nothing if not efficient.

On a June visit to a fifth-grade class in Peekskill, in Westchester County, he never ventured more than a few steps into the classroom. He stood rigidly, suit jacket buttoned and hands clasped, and his chitchat with the class — he asked at one point about the Buffalo Bills, drawing blank stares — lasted only five minutes.

Some students had made posters welcoming the governor, but there was no time to present them. Sage North, 10, said she felt disappointed. “My friend and I were planning to take a selfie, and he left,” she said.

Sometimes Mr. Cuomo seems to go out of his way to avoid crowds. He arrived on opening day of the state fair last week around 9:15 a.m., before almost any fairgoers.

Mr. Cuomo is not entirely walled off from the public. Flying business class to Israel this month, he took a chatty stroll through coach. In Jerusalem, he split a pizza with students from New York.

And he was a quick-witted dining companion.

“Are we eating or are we talking?” he asked at one point, digging into a slice. “The best pizza I’ve had in Jerusalem,” he added. “Maybe all of Israel!”

But by and large, Mr. Cuomo’s mingling with ordinary New Yorkers is limited to controlled settings. Many politicians go to great lengths to choreograph their public appearances, but even by that standard, Mr. Cuomo takes particular care to avoid spontaneous interactions, particularly with strangers.

Nowhere is his aversion to the unplanned more noticeable than when he marches in parades, the kind of fish-in-a-barrel opportunity for retail politicking, and for flattering news coverage, at which other politicians unleash themselves on anyone with a hand to shake or a baby to kiss.

Mr. Cuomo can appear surprisingly demure.

At the Gay Pride Parade in June in Manhattan, where he received a hero’s welcome — he masterminded the successful push to legalize same-sex marriage in 2011 — he made little effort to interact with people beyond waving from a distance. Over the course of more than an hour and a half, he spent only about three minutes shaking hands with spectators.

This month, at the Dominican Day Parade, Mr. Cuomo seemed content to avoid the crowd altogether. In the 15-block march up Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, he shook hands with paradegoers only once — when a lawmaker marching with him, State Senator Adriano D. Espaillat, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him over to the crowd.

“You got to grease the wheels, right?” Mr. Espaillat said later. “You got to go shake hands and work the people, as they say, right? And people like that; they love it.”

But Mr. Cuomo shook hands for only about 10 seconds. Then he returned to the middle of the avenue.

In such busy settings, Mr. Cuomo seems more comfortable speaking with the people he already knows, like Mr. Espaillat.

At the Staten Island parade, on Memorial Day, Mr. Cuomo spent most of his time talking with legislators marching alongside him. Only rarely did he shake hands or pose for photos with spectators like Mr. D’Antuono. (The governor’s office later sent Mr. D’Antuono a copy of their photo, which now hangs in his store.)

And the governor does not often linger before hopping into the black Chevrolet Suburban that is usually waiting to spirit him away.

Mr. Cuomo’s schedule is not as replete with public appearances as those of some other politicians. This year, he has been invited to about 1,800 events, including a maple-tree-tapping ceremony near the Canadian border; the opening day of a Little League in Oneonta; and a Purim carnival in Brooklyn, records show. His office said he had attended about two dozen of them.

“Before he was the governor, he was out in the street,” said John Quinn, a Democratic State Committee member from Lower Manhattan. “Not anymore.”

Mr. Cuomo also tightly restricts access to many of his public appearances.

For an announcement in June about his efforts to address rising heroin abuse, Mr. Cuomo commandeered the student union at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury.

The public was not invited, and students were nowhere to be found. But faculty and staff members, who are state employees, were summoned to the student union. A college administrator promised “an informative event.”

Even so, Mr. Cuomo departed almost immediately after the end of the event, taking no questions from the audience and retreating behind a black curtain.

A college employee, Thomas Lawson, managed to intercept Mr. Cuomo before he reached the elevator.

Mr. Lawson, who asked for a photo, said he had seen Mr. Cuomo visit in the past, so he knew to give chase after the program concluded.

“He may be here maybe another five, 10 minutes after that,” Mr. Lawson said, “and he’s out the door.”

“I know he’s busy,” Mr. Lawson added. “Running this state is not easy.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 30, 2014, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Handshakes and Hugs, Hallmarks of the Stump, Are Rare With Cuomo . Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Fraud Charges for Strip-Club Owner Who Publishes a Westchester Newspaper

By JOSEPH BERGERSEPT. 19, 2014

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Gerald Lefcourt, a lawyer for Mr. Zherka, leaving court on Friday. Prosecutors portray Mr. Zherka, known as Sam, as a thug.

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WHITE PLAINS — He is the gadfly of Westchester County, the publisher of a free weekly newspaper who regularly rips into the county’s political establishment with shoot-from-the-hip accusations that embarrass their targets even if the details are not always on target.

His newspaper has offered a $100,000 reward for information that would lead to the conviction of Janet DiFiore, the Westchester district attorney. Without offering any genealogical evidence, he once alleged that she was a close friend of a former police officer whose dead nephew had been a mob boss. He has accused the county executive, Rob Astorino, now a candidate for governor, of packing the membership of a third party with Republicans to secure its endorsement, a charge Mr. Astorino shrugged off.

But this week it was that man, Selim Zherka, known as Sam, who was on the defensive. A federal grand jury here indicted Mr. Zherka, 46, of Somers, the owner of two strip clubs in Manhattan and a modest real estate empire and the publisher of The Westchester Guardian, on fraud charges in connection with applications seeking $146 million in property loans. He was also charged with income-tax fraud and witness tampering.

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Selim Zherka, known as Sam, publisher of The Westchester Guardian free weekly, in 2008.

Moreover, in papers submitted for a bail hearing on Friday, two assistant United States attorneys, Perry A. Carbone and Elliott B. Jacobson, accused Mr. Zherka, the Bronx-bred son of an Albanian-immigrant janitor, of essentially being a dangerous thug.

The brief filed by the prosecutors contended that the former owner of Cheetah’s Gentleman’s Club in Manhattan had accused Mr. Zherka, a muscular six-footer, of “shaking him down” and of trying to take over the club by brute force. (Mr. Zherka now owns the club, which is on West 43rd Street.) It also said a prisoner at Sing Sing had told the authorities that Mr. Zherka was part of “an Albanian crew” that distributed narcotics in Queens.

Mr. Zherka, the brief went on, once found a dead body duct-taped to a chair in the basement of one of his nightclubs, a man that Mr. Zherka’s brother, Ali, admitted roughing up. And, the brief said, Mr. Zherka once pulled a shotgun on an African-American man dating his daughter and, using an expletive, warned him to stay away from her or he would “blow his head off.”

The brief said that Mr. Zherka and his brother brutally beat the former owner of Mr. Zherka’s V.I.P. Club in the Flatiron district after he complained that he was owed money from the sale. Mr. Zherka, the brief said, pointed a gun at the man’s head and “threatened to kill him and his family and/or assault and rape his wife and three daughters.”

The brief also said The Westchester Guardian published a banner-headlined story in March calling a group of federal prosecutors “unethical and corrupt hypocrites” and identifying the towns in which they lived and their birthdays — which the brief said constituted “not-so-veiled threats.”

After an almost three-hour hearing on Friday, Mr. Zherka, unshaven, wearing the same pinstriped shirt and dark slacks in which he was arrested on Thursday at his New Rochelle office, and accompanied by seven lawyers, was denied bail by Judge Cathy Seibel of United States District Court here. She concluded he was a “danger to the community” and “a risk of flight,” taking particular note of boasts that witnesses said he had made about his penchant for violence.

“One only boasts about that sort of thing if one wants people to feel fearful, threatened and intimidated by you,” the judge said.

Mr. Zherka entered a plea of not guilty to the loan and tax fraud charges on Thursday. In an interview, one of his lawyers, Kerry Lawrence, described him as “a hard-working, successful businessman who is not a violent person.”

“Any allegation of violent conduct in the brief is untrue,” Mr. Lawrence said, adding that Mr. Zherka had paid off most of the mortgages.

Mr. Zherka, a litigious man who has filed multiple lawsuits against his antagonists, has called himself the state Tea Party’s “loudest voice” and has said he had been unfairly pursued by the Internal Revenue Service as part of a government “witch hunt.” But some local Tea Party leaders have distanced themselves from him.

The indictment, announced by Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and other federal officials, said that from 2005 to 2008, Mr. Zherka obtained a total of $146 million from three banks to buy or refinance apartment complexes in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Tennessee. In each case, the indictment said, he inflated the purchase price and at times exaggerated the down payment he was making, misstatements that allowed him to qualify for larger loans.

The indictment contended that he also lied on the applications about his assets and income, accompanied them with false tax returns and did not fully reveal that he had not paid a 2000 state court judgment growing out of the alleged assault of the former V.I.P. Club owner.

If convicted, Mr. Zherka could face 30 years in prison for each of the 11 counts of false loan applications alone. Unless he wins an appeal of the bail denial, he is likely to spend months behind bars waiting for trial.

In arguing for bail, Mr. Lawrence said that Mr. Zherka had been aware of the criminal inquiry for three years and never fled and that he had no passport. And he said Mr. Zherka would never leave his eight children, among them 5-year-old quadruplets.

Kate Pastor contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Fraud Charges for Strip-Club Owner Who Publishes a Westchester Newspaper. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Judge Questions Plea Deal With Man Tied to Lethal Qaeda Bombings

By BENJAMIN WEISERSEPT. 19, 2014

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An Egyptian terrorism defendant pleaded guilty in Manhattan on Friday to charges that he had helped Osama bin Laden pass messages that claimed responsibility for the deadly 1998 bombings of two United States Embassies in East Africa and that issued new threats.

But in an unusual step, the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court, did not immediately accept the guilty plea, saying he wanted more information about the government’s decision to allow the defendant to plead guilty to three counts that carried a maximum sentence of 25 years.

The defendant, Adel Abdul Bary, who was brought to the United States from Britain in 2012 after a lengthy extradition battle, had faced more than 280 counts. Most were murder charges stemming from the nearly simultaneous attacks on the embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The judge also noted that the plea agreement seemed to suggest that Mr. Bary, 54, could receive credit for the years he was jailed in Britain while fighting extradition to the United States.

“Just so there’s no mystery about why I’m raising it,” Judge Kaplan explained after Mr. Bary entered his guilty plea, “this man is a defendant — I haven’t counted lately — but on a couple of hundred counts.”

“Many, indeed almost all,” of those counts, the judge said, “carry exposure to life imprisonment in the event of conviction.” Such counts would be dismissed under the plea.

Prosecutors have said that in 1997 and 1998, Mr. Bary led the London cell of a terrorist group called Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was headed by Ayman al-Zawahri, now the leader of Al Qaeda.

In August 1998, after the embassy attacks, Mr. Bary passed to the news media Al Qaeda’s claims of responsibility for the bombings and threats of future attacks.

He also arranged for messages to be sent to Bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri, the government said.

The three counts to which Mr. Bary pleaded guilty included conspiring to kill Americans and two charges related to making threats to kill people and to destroy property by means of explosives.

Mr. Bary, as he acknowledged his guilt in court, rubbed his eyes at times and appeared to be weeping. He told the judge that he had made the calls for which he was charged. “I did that knowingly and with the intention of doing it to transmit the threat to attack the American interests everywhere,” he said.

He said he had agreed with Mr. Zawahri and others “to kill American citizens anywhere in the world, either civilian or military.”

In seeking written arguments, the judge said he was obliged to consider whether the counts to which Mr. Bary pleaded “reflect adequately the seriousness of the underlying offense.”

A prosecutor, Sean S. Buckley, said the charges were “appropriate.” Mr. Buckley said Mr. Bary, though he faced murder charges, “was not alleged to have himself engaged in any overt act that resulted in those murders.”

Mr. Bary’s lawyer, Andrew G. Patel, asked the judge to accept the plea, adding, “I believe that this is a just result.”

A son of Mr. Bary’s, a London rapper named Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, has been the subject of speculation that he was the militant who beheaded the American journalist James Foley.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Judge Questions Plea Deal With Man Tied to Lethal Qaeda Bombings. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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British Judges Approve Extradition of Muslim Cleric to U.S. on Terrorism Charges

Women protested Friday in London against the extradition of five terrorism suspects.

By SARAH LYALL and ALAN COWELL

Published: October 5, 2012

LONDON — Five terrorism suspects, including the fiery Islamic preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri, were sent to the United States on Friday night to face an array of terrorism charges. Their extradition came after a British court ruled they had exhausted their final appeal, ending years of legal battles that tested the balance between civil liberties and national security.

The Home Office reported that the five men had left in two jets from Royal Air Force Base Mildenhall in Suffolk. They had been taken there earlier Friday from the Long Lartin prison in a police convoy that included two armored vans and a minivan with blacked-out windows. Home Secretary Theresa May said in a statement that British and American authorities had worked together “to put plans in place so that tonight these men could be handed over within hours of the court’s decision.”

Mr. Masri, 54, has been an object of fascination in this country. Hook-handed and one-eyed because of injuries caused by explosives many years ago, he attracted a following among militants as much as he drew the reproach of his foes and the attention of the British security services.

The United States has been seeking his extradition since 2004 to face 11 charges that include calling for holy war in Afghanistan, playing a role in kidnappings in Yemen and participating in a plot to set up a terrorism training camp in Bly, Ore. Since 2006, he has been incarcerated in Britain on other charges, including incitement to murder.

“Each of these claimants long ago exhausted the procedures in the United Kingdom,” said Sir John Thomas, one of two senior judges hearing the case in the British High Court. Noting that they had lost an earlier appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in favor of extradition in April, he said it was in “the interests of justice” that they be tried as quickly as possible.

Mark Toner, a spokesman for the State Department in Washington, said, “We we are pleased that the U.K. judicial authorities approved the extraditions.” The cases of Mr. Masri and two of the other men will be prosecuted in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The others have been indicted in Connecticut.

Before the ruling on Friday, a crowd of protesters confronted a line of police officers outside the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, brandishing placards proclaiming “Islam will prevail” and “U.S. and U.K. the real terrorists.”

Lawyers for Mr. Masri, 54, said on Tuesday that he was physically unfit to face the accusations against him and that it would be “oppressive” to extradite him under the terms of British law. He suffers from diabetes, depression and memory loss, his lawyers say.

Mr. Masri, born Mostafa Kamel Mostafa in Egypt, came to Britain as a student in 1979. As he grew in stature as a radical preacher, his fiery sermons at the Finsbury Park mosque in North London attracted many followers at a time when British security services seemed to play down his importance.

But the mosque became a gathering point for militants who were later linked to terrorist attacks. One was Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber,” who is serving a life term for his attempt to bring down a trans-Atlantic flight in December 2001. Another was Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of having trained to be the hypothetical “20th bomber” in the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

The other men wanted in the United States are Babar Ahmad, Seyla Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled al-Fawwaz. Mr. Bary and Mr. Fawwaz are charged in the conspiracy that led to the killing of more than 200 people in the 1998 bombings of the American Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. Mr. Ahsan and Mr. Ahmad are charged with providing support to terrorists and conspiracy-related offenses.

Sarah Lyall reported from London, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Charlie Savage contributed reporting from Washington.

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U.S. Says It Has Fingerprints Of Embassy Bombing Suspects

By DAVID ROHDE

Published: July 13, 1999

Federal prosecutors said yesterday that the fingerprints of two Egyptian associates of Osama bin Laden had been found on statements that took responsibility for bomb attacks against two American embassies in Africa last August.

The two men, Ibrahim Hussein Eidarous, 42, and Adel Mohammed Abdul Bary, 39, were arrested on Sunday in London and ordered held by a British magistrate yesterday. Prosecutors in New York said the fingerprints had been found on a statement faxed to three news organizations that took responsibility for the bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7 that killed 224 people and injured more than 4,500.

In court documents made public yesterday in New York, prosecutors also accused the two men of having maintained contact with Muhammad Atef, who has been described as Mr. bin Laden's military commander.

The fingerprints were found on a declaration of war against American citizens issued in February 1998 by Mr. bin Laden, the court documents said. The United States Government also accused Mr. Eidarous of organizing a terrorist cell in 1995 for Mr. bin Laden in Azerbaijan and providing ''fugitive terrorists'' with passports.

The statements were found in September in a police raid in an office in London that Mr. Bary rented. They matched the copies of faxes that took responsibility for the bombings that news organizations received after the bombings.

Lawyers for the two men strongly denied yesterday that they had ties to terrorism and pledged to fight efforts to extradite them to New York.

The lawyers described Mr. Eidarous as a former army officer and Mr. Bary as a lawyer who helps fellow Egyptian dissidents. The lawyers said each man had five children and lived in London with his family.

Mr. Eidarous's lawyer, Gareth Pierce, said her client was the subject of a ''Kafkaesque'' American abuse of power.

The charges bring to 17 the number of people charged with roles in the embassy bombings or in what prosecutors describe as a global conspiracy by Mr. bin Laden's to kill Americans. Five are being held in New York for trial. Three are in custody in Britain, and nine, including Mr. bin Laden, remain at large.

The court documents appear to suggest that Mr. Eidarous and Mr. Bary worked with a Saudi, Khalid al-Fawwaz, who was arrested in September in London in connection with the distribution of Mr. bin Laden's private and public instructions from London around the world. Mr. al-Fawwaz has denied wrongdoing and is fighting extradition.

The instructions included the decree that Mr. bin Laden signed in February 1998 to inspire global attacks on Americans that had both suspects' fingerprints.

The court documents cited evidence found in searches of their houses and offices in London, as well as telephone records. The lists of reported links to Mr. bin Laden include records that show that a satellite phone used by Mr. Atef called Mr. Eidarous's cell phone 84 times from January to August last year.

Prosecutors said the three statements about responsibility for the bombings were faxed to news organizations from a public machine in a British post office the day after the bombings. At the hearing yesterday in the Bow Street Magistrates Court in London, Arvinder Sambi, appearing for the Crown Prosecution Service on behalf of American prosecutors, said the suspects' fingerprints covered the documents.

Outside the court, Mr. Bary's lawyer, Iqbal Ahmed, said his client ''absolutely denies the allegations,'' which he said were the result of a ''belated and unsupported'' extradition application from the United States. Calling his client a ''respected lawyer,'' Mr. Ahmed added, ''He is opposed to violence and he has publicly condemned the bombings.''

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After Woman Is Struck, Debate on Cycling in City Is Revived

By BENJAMIN MUELLER and KIA GREGORYSEPT. 19, 2014

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Police officers on Friday handed out safety fliers on West Drive, where a pedestrian was hit.

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The long-simmering conflict between bicyclists and pedestrians in New York City flared again after a 58-year-old woman was struck by a bicyclist and critically injured in Central Park on Thursday afternoon.

The woman, Jill Tarlov of Fairfield, Conn., was walking across West Drive near West 63rd Street in the park around 4:25 p.m. when the bicyclist, a 31-year-old man, came along the road.

He swerved to avoid one group of pedestrians but struck Ms. Tarlov, causing her to hit her head. She was listed in critical condition at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, the police said.

No charges have been filed against the bicyclist, whom the police declined to identify. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital after the accident with injuries to his shoulder and hand.

On Friday afternoon, the police were trying to alert bicyclists to safety requirements in Central Park.

At the same crosswalk where Ms. Tarlov was struck, four officers instructed groups of cyclists to stop at red lights and yield to pedestrians.

The officers also handed out fliers advising riders on how to avoid accidents.

Earlier in the day, zooming cyclists shared the road with horse-drawn carriages and women pushing jogging strollers.

Some pedestrians crossed against the light, and joggers ran in a bicycle lane, prompting one cyclist to yell, “What are you doing?”

Shahjahan Talukder, a food-cart vendor on West Drive, said that just before the accident he heard someone yell, “Move!” When he looked up, he saw a woman lying in the street.

“Who’s right, who’s wrong,” he said, “I don’t know.”

He added that he had seen accidents on the road before and worried for pedestrians.

“The bikes are crazy,” he said. “They should close bikes here.”

Accidents are not uncommon on the busy park roadways, frequented by bicyclists, tourists, joggers, pedicabs, skateboarders and in-line skaters. In August, a 75-year-old man was fatally struck by a teenage bicyclist trying to avoid a pedicab driver in the park.

Some say the danger from bicyclists in the city has never been greater. Commuters on Citi Bikes run red lights on the same roads where cyclists ride against the flow of traffic and race, they say.

“I’m turning to the right, I’m turning to the left, I don’t know where they’re going to come at me,” said Bunny Abraham of the Upper West Side, who has called for new rules that would require riders to have licenses. “They feel as if they own the city,” she said. "They feel as if they own the roads. And you cannot touch them.”

The city has recently sought to clamp down on reckless cycling. So far this year, the authorities have issued 468 moving summonses for bicycle violations in Central Park, more than triple the 151 summonses issued in the same period last year, the police said. Half of the summonses issued this year penalized riders who failed to yield to pedestrians.

And a two-week Police Department initiative in August, Operation Safe Cycle, conducted as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero traffic safety campaign, led to 4,300 moving violations for cyclists across the city.

Eileen Kurtis, 61, who walks three or four times a week along the stretch of the park where Ms. Tarlov was hurt, said she had had some close calls.

“When there is a herd of bikes,” Ms. Kurtis said, “I wait, I dodge.”

With more bicycles on the road, she said, “I feel it could happen to anyone.”

Michele Bodner, who lives on the Upper West Side and was walking her terrier, as she does every morning, said she often saw bicycles crossing into the pedestrian and car lanes “to go as fast as they can.”

She expressed outrage about the accident, saying she and others were organizing a petition that would call for the city to establish a speed limit for bicycles and for the police to enforce summonses.

“Every single person who uses this park every single day, many times over, has been threatened by these groups,” she said. “There’s no other way to put it.”

Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a cycling and pedestrian advocacy group, said in a statement that the group’s thoughts were with Ms. Tarlov.

“Because we’re serious about reaching Vision Zero,” he said, “we need to speak out in response to every preventable tragedy and condemn all acts of reckless behavior in traffic.”

The statement added: “As the most vulnerable users of our streets, pedestrians must be safe from reckless cycling, just as they need to be protected from reckless driving. This is particularly true in our parks.”

Michael Nagle contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: After Woman Is Struck, Debate on Cycling in City Is Revived. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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De Blasio Outlines Steps to Eliminate Traffic Deaths

By MATT FLEGENHEIMERFEB. 18, 2014

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Mayor Bill de Blasio, center, and Police Commissioner William J. Bratton discussing new safety efforts on Tuesday.

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Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday unveiled a sweeping set of proposals aimed at improving street safety in New York City, pledging considerable police resources and even precious political capital in Albany to a most ambitious goal: eliminating traffic deaths.

The 42-page plan is rooted in a Swedish street safety approach known as Vision Zero, which treats all traffic deaths as inherently preventable. Perhaps the most significant changes involve the New York Police Department, whose officers will increase precinct-level enforcement of speeding. Other measures include the widening of parking lanes, to keep delivery vehicles out of travel lanes while double-parked, and exploring the use of an automated system that could pause a taxicab’s meter if a driver exceeds the speed limit.

“Our lives are literally in each other’s hands,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference at Public School 75 on the Upper West Side, an area where three pedestrians were killed in fewer than 10 days last month. “Our children’s lives are in each other’s hands.”

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There were three pedestrian deaths last month in fewer than 10 days on the Upper West Side.

In 2013, 176 pedestrians were killed in traffic in New York, according to police statistics.

Several relatives of people killed in traffic crashes joined the mayor, who was flanked by William J. Bratton, the police commissioner, and Polly Trottenberg, the transportation commissioner, among other officials.

Some of the mayor’s proposals — like lowering the citywide speed limit to 25 miles per hour from 30 and expanding the installation of red-light and speed-tracking cameras that issue tickets — require approval in the state capital, where the administration is asking lawmakers to approve a tax increase on the city’s top earners to finance prekindergarten programs.

Though the Bloomberg administration pressed the Legislature for years, with mixed success, to approve the expansion of automated enforcement cameras, Mr. de Blasio predicted “a receptive audience in Albany” this time around.

Cycling and pedestrian advocates have cheered Mr. de Blasio since he first committed to a Vision Zero stance during the mayoral campaign, though it had not been clear exactly what form the pledge would take.

So far this year, the Police Department has devoted increased attention to jaywalking. Through Feb. 9, the city had issued 215 jaywalking summonses, compared with 27 over the same period last year. Tickets issued to drivers fell slightly.

On Tuesday, Mr. de Blasio, as he has in the past, said that the issuing of tickets to jaywalkers was not part of the city’s broader safety plans, though he added that precincts had wide latitude.

The stronger emphasis, the report said, would be on increasing the enforcement of violations like failing to yield, improper turning or using a phone while driving. “The central problem is related to our vehicles,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Mr. Bratton has said that the Police Department plans to add dozens of officers to its Highway Division, raising the total to 263. But so far, the department has struggled to find enough officers interested in the assignment, according to a top police official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss personnel matters.

Many of the policies focus on taxis. The Taxi and Limousine Commission will form an “enforcement squad,” with a focus on dangerous cabdrivers, and begin a pilot program to install “black box” data recorders in the city’s taxis and limousines.

Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said she was concerned that taxi drivers were being “scapegoated” in the mayor’s report. She expressed particular opposition to a plan to look at technology that could pause a meter in a speeding cab. “What if, in a moment, you’re speeding to actually avoid something?” she said. “It’s insanely Big Brother to me.”

Those confused in recent years by roadbed instructions may see a reprieve: The plan will redesignate lanes to “clarify who belongs where on the street through better markings.”

The city’s Transportation Department also plans to overhaul 50 intersections and corridors each year, with a goal of improving visibility and ensuring “more predictable movements.”

Other expected changes include enhanced street lighting at 1,000 intersections, the installation of 250 speed bumps and an expansion of bike paths.

Mr. de Blasio has proved more circumspect on pedestrian plazas. During a mayoral campaign debate in October, he said “the jury’s out” on the Broadway plazas constructed under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. On Tuesday, he said that an assessment of the Times Square changes had not been completed, though Ms. Trottenberg, the traffic commissioner, said that plazas had often improved safety.

After the news conference, several pedestrian advocates lingered, exchanging congratulations for coaxing the new mayor to embrace street safety.

Near the back of the room, Gary Eckstein and Amy Cohen sat with a picture of their son, Sammy Cohen Eckstein, 12, who was killed after being struck by a van in Brooklyn last fall.

“It’s a paradigm shift,” Mr. Eckstein said, suggesting that stories like theirs had reinforced the notion that no family was immune to tragedies on the road.

“We didn’t think it could happen to us either,” Ms. Cohen said.

A version of this article appears in print on February 19, 2014, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: De Blasio Outlines Steps to Eliminate Traffic Deaths. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Testimony in Etan Patz Case on Handling of Suspect

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.SEPT. 19, 2014

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A defense lawyer tried to elicit testimony on Friday that detectives who interrogated a man suspected of killing Etan Patz in 1979 gently steered him to a confession, using expressions of sympathy, appeals to his religion and even a group hug.

In cross-examining the arresting officer, Detective David Ramirez, the lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, focused on subtle ways that the detective and two of his colleagues appeared to prompt the suspect, Pedro Hernandez, during a half-hour videotaped confession in 2012. That confession came after more than six hours of interrogation that was not taped.

Mr. Hernandez, 53, of Maple Shade, in southern New Jersey, has a low I.Q. and a history of mental illness. Mr. Fishbein, in trying to get the confession thrown out before trial, has argued that Mr. Hernandez was so suggestible and compliant he told the police what he thought they wanted to hear, even though it was false.

Justice Maxwell Wiley of State Supreme Court in Manhattan must decide if Mr. Hernandez’s first confession, and another about 11 hours later, were voluntary or the result of psychological coercion. He must also determine if Mr. Hernandez understood his rights and was able to voluntarily waive them, given his mental disabilities.

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Pedro Hernandez in court in 2012

That task is made harder because New York detectives and Manhattan prosecutors did not start videotaping the interrogation until just before Mr. Hernandez signed a waiver of his rights, at 2:53 p.m. Detectives Ramirez and Jose Morales had begun questioning Mr. Hernandez in a cramped interview room at the Camden County prosecutor’s office at 8:10 a.m.

Detective Ramirez said that over the next six or so hours, he made only three pages of notes in a steno book before Mr. Hernandez broke down in tears and confessed to abducting 6-year-old Etan, luring him into the basement of a SoHo bodega where Mr. Hernandez worked, and then choking the boy.

Mr. Fishbein also drew out testimony from Detective Ramirez to support the contention that Mr. Hernandez was virtually under arrest from the moment he was picked up at his home early on the morning of May 23, 2012. The point is important because the police are required by law to inform a person of their right to remain silent the moment they are in custody.

Detective Ramirez acknowledged that Mr. Hernandez had twice expressed a desire to go home during the interrogation in Camden, N.J., before he confessed. “I told him, you know, that no one was holding him against his will and if he wanted to go home, we would take him home,” he said.

Mr. Fishbein asked: “Did you tell him you don’t have to talk to me, you have the right to get up and go home without answering another question? Did you tell him that?”

“No, I did not,” the detective replied.

He said the police had patted Mr. Hernandez down and taken away his wallet and telephone when they picked him up. They then drove him to the back door of the prosecutor’s office in a parking lot surrounded by a tall, chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, Detective Ramirez said. The doors could be opened from the inside, but he said he never told Mr. Hernandez how to operate the doors.

The detective testified that Mr. Hernandez was never handcuffed, even after his arrest.

Going over the taped confession with Detective Ramirez, Mr. Fishbein showed that Detective Morales, who wrote down Mr. Hernandez’s statement, prompted the suspect at some points. When Mr. Hernandez was asked if he still wanted to confess after being read his rights, Detective Morales interjected: “Obviously.” Later, when Mr. Hernandez stopped talking, Detective Morales reminded him to add something about what he had done with Etan’s book bag.

Detective Ramirez admitted under Mr. Fishbein’s questioning that the detectives had “bonded with” Mr. Hernandez, using sympathy as a tool to get him to talk. When he confessed the first time, for instance, the three detectives in the room put their arms around him as he sobbed.

“Was there a group hug going on?” Mr. Fishbein said.

“Yeah, O.K.,” Detective Ramirez replied sheepishly.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Testimony in Patz Case on Handling of Suspect. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Confession to Etan Patz’s Killing Came Hours Into Interview, Detective Testifies

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.SEPT. 18, 2014

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Pedro Hernandez

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A man accused of murdering Etan Patz in 1979 at first denied having anything to do with the boy’s disappearance during an eight-hour interview in 2012 with the police. He averted his eyes when detectives first showed him a poster with a photograph of Etan, a 6-year-old blond-haired boy. He said he had never seen him.

The police pressed on, hour after hour. They appealed to the suspect’s religious beliefs, but he said he had nothing to repent, one of the detectives in the room, David Ramirez, testified at a court hearing on Thursday.

Twice, the suspect, Pedro Hernandez, 53, said he wanted to go home, but the detectives persuaded him to stay a little longer. Finally, after six hours of questioning in the Camden County prosecutor’s office in New Jersey, Detective Ramirez said, they told Mr. Hernandez they had spoken to a close childhood friend of his, a man they knew he had told about the crime.

“At that point, he said: ‘I’m sorry, it shouldn’t have happened. I did it,’ ” Detective Ramirez said at the hearing in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. And the confession came spilling out. “He was weeping,” the detective added. “It was an emotional time.”

Photo

Harvey Fishbein, center, argued that his client, Mr. Hernandez, gave a false confession.

It was not until that moment, around 2:45 p.m. on May 23, 2012, that the detectives read Mr. Hernandez his Miranda rights and another officer watching in a separate room rushed to switch on a video recorder.

The subsequent recording was played at the hearing. The judge will determine if Mr. Hernandez’s statements should be admitted as evidence at trial.

The first hours of Mr. Hernandez’s interview with the police, which started at 8:10 a.m., were not videotaped. The only record of what happened is in the notes and reports of Detective Ramirez.

During the hours leading up to the taped confession, Detective Ramirez tried to appeal to Mr. Hernandez’s Pentecostal background, asking him if he would go to heaven when he died. “He said, ‘Yeah, I have done nothing wrong and I repented my sins,’ ” the detective said. A few minutes later, however, he said that the “police already got the guy who did this kid.”

Mr. Hernandez almost walked out of the interview twice, Detective Ramirez said. The second time was at 2 p.m., just before he confessed, when he was asked again if he had information about Etan’s disappearance. “He said, ‘You guys are trying to pin what happened to that kid on me?’ ” the detective testified. Then he said he wanted to go home.

Photo

Etan Patz’s mother, Julie Patz, leaving court on Monday.

“I said we had a few more questions to ask him and after that he could leave,” Detective Ramirez said.

Mr. Hernandez’s lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, says the confession is false, a product of his client’s low I.Q. and a long history of mental illnesses. Mr. Fishbein also argues Mr. Hernandez’s intellectual disability is severe enough that he did not understand the police when they explained he had the right to remain silent. He has moved to have the confession — as well as another confession he later gave to prosecutors in Manhattan — thrown out.

Justice Maxwell Wiley must decide if Mr. Hernandez voluntarily waived his rights and understood what he was doing, and determine if the police coerced his confession.

But Justice Wiley has made it clear that he will not rule on whether the confession is reliable. That question will be left to a jury.

On the tape, three detectives can be seen consoling Mr. Hernandez in a cramped room; one detective rubs Mr. Hernandez’s back and head. Then, through sobs, fits and starts, he begins to deliver a confession. After luring Etan into a bodega cellar with a promise of soda, he said, he choked the boy, and then stuffed him in a 40-gallon trash bag, and then in a box, leaving him in an alley a block and a half away.

Photo

Etan’s father, Stanley, at right, also attended the hearing.

Another detective, Jose Morales, took down Mr. Hernandez’s words. Mr. Hernandez signed the confession without reading it.

Mr. Hernandez said several times that the boy was alive when he left him. “All I know is that I did what I did, but he was alive,” he said. “He wasn’t dead. Somebody must have done something. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t do it.”

Then a third detective, James Lamendola, showed Mr. Hernandez the same poster of Etan that he had been shown in the morning. The detectives instructed him to write down what he did to the boy, next to the boy’s photo. “How do you spell choke?” Mr. Hernandez said, working the pen.

“You recognize this as the boy you choked that day?” Detective Lamendola said. “Yes,” Mr. Hernandez answered.

Etan disappeared on May 25, 1979, while walking from his family’s apartment building on Prince Street in SoHo to a school bus stop nearby. He had kissed his mother goodbye and had a dollar in his hand for a soda. He was last seen on the corner of Wooster and Prince Streets, looking uptown at the coming traffic.

Mr. Hernandez, 53, worked at a bodega on the same corner as the school bus stop: the northwest corner of West Broadway and Prince.

During his questioning in New Jersey, Mr. Hernandez revealed nothing about his motives to the police. When Detective Lamendola asked, “What made you do this?” he replied: “I don’t know. It was just something that happened.” Asked if had hurt other children, he answered: “No, never.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 19, 2014, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Confession to Patz Killing Came Hours Into Interview, Detective Testifies. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Judge to Examine Circumstances of Suspect’s Confession in Patz Case

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.SEPT. 14, 2014

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Pedro Hernandez, whose I.Q. is about 70, didn’t understand his right to remain silent, his lawyer says.

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Sometime on the afternoon of May 23, 2012, Pedro Hernandez confessed to one of New York’s most infamous unsolved crimes of the 20th century — the disappearance of Etan Patz.

No camera was rolling when Mr. Hernandez made his first admission about Etan, who was 6 years old when he vanished in 1979. The police had been interviewing Mr. Hernandez for more than seven hours in a prosecutor’s office in Camden, N.J., near his home in Maple Shade township, court papers say.

Once he said something incriminating, the New York detectives in the room read Mr. Hernandez his rights, and then, just before 3 p.m., switched on a camcorder, court papers say. Over the next 25 minutes, Mr. Hernandez said he had choked Etan after luring him with a soda into the basement of a SoHo bodega where Mr. Hernandez worked. Eleven hours later, after being taken to New York, he gave a fuller confession in two more videotaped statements to a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Those statements are the only evidence prosecutors have made public against Mr. Hernandez, 53, a janitor with a low I.Q. and a history of mental illness. Etan’s body was never found, and prosecutors have not revealed any physical evidence or witnesses linking Mr. Hernandez to the crime.

Mr. Hernandez’s lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, argued that the confessions should be thrown out because Mr. Hernandez’s intellectual disability made it impossible for him to know that he had waived his right to remain silent.

On Monday, Justice Maxwell Wiley will start a monthslong hearing in State Supreme Court in Manhattan into the merits of that claim, giving the public a rare chance to see the videotapes and to hear the police and prosecutors describe the interrogation.

Justice Wiley is unlikely to rule on whether the confessions are false, as Mr. Fishbein has maintained since his client’s arrest. That will be a question for the jury when the case goes to trial.

Still, the hearing will make public much of the evidence the jury will have to weigh to determine whether Mr. Hernandez told the truth or made a false confession under pressure from detectives. Not only will prosecutors play the confessions in court, but the police will also describe the interrogation, and psychological experts will testify about Mr. Hernandez’s intelligence level and his past mental illness, including a personality disorder.

A central issue for Justice Wiley will be whether Mr. Hernandez believed he was free to leave during the several hours of interrogation that preceded his confession and arrest. The law requires Miranda warnings be given as soon as someone is in police custody. If the judge determines Mr. Hernandez should have been read his rights earlier, then the statements must be suppressed.

The judge will also have to decide whether Mr. Hernandez, who has an I.Q. of about 70, understood that he had a right to remain silent. A psychological expert will testify for the defense that he did not, Mr. Fishbein said.

“The hearing is about: Was he timely advised of his rights? Was he able to make an intelligent and voluntary waiver of his rights? And what role did his psychological status and very low I.Q. play in this case?” Mr. Fishbein said.

Justice Wiley must also decide if Mr. Hernandez’s statements were voluntary, weighing whether the pressure from interrogators and other factors overrode Mr. Hernandez’s desire not to confess.

Prosecutors say they intend to let the videotaped confessions speak for themselves. Mr. Hernandez spoke freely several times about the crime over a span of 30 hours, describing it in detail and expressing remorse, they say.

But experts on false confessions say Mr. Hernandez’s interview with the detectives over the nearly eight hours before the camera was turned on is a critical, and undocumented, part of the case against him.

“How is a judge supposed to know if a confession was voluntary if he or she hasn’t seen the process by which it was taken?” Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies false confessions, asked. “In this case, it’s particularly problematic.”

Research on exonerations through DNA evidence in recent years has shown that people with low I.Q.s are particularly susceptible to making false confessions. “The reality is that people with low I.Q.s are more compliant and more suggestible, and those two traits make them more likely to confess to crimes that they didn’t commit when interrogated,” Steven A. Drizin, the legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, said.

Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia who studies wrongful convictions, said there were at least 65 documented cases of people who confessed to major crimes like murder and rape but were later exonerated through DNA evidence, and 19 of those defendants had an intellectual disability.

Many of them knew details of the crime that had not been made public, Mr. Garrett said, suggesting the police unwittingly fed them ideas with leading questions. Without a recording of the entire interview, he said, “you have no idea if the details came from the suspect or the police.”

This September, for instance, Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown, two mentally disabled half brothers, were exonerated through DNA evidence 30 years after they confessed to the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in rural North Carolina. They both signed confessions after five hours of interrogation and talked about details known only to the police.

Mr. Garrett said judges in New York generally have been wary about ruling before trial on whether a defendant gave an unreliable or false confession. Especially in a high-profile case like Etan Patz’s disappearance, judges tend to look to see only if Miranda warnings were properly given and if the confession seems voluntary, he said.

“Judges will tend to be quite reluctant to keep evidence out of a trial entirely, particularly evidence that seems important,” Mr. Garrett said. “Suppressing a confession could mean the end of a case. It’s a lot to put on a judge.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 15, 2014, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Judge to Examine Circumstances of Suspect’s Confession in Patz Case. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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After 33 Years, Police Make Arrest in Case of Etan Patz

Raymond W. Kelly, the New York City police commissioner, during a news conference about the Etan Patz murder case in New York on Thursday.

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Published: May 24, 2012

A New Jersey man was arrested in the killing of Etan Patz, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced on Thursday, an extraordinary moment in a case that has gripped New York City’s psyche ever since the 6-year-old boy vanished in SoHo on his way to school in 1979.

The man, Pedro Hernandez, told investigators that he lured Etan to the basement of a bodega where Mr. Hernandez worked at the time with the promise of a soda, Mr. Kelly said. Once Etan was inside, Mr. Hernandez choked him, stuffed his body into a bag and took the bag about a block and a half away, where he left it out in the open with trash, Mr. Kelly said.

“He was remorseful, and I think the detectives thought that it was a feeling of relief on his part,” Mr. Kelly said during a news conference at Police Headquarters. “We believe that this is the individual responsible.”

The break in the case came a month after investigators spent five days excavating a SoHo basement near the spot where Etan disappeared. The search for his remains was fruitless.

But Mr. Kelly said the search had prompted a call to the missing persons squad earlier this month from a person who led them to Mr. Hernandez. The commissioner said that over the years since Etan’s disappearance, Mr. Hernandez told a family member and others that he had “done a bad thing and killed a child in New York.”

Mr. Hernandez had been making the claims since as far back as 1981, Mr. Kelly said, but he had never identified the child he had claimed to have hurt.

The news of the arrest was the latest chapter in a wrenching story that has tormented New York City since Etan’s disappearance 33 years ago on Friday in a neighborhood far grittier than today’s SoHo, with its tourist-clogged streets lined with boutiques and restaurants.

It is unclear whether investigators have been able to corroborate the account Mr. Hernandez has provided. Without any trace of human remains or other forensic evidence, any possible prosecution of him would face significant evidentiary hurdles.

Asked what about Mr. Hernandez’s confession had led detectives to find him credible, Mr. Kelly responded, “The fact that he had told this story to others in the past, and the specificity of what he said in the confession.” He said he did not know what the motive might have been.

Mr. Hernandez, 51, was charged with second-degree murder by the police. Mr. Kelly said he expected the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., to present Mr. Hernandez for arraignment on Friday, but could not say what charges would be filed.

Under the law, prosecutors will have to bring Mr. Hernandez before a grand jury within six days of the arrest and present sufficient evidence to convince them to vote for an indictment, or hold a preliminary hearing, an extremely rare occurrence.

And it was unclear on Thursday what evidence, beyond Mr. Hernandez’s confession, the prosecutors have in hand. Mr. Kelly acknowledged that there was no physical evidence implicating Mr. Hernandez, though he said the investigation was continuing.

Mr. Hernandez, who was 18 at the time Etan vanished, worked as a stockboy in a bodega at 448 West Broadway that is now an eyeglass store, Mr. Kelly said. Etan disappeared on the first morning his parents allowed him to walk alone from the family’s home on Prince Street to a school bus stop on West Broadway.

Mr. Hernandez was working in the basement, which had a separate door to the street, Mr. Kelly said. Etan was at the bus stop when Mr. Hernandez led him away and to the basement, Mr. Kelly said.

“It’s unlikely, very unlikely,” that Etan’s remains would be recovered, Mr. Kelly said.

Mr. Hernandez’s name was mentioned in a 1979 detective’s report as part of the investigation into Etan’s disappearance, Mr. Kelly said. The report listed him as an employee of the bodega, but Mr. Hernandez was never questioned by investigators, Mr. Kelly said.

“I can’t tell you why, 33 years ago, he wasn’t questioned,” he said. “We know that other people in the bodega were questioned.”

Although Mr. Hernandez also lived on West Broadway near the bodega, the authorities said they did not believe he had ever met Etan before.

Etan’s family was told by the police ahead of time that Mr. Hernandez was going to be arrested in their son’s murder, Mr. Kelly said.

His father was “taken aback,” said Lt. Christopher Zimmerman, the commanding officer of the missing persons squad, and “overwhelmed to a degree.”

Shortly after Etan vanished, Mr. Hernandez left the store and moved to the Camden area in southern New Jersey, where he has many relatives, law enforcement officials said.

Investigators from the New York Police Department traveled to New Jersey and questioned Mr. Hernandez for several hours on Wednesday in the Camden County prosecutor’s office. Mr. Hernandez returned voluntarily to New York, where he led investigators to the address where he worked and described to them what he had done, Mr. Kelly said.

“They kept asking him, ‘Why did you do this?’ ” one law enforcement official said. “And he kept saying: ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ ”

Mr. Hernandez was placed into custody later on Wednesday and taken to the offices of the Manhattan district attorney, whose prosecutors are overseeing the inquiry by New York police detectives and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mr. Hernandez was emotional and broke down in tears during the confession, the law enforcement official said, adding that it was videotaped, which is standard practice in New Jersey.

During his time in South Jersey, Mr. Hernandez does not appear to have been in any trouble with the local authorities.

He and his wife, Rosemary, live in an apartment in the back of a modest two-story house in Maple Shade, a town of about 19,000 residents east of Camden. The man who rents the front part of the home said Mr. Hernandez and his wife worked with computers, were Pentecostals and hosted many holiday parties with their friends and relatives.

“They were good people, and he was a good neighbor,” said the man, Dan Wollick, 71, adding that he and Mr. Hernandez shared chores like mowing the lawn, raking leaves and shoveling snow.

The investigation into the boy’s disappearance and presumed death has seen a parade of suspects and a range of theories over the years. Last month, the F.B.I. and the Police Department tore apart the basement of a building on Prince Street, just doors away from the longtime Patz family home. Etan’s parents still live on the street. The search was based on a belief among investigators that a local handyman who kept a workshop in the basement in 1979 had abducted and murdered the boy and possibly buried his body there beneath a concrete floor.

A woman interviewed by The New York Times last month who ran a playgroup in SoHo at the time Etan disappeared recalled seeing mounds of garbage bags in the days after the boy vanished, which included Memorial Day weekend. “I always thought there were so many garbage bags out and why did they not search them,” said the woman, Judy Reichler, who now lives in New Paltz, N.Y. “For three days everyone piled bags on the street and then they got picked up.”

The mobilization in the city to find Etan began a new era in the country, marked by children’s faces on milk cartons and made-for-television dramas about kidnapped children. Jim Bogie, 62, a window salesman in Flushing, Queens, said his three children are now in their mid- to late 30s, about the same age Etan would be, and remembered on Thursday being horrified by the disappearance three decades ago.

“It was terrifying,” he said. “If it could happen to him, it could happen to anybody.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg spoke to reporters about Mr. Hernandez while he was being questioned but before he was arrested. “I certainly hope we are one step closer to bringing them some measure of relief,” the mayor said, referring to Etan’s family.

Al Baker, Noah Rosenberg and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

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The Horses in Central Park Are to Show, Not Work

By SARAH MASLIN NIRSEPT. 19, 2014

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Samantha Kasowitz on her horse, Corprizia, in the Central Park Horse Show on Friday.

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New York City remains divided between those who would have carriage horses trot the streets and those who would rather send them out to pasture. But on Friday night, the city’s greenest paddock — Central Park — was nevertheless filled with horses, though of a very different sort than those hired nearby on West 59th Street.

With names like Bugatti VDL and Ballade van het Indihof, they were among the country’s finest show-jumping horses, most costing more than a million dollars, there to test their skills at the Central Park Horse Show, an equestrian competition at the park’s ice-skating rink.

The event marks a return of horse sport to New York City, the home of the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden until it decamped to Florida more than a decade ago.

The horses arrived in the small hours of the morning on Friday. They unloaded onto Central Park West and clip-clopped through the park to ranks of stalls just west of Trump Rink. There, they spent the day being primped, petted and treated with high-tech sports therapies that an N.B.A. star would envy.

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The Army teams of Mexico, Peru and the U.S. lined up at Madison Square Garden in 1946.

Friday was the second day of a four-day competition and exhibition. On Thursday night, the Central Park Grand Prix was won by Georgina Bloomberg, the daughter of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. She was riding her mare Juvina, her father watching with her infant.

Days three and four will feature balletic dressage and other displays.

On Friday, horses were braided and brushed in the makeshift barns before the evening event. In one stall lay Quality Girl, an Oldenburg mare, her nose deep in a pile of wood shavings. The day before, in a jumping competition that tests the animals and their riders on speed and accuracy, she had knocked down a rail. But her groom, Cameron Scott, insisted her prone position did not reflect dejection. “She’s not depressed,” he said, “She’s a superstar.”

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Ariel Epstein, left, on Timo, and Brianne Link, on E bay, warming up on Friday.

The rink had been transformed for the weekend, with topiary horses of sphagnum moss galloping from the entrances. In place of the pro shop selling ice skates were pop-up shops offering saddles and posters of horses photoshopped into subway cars.

The show horses trooped beneath a stone bridge to the rink around 7 p.m.

Seats for the night’s competition cost over $200. There was no lower tier. In a glittering V.I.P. tent with chandeliers, people like Bruce Springsteen — there to watch his equestrian daughter, Jessica, ride over jumps shaped like the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building — did little to dispel an association with horse racing’s reputation as the sport of kings.

Mark Bellissimo, the chief executive of the International Equestrian Group, which put on the $3 million show, said that depending on the day, 25 to 50 percent of the seats were given away through various community organizations and local charities. Nevertheless, though organizers said that Friday night’s competition was nearly sold out, there were sections of empty seats in the bleachers. The show is the first event to be held under a seven-year contract with Donald Trump for use of the rink.

As night fell, the horses galloped into the rink and over fences almost four-and-a-half-feet high. Over jumps carved like the skyline, horse after horse demonstrated hairpin turns to rival any bike messenger’s, with a finesse that would make any cabdriver proud.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: The Horses in the Park Are to Show, Not Work. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Group to Sue After M.T.A. Rejects Ad That Refers to Muslims Killing Jews

By ASHLEY SOUTHALLSEPT. 19, 2014

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A pro-Israel group behind a public transit advertisement that refers to Muslims killing Jews plans to sue the Metropolitan Transportation Authority after the agency rejected the ad. The authority said the ad would be seen as a call to violence against Jews amid turmoil in the Middle East and security concerns in New York.

The group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, proposed an ad that included the quote, “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” attributed to “Hamas MTV.” The ad, which pictures a man wearing a kaffiyeh wrapped around his face, also says: “That’s his Jihad. What’s yours?”

In a statement issued on Friday, the authority said that the ad violated its “viewpoint-neutral” advertising standards. The agency said it was “reasonably foreseeable” that displaying the ad on the back of city buses “would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace, and so harm, disrupt or interfere with safe, efficient and orderly transportation operations.”

The statement said the authority did not decide whether to allow an ad to run based on viewpoint, or whether the viewpoint might be controversial — a change made after the American Freedom Defense Initiative successfully sued the transit agency three years ago when another ad was rejected.

Pamela Geller, the group’s president, said the authority’s decision violated the group’s freedom of speech. The group, which has courted controversy with ads promoting its views on jihad, Hamas, Islam and Israel throughout the transit system, plans to file a lawsuit next week, she said.

“They’re wrong,” Ms. Geller said. “And when they’re wrong, they make it easy.”

Ms. Geller said the ad was part of a five-ad push parodying a “My Jihad” campaign sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The “My Jihad” ads, which portrayed jihad as a concept of nonviolent individual and personal struggle, ran in cities including Chicago and Washington, but not New York.

In an Aug. 19 letter, which Ms. Geller obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the safety and security director of the transportation authority, Raymond Diaz, explained to the agency’s chief executive, Thomas F. Prendergast, that because the council’s ads did not run in New York, “the much more likely interpretation of A.F.D.I.’s ‘Killing Jews’ ad by most people would be that it urges Muslims to kill or attack Jews as a religious obligation.”

The authority said on Friday that Mr. Diaz concluded that the ad “would lead reasonable observers to interpret it as urging direct, violent attacks on Jews, given turmoil in Gaza, Syria and Iraq, and New York City’s heightened security concerns.”

The city’s buses have served as a platform for Middle East policy debates. Two ads submitted by the American Freedom Defense Initiative in place of the rejected one will run with four others at two subway stops and on 100 buses starting on Monday, Ms. Geller said.

The ads, which include an image of James Foley, an American journalist who was beheaded in August by Islamic State militants, have drawn condemnation from Mayor Bill de Blasio, who called them outrageous.

The pending lawsuit would be the second legal clash between the transportation authority and the group, which opposed a mosque planned near the World Trade Center.

The authority updated its advertising standards after the group sued in 2011, because the agency rejected an ad on grounds that it contained demeaning language. At the time, the agency prohibited ads that it determined demeaned groups of people on account of their religion, national origin or ancestry. The next year, a judge ruled that the standard violated the First Amendment.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Group to Sue After M.T.A. Rejects Ad That Refers to Muslims Killing Jews. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Controversial Group Plans More Ads in Subway Stations

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER

Published: December 13, 2012

The group behind a recent spate of inflammatory advertisements throughout the transit system said this week that it planned to make its biggest purchase yet: the space beside each of the roughly 220 clocks hanging in New York City’s subway stations.

The advertisements depict the twin towers, engulfed in flames, beside a quote attributed to the Koran: “Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.”

The clocks are suspended from ceilings above subway platforms in stations across the city.

The group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, has often stoked controversy with its messages, including posters placed in 10 subway stations in September, characterizing Islamist opponents of the Jewish state as “savage.” Virtually all of the ads were vandalized shortly after they were posted.

But the latest ad buy is unique. It is large enough that, compared with past campaigns, New Yorkers will be much more likely to see the displays. And because of the advertisements’ overhead placement, would-be vandals “would have to get a ladder,” said Pamela Geller, the group’s executive director.

A spokesman for the transportation authority said it was reviewing the advertisements. Rejection seems unlikely: the authority recently approved virtually identical ads from the group, with the same image and quotation, for display at Metro-North Railroad stations. Ms. Geller, whose group has also placed ads that say “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad,” said that campaign would begin next week.

Ms. Geller has long created headaches for officials at the transportation authority, which initially rejected the campaign that included the “savage” label, citing its demeaning language. The American Freedom Defense Initiative sued and in July won a federal court ruling on First Amendment grounds.

In September, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority amended its advertising policy to require so-called viewpoint advertisements to include a disclaimer that they do not imply the authority’s endorsement of their views. The authority’s new guidelines also included prohibitions on ads that the agency “reasonably foresees would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace.”

Ms. Geller said that the advertisements — intended to be displayed beside actual clocks, not the countdown clocks that predict train arrivals — cost roughly $320 each for a four-week placement — about $70,000 for all the clocks.

The clocks were her latest advertising target, Ms. Geller said, “because metaphorically it’s so powerful. The clock is ticking, from a civilizational point of view.”

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Militant Group Says It Killed American Journalist in Syria

ISIS Video Purports to Show Beheading of James Foley

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHIAUG. 19, 2014

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James Foley, in a photo from the website FreeJamesFoley.org, in Aleppo, Syria, in November 2012, the month he disappeared.

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The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria posted a video on Tuesday that it said showed the beheading of James Foley, an American journalist who was kidnapped in Syria nearly two years ago, according to a transcript released by the SITE Intelligence Group.

The authenticity of the video, which was also posted on YouTube, could not be verified, and a telephone call placed to Mr. Foley’s family was not immediately returned. YouTube later took down the four-minute, 40-second video.

Titled “A Message to America,” the video shows the journalist kneeling in a desert landscape, clad in an orange jumpsuit — an apparent reference to the uniforms worn by prisoners at the American military detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Standing to his left is a masked ISIS fighter, who begins speaking in English, with what sounds like an East London accent. Pulling out a knife, he says that Mr. Foley’s execution is in retaliation for the recent American airstrikes ordered by President Obama against the extremist group in Iraq.

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An image from a video posted by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which the group said was the execution of James Foley.

“I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers — the U.S. government — for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacent criminality,” Mr. Foley says in the video, which was uploaded to the online account of the al-Furqan Media Foundation, according to SITE, an organization that follows jihadist groups. He ends saying that when American soldiers began dropping bombs on Iraq this month, “they signed my death certificate.”

On Tuesday night, Mr. Foley’s mother, Diane Foley, issued a statement on the Facebook page the family had created to publicize their son’s disappearance: “We have never been prouder of our son Jim. He gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people. We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages. Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world.”

Two weeks ago, in the wake of American-led airstrikes against the terrorist group, which was fanning out across Iraq, jihadists had taken to social media to call for attacks on American interests. In the three hours after the graphic video of Mr. Foley’s beheading was uploaded on YouTube, jihadists using the hashtag “#NewMessageFromISIStoUS” surpassed 2,000 tweets, according to a survey by SITE, with many fighters gloating over his death, and calling it just retribution for the air raids.

Mr. Foley, 40, a freelance journalist who was working for GlobalPost, an online publication based in Boston, as well as for Agence France-Presse, disappeared in Syria on Nov. 22, 2012. He was held alongside several other Americans, whose families have asked for a news blackout.

The video concludes with the fighter threatening to kill Steven Sotloff, another American freelance journalist, who was being held alongside Mr. Foley. Mr. Sotloff is seen kneeling in the same position, in the same landscape and wearing the same style of orange-colored jumpsuit. “The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision,” the fighter says.

Mr. Obama was briefed about the video by Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, on Air Force One as he returned to Martha’s Vineyard, according to Eric Schultz, the deputy White House press secretary.

In Washington, a National Security Council spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden, said in a statement: “We have seen a video that purports to be the murder of U.S. citizen James Foley by ISIL. The intelligence community is working as quickly as possible to determine its authenticity. If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist,” she said, using an alternative name for ISIS.

Reached by telephone, Philip Balboni, the chief executive and a founder of GlobalPost, said that the newsroom and Mr. Foley’s family were also trying to establish the veracity of the footage. “We are still evaluating the video at this time,” he said.

Mr. Foley, who was last seen in Binesh, Syria, was also abducted in Libya in 2011, where he was held for several weeks after running into troops loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s crumbling government.

He was among dozens of journalists — many of them freelancers without the formal backing of a news organization — who disappeared in 2012 and 2013 in Syria.

Correction: August 19, 2014

An earlier version of a summary with this article misstated the location of the airstrikes that ISIS opposed. The terrorist group said it executed James Foley in retaliation for American airstrikes in Iraq, not Syria.

Julie Davis contributed reporting from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on August 20, 2014, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: ISIS Says It Beheaded American Journalist in Syria. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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M.T.A. Amends Rules After Pro-Israel Ads Draw Controversy

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER

Published: September 27, 2012

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved new guidelines for advertisements on Thursday, prohibiting those that it “reasonably foresees would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace.”

The 8-to-0 vote by the authority’s board came three days after pro-Israel ads characterizing Islamist opponents of the Jewish state as being “savage” began appearing in subway stations, setting off vandalism, denunciations of the authority and calls for the ads’ removal.

The authority had initially rejected the ads, citing their “demeaning” language. The group responsible for the ads, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, sued, and in July won a federal court ruling on First Amendment grounds.

“We’ve gotten to a point where we needed to take action today,” Joseph J. Lhota, the authority’s chairman, said at a news conference on Thursday.

The authority said it believed the new guidelines adhered to the court’s ruling and would withstand any potential First Amendment challenge. Under the new policy, the authority will continue to allow so-called viewpoint ads, but each will be required to include a disclaimer noting that the ad does not imply the authority’s endorsement of its views.

“You deal with a free-speech issue with more free speech,” Mr. Lhota said.

The advertisements have attracted considerable attention in recent weeks amid the violent and sometimes deadly protests across the Muslim world in response to an American-made video mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

During the public comment portion of the authority’s meeting on Thursday, several speakers assailed the placement of the ads. (The authority said last week that “our hands are tied” because of an order, by Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of Federal District Court in Manhattan, to post the ads.)

Many at the meeting held signs echoing the Occupy Wall Street movement’s message. “The subway belongs to the 99 percent,” they read. “Take the racist ads down.”

Pamela Geller, the executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, also spoke, though she was repeatedly shouted down. She urged the board not to change its ad policy.

“Have the courage of your convictions,” she said, “even if the judge imposed it.”

M.T.A. Violated Rights of Group, Judge Says

By BENJAMIN WEISER

Published: July 20, 2012

A federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Friday that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority violated the First Amendment rights of a pro-Israel group when it rejected an advertisement the group wanted to place on city buses on grounds that they contained demeaning language.

The group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, had proposed an ad that said, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.”

Then, between two Stars of David, the ad said: “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

The transportation authority said the ad violated its prohibition on ads that demeaned individuals or groups on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin and five other specific categories. The group was given the opportunity to revise the ad, but it refused, and claimed in a lawsuit that the agency’s “no demeaning” language restriction was unconstitutional.

The judge, Paul A. Engelmayer of Federal District Court, ruled that the rejected ad was “not only protected speech — it is core political speech,” expressing a “pro-Israel perspective on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict” and implicitly calling “for a pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy with regard to that conflict.”

As such, the judge held, the ad “is afforded the highest level of protection under the First Amendment.”

Pamela Geller, executive director of the group that sought to place the ad, called the decision “a victory for freedom-loving people.”

Ms. Geller is an outspoken blogger and critic of Islam whose group ran ads on city buses in 2010 that opposed construction of an Islamic center near ground zero.

Judge Engelmayer said he would delay the effect of his order for 30 days, to allow the transportation authority to consider its appellate options and alternatives to the current rule.

Aaron Donovan, a transportation spokesman, said on Friday that the authority was reviewing the decision, and that it was also “evaluating its existing advertising standards in light of the court’s ruling.”

A statement by the authority also cited portions of the opinion, including one in which the judge said that “the court does not impugn in the slightest” the agency’s motives in devising its “no-demeaning” standard or applying it to the proposed ad.

“Quite the contrary,” Judge Engelmayer wrote, noting that testimony and evidence in the case showed that the authority “has aspired to hold ads on public buses to a standard of civility.

“Its goal of preventing ads on city bus exteriors from being used as a medium for abuse and division in this diverse metropolis is entirely laudable,” the judge wrote. “It appears likely that M.T.A. drafted the standard in question with an eye toward the groups it felt most likely to be targeted by demeaning ads, without adequately considering the First Amendment implications.”

The judge said the authority had “reasonably read” the ad as referring to Muslims as “savages.”

But, he added, it was “well settled that, where a violation of the First Amendment is concerned, the government’s benign, even noble, intentions are no cure.”

The judge noted that the authority’s rule barred only ads that contained language that demeaned on the basis of the nine listed categories, which included ancestry, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation. Outside that list, the judge noted, the rule would permit demeaning ads.

He even offered examples, like “Southerners are bigots,” “Upper West Siders are elitist snobs,” “Fat people are slobs,” “Blondes are bimbos” and “Lawyers are sleazebags.”

Under the standard, he wrote, an ad could even accuse a private citizen of being a child abuser or running a Ponzi scheme.

“Whatever weight might be assigned to the governmental interest in banning demeaning speech on the exterior of New York City buses on an evenhanded basis,” Judge Engelmayer said, “there is no good reason for protecting some individuals and groups, but not others, from such abuse.”

The “no-demeaning” standard, he said, was, “therefore, inconsistent with the First Amendment.”

The group whose pro-Israel ad was rejected had sought to run it on about 318 city buses for four weeks, at a cost of about $25,000, the judge noted.

The ruling came two days after the transportation authority announced that it would sell advertising space on the front of MetroCards. Mr. Donovan said on Friday that the authority “does not intend to open MetroCards to noncommercial advertisements,” a decision that was reached, he said, before Friday’s ruling.

The authority has said in court papers that it received $116.4 million in revenue in 2011 from advertising sold throughout its subway, commuter rail and bus systems; of that, it received $4.65 million from noncommercial advertising, which included political ads.

“M.T.A. is cash-strapped,” the judge wrote. “It regards the money it receives from such ads as an important source of revenue.”

Matt Flegenheimer contributed reporting.

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Part of the Berlin Wall Comes Down, Again

By DAVID W. DUNLAPSEPT. 19, 2014

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A 2000 photo of the section of the Berlin Wall on display behind 520 Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

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The Berlin Wall has come down again.

For nearly a quarter-century, surprising even those who think they know everything about New York, five segments of the concrete border that once divided Berlin have served as the centerpiece of a public plaza on East 53rd Street, behind the office tower at 520 Madison Avenue.

Not now. They have vanished.

About 10 days ago, Lee Gelber, a professional guide who does business as Here Is New York Tours, received a panicked email from a colleague specializing in groups of Dutch and German tourists. “She said, ‘Lee, the Berlin Wall isn’t there anymore,’ ” Mr. Gelber said. He went to see for himself. Sure enough, it was gone.

The Municipal Art Society was baffled, he said. The New York Landmarks Conservancy knew nothing of the disappearance. In utter desperation, he reached out to a reporter.

It seems that the news is good: The concrete slabs have been taken away for restoration and repair, which they needed after years of standing near a waterfall, and they will be back. But this could not be officially confirmed on Friday with Tishman Speyer, which owns 520 Madison Avenue and describes the wall on its website as a permanent amenity.

Photo

The same public plaza and waterfall on Friday, after the slabs were removed.

Having stood 28 years as a potent symbol of the Cold War — a concrete embodiment of the Iron Curtain — the wall was largely demolished in 1989 and 1990, after the East German government allowed its citizens to travel to the West. Jerry I. Speyer, the chairman of Tishman Speyer, bought five 12-foot-tall segments from the government.

The slabs could not be missed by passers-by. They were arranged West Berlin-side out, covered with angry graffiti, including an enormously disturbing human face.

“The slabs powerfully convey the sense of desolation and alienation,” Jerold S. Kayden wrote in the book, “Privately Owned Public Space: The New York Experience,” which has been excerpted on a website called Apops.

“The work is known as ‘The Berlin Wall,’ created by artists Thierry Noir and Kiddy Citny,” he wrote, “and falls squarely within a venerable public art tradition of jolting viewers out of their routine ways of thinking.”

Mr. Gelber, who is 76 and lives in Astoria, Queens, said the wall had a special resonance for him. He was undergoing basic training at Fort Dix, N.J., when the wall was erected in 1961, seemingly presaging the possibility of World War III.

“They had equipment packed in ocean containers so that, theoretically, we could go at the proverbial moment’s notice,” he recalled. “I really thought I’d be looking down the muzzle of a Russian tank.”

For him, there is no romance to the wall, where many East Germans met their deaths trying to escape to the West. After visitors have contemplated the artwork on the visible side, he invites them to inspect the eastern side, which is out of view.

“I tell them, ‘Put your hand back there and you’re going to feel holes about 9 millimeters in diameter,’ ” he said. “That’s a gotcha.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Part of the Berlin Wall Comes Down, Again. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Camor in the East; The Berlin Wall: A Monument to the Cold War, Triumphs and Tragedies

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

Published: November 10, 1989

It was a monument to political control, a scene of gunfire and drama and tragedy, the stuff of spy novels and a physical and psychic barrier that divided Berlin, Germany and Europe. For 28 years, the Berlin wall has been the foremost symbol of cold war and East-West confrontation.

Yesterday, the barrier still stood, but its meaning began to crumble like old mortar when embattled East German leaders announced that they would soon throw open their western border and allow citizens to travel freely beyond the wall where at least 191 people have died in bloody, sometimes bizarre, attempts to escape.

Even when it first went up on Aug. 13, 1961, to halt an exodus of East Germans to the West, the Soviet leader, Nikita S. Khrushchev, called it an ugly thing. But ugly hardly captured the horrifying sense of a structure that overnight sundered a great city and its people.

At first a crude 29-mile expanse of cinder blocks and barbed wire that split the city, the wall in time became a 103-mile stretch of fortified concrete and steel that encircled and imprisoned West Berlin. It is 13 to 15 feet high, topped with barbed and razor wire, and set with hundreds of watchtowers, gun emplacements and explosive mines. Kennedy's Decision on the Wall

The East Germans asserted that the wall was intended as protection, to prevent an attack from the West and to preserve the peace. But the West condemned it as a cause for shame and mourning, a symbol of moral differences between Democratic freedoms and totalitarian Communism.

The wall's construction was supervised by Erich Honecker, who was then a member of the East German Politburo. It divided friends, families and neighborhoods. Thousands of commuters lost their jobs. But in a country from which 2.5 million people had fled from 1949 to 1961, the wall also stemmed a flight of 3,000 people a day to the West and briefly generated another crisis over Berlin.

President John F. Kennedy decided against dismantling the wall, believing that the East Germans would just re-erect it and that a confrontation with the Soviet Union over the wall was not warranted. Some historians have linked Mr. Kennedy's inaction in Berlin to Mr. Khrushchev's decision to test American firmness by putting offensive missiles in Cuba in 1962.

In one of history's twists, the 77-year-old Mr. Honecker has been swept out amid rising demands for change in East Germany, and a new flight to freedom by thousands of East Germans has forced the Communist Government to declare free travel, removing the wall's meaning as a political barrier. Pact on Access to West Berlin

Over the years, visiting presidents, prime ministers and other Western dignitaries have made what became almost obligatory visits to the wall, calling ritually for its removal and denouncing the system of government that needed walls and wire to control people.

In the best known of those visits, President Kennedy went to Berlin on June 26, 1963, and declared: ''Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was 'civis Romanus sum.' Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' ''

Tourists, too, went to see the jagged, gray-concrete structure - in some places a double wall with a no-man's land between - where hundreds of East Germans risked their lives to escape and where by West Germany estimate 191 died in gunfire or in the explosion of mines, and 5,000 more were captured and dragged back within yards of freedom.

In 1970, the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union - the victorious World War II powers that occupied the city - reached an agreement aimed at easing tensions, allowing the west easier access to West Berlin, 110 miles inside East Germany, and visits beyond the wall for West Berliners. Pardons for Captured Escapees

While East Berliners were forbidden to travel to the west, West Berliners and non-Germans gained access to East Berlin through a series of checkpoints, including Checkpoint Charlie, the famed spot where spies were exchanged. West Berliners also rode in aboard an elevated train from the Zoo in West Berlin to Friedrichstrasse in East Berlin.

Despite those concessions, many found it hard to forget the grim images of 19-year-old Peter Fechter, who was shot in 1962 after getting past Communist border guards at Checkpoint Charlie. He died in no-man's land in full view of scores of helpless West Berliners, foreign correspondents and security officials.

While most escapes took place along less-fortified sections of the 860-mile border between East and West Germany, the Berlin wall was the scene of thousands of attempts. West German estimates say 5,000 people have made it over, under and through the wall since 1961.

A total of 4,000 people whose escape attempts failed are believed to be held in East German jails and prisons. As part of its current program of political change, the East German Government has pardoned those prisoners and has said they are to be released at the end of November.

In scenes of triumph and tragedy, escapees in the early years of the wall sometimes leaped from windows on the Bernauerstrasse, buildings that once made up part of the wall, into a western street. But the East Berlin authorities dynamited buildings nearest the wall and eventually established a free-fire zone where anything that moved was shot.

Swept by searchlights at night and watchtower binoculars by day, the zone brought new perils to the business of escape. Guards with machine guns and police dogs patrolled it; explosive mines were planted. Sand was laid down and raked daily to reveal footprints.

For years, border guards on the lookout for escapees had orders to shoot to kill. But earlier this year, those orders were rescinded. Still, the order to halt and capture escapees remained in force.

There were fascinating stories of bravery and bizarre tales of ingenuity in the attempts to flee, the results of despair, frustration, anger, envy, and even idealism that were was hard for Westerners to understand. One East German engineer piloted a glider over the wall; another made a hot-air balloon of patched-together bedsheets and shower curtains.

In 1983, two young men used an archery bow to fire a cable over the wall from an attic to an accomplice on a rooftop in West Berlin. They attached pulleys to the cable and rode in the dark over the heads of the border guards.

There were people who hid in drums used for storing telephone cable. Two medical students who had a friend make up East German border-patrol uniforms and who painted a car to look like an army vehicle drove unchallenged to the West.

At least 14 trucks rammed through the wall. In 1964, nine people escaped by hiding in a car so small that guards did not consider it worth searching. In September 1962, 147 people tunneled under it, and others have tunneled their way out over the years.

The exchange of espionage agents at the wall and the need for Berlin's many spies to penetrate the wall on missions to the other side and the division of families and friends gave rise to much fiction, notably John Le Carre's early success, ''The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,'' which ended with death at the wall.

Photos of an East German soldier hurdling barbed wire as he crossed the wall to the West on Aug. 15, 1961, two days after the wall was erected (AP); the Berlin Wall (Black Star/Flip Schulke); a man waving to friends across the wall in 1962 (Black Star/Robert Lachenbach)

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F.Y.I.

By DANIEL B. SCHNEIDER

Published: August 12, 2001

Remembering the Wall

Q. After it was torn down, did any significant portions of the Berlin Wall wind up in New York City?

A. Destruction of the Berlin Wall began shortly after 7 p.m. on Nov. 9, 1989, when a member of the East German Politburo announced that the border with West Germany would be partly opened and jubilant demonstrators arrived on the scene carrying hammers and chisels. Innumerable chips, chunks and slivers of the wall have since made their way to the city, in private hands.

In 1990, a large section of the wall -- five 12-foot tall slabs weighing about 5,000 pounds each -- was conveyed to the city and installed in a courtyard on East 53rd Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues. The graffiti-covered, 20-foot section of wall was bought from the former East German government by Jerry Speyer of Tishman Speyer Properties, owners of the courtyard, which adjoins 520 Madison Avenue.

A smaller section, a gift from the German government, is to be installed in the north garden of United Nations headquarters in October. It consists of three spray-painted sections, which together depict a couple locked in embrace over the top of the wall. They stood in Leipzig Square in Berlin until July. The eight-and-a-quarter-ton section of the wall, about 12 feet wide, will face the East River. So, apart from chips, about 32 feet of the former Berlin Wall will be standing in Manhattan by wintertime. Before the wall was destroyed it stretched for more than 100 miles.

Blissful Confusion

Q. Until a few years ago, the 46th Street stop on the 7 train in Sunnyside, Queens, bore the additional label ''Bliss Street,'' and local businesses, from the Bliss Street Station Bar to the Bliss Nail Salon, still use the name. I cannot find the street. Where is it?

A. Since you've no doubt walked up and down the street countless times without realizing it, ignorance, in this case, has been very close to Bliss. Bliss was the original name of 46th Street, at least in the Sunnyside area, and it was still in use in the late 1920's, according to James Driscoll of the Queens Historical Society.

The street was probably one of many laid out after the completion of the Queensboro Bridge in 1909, when Queens Boulevard was built, passing through the new Sunnyside area.

Like Blissville, the tiny industrial community to the southwest, Bliss Street was named for Neziah Bliss, the steamship builder and real estate speculator instrumental in the planning and development of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Sunnyside itself takes its name from a roadhouse built in the 1850's on Jackson Avenue.

To impose some order on the jumble of streets crisscrossing the former swamps and farmlands of Queens, many street names were replaced by numbers, including Bliss. In 1982, residents of Sunnyside Gardens, the planned community bordered by 43rd Street, 51st Street, Queens Boulevard and Skillman Avenue, persuaded the City Council to return 46th Street and others within the 16-block area to their original names.

To avoid confusion, however, the numeric designations were also kept in place, and on street signs, according to Dorothy R. Morehead, president of the Sunnyside Foundation, a preservation group.

Manhattan Mastodon

Q. Is it true that mastodon bones were once found in the city?

A. On March 14, 1925, construction workers digging a building foundation near Broadway and Dyckman Streets in northern Manhattan discovered the jawbone of an American mastodon 22 feet below ground. The jawbone included 14 teeth.

Paleontologists believe that mastodons, as well as saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths, were quite common in this area during the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago, but the reddish-brown elephantlike behemoths abruptly disappeared several thousand years later. DANIEL B. SCHNEIDER

Drawing (Stuart Goldenberg)

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Fighting Enmity Against Sikhs With Art, Talks and Superhero Garb

SEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

Vishavjit Singh, right, helped Holden Whitehead, a student at Alfred University, into a turban as part of a diversity program.

On Religion

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

ALFRED, N.Y. — Standing before his living-room mirror one morning in August 2001, Vishavjit Singh put his fumbling fingers to the task of wrapping on his turban for the first time in a decade. It slumped to one side. Then the creases were not crisp enough. Finally, he got it right, and headed to his job as a software engineer in suburban New York.

Mr. Singh had stopped wearing the turban, an emblem of his Sikh religion, in part because he had not been especially observant while growing up. More deeply, he knew firsthand how that visible symbol marked Sikhs as targets of bigotry, sometimes by Hindu foes in India, sometimes by Americans who assumed anyone in a turban to be Muslim.

By this time, though, Mr. Singh had studied and embraced his religion, and spent 18 months letting his hair and beard grow in accordance with Sikh precepts. With several hundred thousand Sikhs living in the United States, a country founded on religious tolerance, why should he keep effacing his identity?

Then, about the month later, a brilliant sun rose on the morning of Sept. 11. Strolling outside his White Plains office a half-hour after the planes struck the World Trade Center, Mr. Singh saw drivers giving him the middle finger and heard passers-by calling him “Osama.” Yet none of it, that day or for all the years after, compelled him to give up the turban.

So it was that on another crystalline late-summer morning, this one in September 2014, Mr. Singh, 43, stood on a brick plaza of the Alfred University campus in upstate New York, folding and twisting a light-green cloth into a taut band. Holden Whitehead, a linebacker on the college football team, then held one end of the fabric between his teeth, as Mr. Singh circled him clockwise, enfolding the student’s hair in a turban.

And, oh, by the way, Mr. Singh was doing this while wearing a Captain America costume, about which more will be said later. Costume or not, Mr. Singh had planted on Mr. Whitehead’s skull not just a form of headwear but an epiphany or two.

“I’ve heard of the Sikh religion before, but I didn’t know anything,” said Mr. Whitehead, 20, who was taking a class on diversity and comic art. “Like everyone else, I thought it was Arab.”

In this moment of role reversal, it was the white guy from Lock Haven, Pa., who was thrust into the role of being the visible other. “If you’re proud of your religion, just rock it,” Mr. Whitehead said. “But it must be hard to keep your composure, dealing with all the stares.”

Stares would qualify as the benign end of the spectrum for many American Sikhs, who follow a monotheistic religion founded in South Asia about 600 years ago. Because they are so often mistaken for fundamentalist or even jihadist Muslims — the turban being associated with the leaders of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and the Islamic State — American Sikhs have endured a substantial amount of hate crime. While the F.B.I. does not break down separate statistics for attacks against Sikhs specifically, the last 13 years have seen numerous beatings and several killings, most notoriously the fatal shooting of six worshipers at a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee in 2012.

Mr. Singh has made it his mission, in deeply felt and highly idiosyncratic ways, to address the ignorance and thus defang the hate. To understand the depth of his conviction, it helps to return to his childhood. Born in Washington, the son of a civil servant in the Indian Embassy, Mr. Singh moved back to Delhi with his family for his schooling. When he was in seventh grade, a wave of anti-Sikh violence engulfed the city — partly provoked by the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two bodyguards who were Sikh, but also abetted by some members of the police and government.

As a boy of 13, Mr. Singh peered through the curtained windows of his family’s apartment at a Hindu gang trying to break into the building. Ultimately, a Hindu neighbor hid and sheltered the Singhs for several days until the worst violence abated. By then, several thousand Sikhs had been killed, many burned alive, and tens of thousands had fled their homes. To this day, Sikhs like Mr. Singh refer to the events as a pogrom rather than merely a riot.

The memory of human nature at its worst and its best, of marauding mobs and compassionate neighbors, stayed with Mr. Singh even as he returned to the United States for college, then earned a graduate degree and began a career in computer engineering. What did fall away in those years was his boyhood love of cartooning, which seemed like no way to make a living.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, though, Mr. Singh found himself compelled to resume drawing, to put his pleas for tolerance in the easily digestible form of comics. Techie that he was, he sketched with his index finger on a laptop’s touch pad and posted the resulting work online. By the end of 2002, he had produced enough cartoons to start a website, sikhtoons.com, which eventually attracted about 1,500 unique visitors a day.

Trying to promote his artwork, Mr. Singh attended the New York Comic Con in 2011. For the occasion, he drew up a poster of Captain America, the patriotic character originally created for World War II’s struggle against fascism, but with a Sikh’s turban and beard. A year later, after the mass shootings at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, Mr. Singh wrote an op-ed column for The Seattle Times, declaring, “It’s time for a new superhero to fight hate crimes.”

The blowback online from readers — “dumb column,” “race obsessed left,” “ ‘hate crimes’ is a political invention” — only fortified Mr. Singh’s commitment. He ordered a Captain America outfit and then found a tailor to do alterations for his alter ego, trimming its XL dimensions for his 5-foot-9, 125-pound frame.

Sometimes in his casual jeans, sometimes in his neon-bright outfit, always with his turban and beard, Mr. Singh has taken his message about Sikhs and tolerance to audiences from the University of Kansas to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles to the satirical television show “Totally Biased.” At Alfred University, which runs a special program called “Drawn to Diversity,” he found an especially receptive audience for his speech, cartoon presentation and turban-tying workshop. His performance-art stroll through the campus became the occasion for many selfies, fist-bumps and iterations of “Awesome, dude!”

“People can think I’m not an American, they can tell me to go home to where I came from,” Mr. Singh told his student listeners at one point. “And I say: ‘O.K., I’ll go home tonight. I live here.’ ”

Email: sgf1@columbia.edu

Twitter: @SamuelGFreedman

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Fighting Enmity Against Sikhs With Art, Talks and Superhero Garb. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Hijacked Jets Destroy Twin Towers and Hit Pentagon

By SERGE SCHMEMANN

Published: September 12, 2001

Hijackers rammed jetliners into each of New York's World Trade Center towers yesterday, toppling both in a hellish storm of ash, glass, smoke and leaping victims, while a third jetliner crashed into the Pentagon in Virginia. There was no official count, but President Bush said thousands had perished, and in the immediate aftermath the calamity was already being ranked the worst and most audacious terror attack in American history.

The attacks seemed carefully coordinated. The hijacked planes were all en route to California, and therefore gorged with fuel, and their departures were spaced within an hour and 40 minutes. The first, American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 out of Boston for Los Angeles, crashed into the north tower at 8:48 a.m. Eighteen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175, also headed from Boston to Los Angeles, plowed into the south tower. Then an American Airlines Boeing 757, Flight 77, left Washington's Dulles International Airport bound for Los Angeles, but instead hit the western part of the Pentagon, the military headquarters where 24,000 people work, at 9:40 a.m. Finally, United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 flying from Newark to San Francisco, crashed near Pittsburgh, raising the possibility that its hijackers had failed in whatever their mission was.

There were indications that the hijackers on at least two of the planes were armed with knives. Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters in the evening that the suspects on Flight 11 were armed that way. And Barbara Olson, a television commentator who was traveling on American Flight 77, managed to reach her husband, Solicitor General Theodore Olson, by cell phone and to tell him that the hijackers were armed with knives and a box cutter.

In all, 266 people perished in the four planes and several score more were known dead elsewhere. Numerous firefighters, police officers and other rescue workers who responded to the initial disaster in Lower Manhattan were killed or injured when the buildings collapsed. Hundreds were treated for cuts, broken bones, burns and smoke inhalation.

But the real carnage was concealed for now by the twisted, smoking, ash-choked carcasses of the twin towers, in which thousands of people used to work on a weekday. The collapse of the towers caused another World Trade Center building to fall 10 hours later, and several other buildings in the area were damaged or aflame.

"I have a sense it's a horrendous number of lives lost," said Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. "Right now we have to focus on saving as many lives as possible."

The mayor warned that "the numbers are going to be very, very high."

He added that the medical examiner's office will be ready "to deal with thousands and thousands of bodies if they have to."

For hours after the attacks, rescuers were stymied by other buildings that threatened to topple. But by 11 p.m., rescuers had been able to begin serious efforts to locate and remove survivors. Mr. Giuliani said two Port Authority police officers had been pulled from the ruins, and he said hope existed that more people could be saved.

Earlier, police officer volunteers using dogs had found four bodies in the smoldering, stories-high pile of rubble where the towers had once stood and had taken them to a makeshift morgue in the lobby of an office building at Vesey and West Streets.

Within an hour of the attacks, the United States was on a war footing. The military was put on the highest state of alert, National Guard units were called out in Washington and New York and two aircraft carriers were dispatched to New York harbor. President Bush remained aloft in Air Force One, following a secretive route and making only brief stopovers at Air Force bases in Louisiana and Nebraska before finally setting down in Washington at 7 p.m. His wife and daughters were evacuated to a secure, unidentified location.

The White House, the Pentagon and the Capitol were evacuated, except for the Situation Room in the White House where Vice President Cheney remained in charge, giving the eerie impression of a national capital virtually stripped of its key institutions.

Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks. But the scale and sophistication of the operation, the extraordinary planning required for concerted hijackings by terrorists who had to be familiar with modern jetliners, and the history of major attacks on American targets in recent years led many officials and experts to point to Osama bin Laden, the Islamic militant believed to operate out of Afghanistan. Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban rulers rejected such suggestions, but officials took that as a defensive measure.

Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, told reporters that the United States had some evidence that people associated with Mr. bin Laden had sent out messages "actually saying over the airwaves, private airwaves at that, that they had hit two targets."

In the evening, explosions were reported in Kabul, the Afghan capital. But officials at the Pentagon denied that the United States had attacked that city.

President Bush, facing his first major crisis in office, vowed that the United States would hunt down and punish those responsible for the "evil, despicable acts of terror" which, he said, took thousands of American lives. He said the United States would make no distinction between those who carried out the hijackings and those who harbored and supported them

"These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed," a somber president told the nation in an address from the Oval Office shortly after 8:30 p.m.

"The search is under way for those who are behind these evil acts," Mr. Bush said. "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

The repercussions of the attack swiftly spread across the nation. Air traffic across the United States was halted at least until today and international flights were diverted to Canada. Borders with Canada and Mexico were closed. Most federal buildings across the country were shut down. Major skyscrapers and a variety of other sites, ranging from Disney theme parks to the Golden Gate Bridge and United Nations headquarters in New York, were evacuated.

But it was in New York that the calamity achieved levels of horror and destruction known only in war.

The largest city in the United States, the financial capital of the world, was virtually closed down. Transportation into Manhattan was halted, as was much of public transport within the city. Parts of Lower Manhattan were left without power, compelling Mayor Giuliani to order Battery Park City to be evacuated. Major stock exchanges closed. Primary elections for mayor and other city offices were cancelled. Thousands of workers, released from their offices in Lower Manhattan but with no way to get home except by foot, set off in vast streams, down the avenues and across the bridges under a beautiful, clear sky, accompanied by the unceasing serenade of sirens.

While doctors and nurses at hospitals across the city tended to hundreds of damaged people, a disquieting sense grew throughout the day at other triage centers and emergency rooms that there would, actually, be less work: the morgues were going to be busiest.

A sense of shock, grief and solidarity spread rapidly through the city. There was the expectation that friends and relatives would be revealed among the victims. Schools prepared to let students stay overnight if they could not get home, or if it emerged that there was no one to go home to.

There was also the fear that it was not over: stores reported a run on basic goods. And there was the urge to help. Thousands of New Yorkers lined up outside hospitals to donate blood.

As in great crises past, people exchanged stories of where they were when they heard the news.

"There is a controlled professionalism, but also a sense of shock," said Mark G. Ackerman, an official at the St. Vincent Medical Center. "Obviously New York and all of us have experienced a trauma that is unparalleled."

"I invite New Yorkers to join in prayer," said Cardinal Edward M. Egan as he emerged from the emergency room of St. Vincent's in blue hospital garb. "This is a tragedy that this great city can handle. I am amazed at the goodness of our police and our firefighters and our hospital people."

All communications creaked under the load of the sudden emergency. Mobile phones became all but useless, intercity lines were clogged and major Internet servers reported overloads.

The area around the World Trade Center resembled a desert after a terrible sandstorm. Parts of buildings, crushed vehicles and the shoes, purses, umbrellas and baby carriages of those who fled lay covered with thick, gray ash, through which weeping people wandered in search of safety, each with a story of pure horror.

Imez Graham, 40, and Dee Howard, 37, both of whom worked on the 61st floor of the north tower, were walking up Chambers Street, covered in soot to their gracefully woven dreadlocks caked in soot, barefoot. They had spent an hour walking down the stairs after the first explosion. They were taken to an ambulance, when the building collapsed. They jumped out and began to walk home. "They need me; I've got to get home," Ms. Howard said. Where was that? "As far away from here as possible."

In Chinatown, a woman offered them a pair of dainty Chinese sandals. Nearby, construction workers offered to hose the soot off passing people.

The twin pillars of the World Trade Center were among the best known landmarks in New York, 110-floor unadorned blocks that dominated any approach to Manhattan. It is probable that renown, and the thousands of people who normally work there each weekday, that led Islamic militants to target the towers for destruction already in 1993, then by parking vans loaded with explosives in the basement.

There is no way to know how many people were at work shortly before 9 a.m. when the first jetliners sliced into the north tower, also known as 1 World Trade Center. CNN and other television networks were quick to focus their cameras on the disaster, enabling untold numbers of viewers to witness the second jetliner as it banked into the south tower 18 minutes later, blowing a cloud of flame and debris out the other side.

Even more viewers were tuned in by 9:50 a.m. when the south tower suddenly vanished in swirling billows of ash, collapsing in on itself. Then at 10:29 a.m. the north tower followed. A choking grey cloud billowed out, blocking out the bright sunshine and chasing thousands of panicked workers through the canyons of Lower Manhattan. Plumes continued to rise high over the city late into the night.

"The screaming was just horrendous," recalled Carol Webster, an official of the Nyack College Alliance Seminary who had just emerged from the PATH trains when the carnage began. "Every time there would be another explosion, people would start screaming and thronging again."

The scenes of horror were indelible; people who left from the broken towers, people who fought for pay phones, people white with soot and red with blood. "We saw people jumping from the tower as the fire was going on," said Steve Baker, 27. "The sky went black, all this stuff came onto us, we ran."

The timing was murderous for the armada of rescue vehicles that gathered after the planes crashed, and were caught under the collapsing buildings. Many rescue workers were reported killed or injured, and the anticipation that Building 7 would soon follow led to a suspension of operatios. The firefighters union said that at least 200 of its members had died.

Mayor Giuliani, along with the police and fire commissioners and the director of emergency management, was forced to abandon a temporary command center at 75 Barclay Street, a block from the World Trade Center, and the mayor emerged with his gray suit covered with ash.

In the evening, officials reported that buildings 5 and 7 of the World Trade Center had also collapsed, and buildings all around the complex had their windows blown out. The Rector Street subway station collapsed, and the walkway at West Street was gone. World leaders hastened to condemn the attacks, including Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and Libya's Muammar el-Qaddafi.

European leaders began quiet discussions last night about how they might assist the United States in striking back, and Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, joined in expressing support for a retaliatory strike.

But in the West Bank city of Nablus, rejoicing Palestinians, who have been locked in a bitter struggle with Israel for almost a year, went into the streets to chant, "God is great!" and to distribute candies to celebrate the attacks.

Many governments took their own precautions against attack. Israel evacuated many of its embassies abroad, and non-essential staffers at NATO headquarters in Brussels were ordered home.

In Afghanistan, the ruling Taliban argued that Mr. bin Laden could not have been responsible for the attacks. "What happened in the United States was not a job of ordinary people," an official, Abdul Hai Mutmaen, told Reuters. "It could have been the work of governments. Osama bin Laden cannot do this work."

Apart from the major question of who was responsible, a host of other questions were certain to be at the forefront in coming days and weeks. One was the timing -- why Sept. 11?

The date seemed to have no obvious meaning. One of the men convicted in the bombing of the United States Embassy in Nairobi in 1998, in which 213 were killed, was originally scheduled for sentencing on Sept. 12. But the sentencing of the man, Mohamed Rasheed Daoud al-'Owhali, had been put off to mid-October.

It was possible that Mr. Al-'Owhali and the others convicted with him were close witnesses to the bombings, since terror suspects typically await sentencing at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan. Officials have not confirmed that the convicted Nairobi bombers are there.

Many questions would also be raised about how hijackers managed to seize four jets with all the modern safeguards in place. Initial information was sketchy, although a passenger on the United Airlines jetliner that crashed in Pennsylvania managed to make a cellular phone call from the toilet. "We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked," the man shouted at 9:58 a.m. As he was speaking, the plane crashed about eight miles east of Jennerstown, killing all 45 aboard.

For all the questions, what was clear was that the World Trade Center would take its place among the great calamities of American history, a day of infamy like Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma City, Lockerbie.

The very absence of the towers would become a symbol after their domination of the New York skyline for 25 years. Though initial reviews were mixed when the towers were dedicated in 1976, they came into their own as landmarks with passing years. King Kong climbed one tower in a remake of the movie classic.

In April, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which ran the World Trade Center through its first 30 years, leased the complex for $3.2 billion to a group led by Larry A. Silverstein, a developer, and Westfield America Inc.

In recent years, the complex has filled up with tenants and revenues have increased. In addition to the towers -- designed by the architect Minoru Yamasaki, each 1,350 feet tall -- the complex included four other buildings, two of which were also gone, for a total of 12 million square feet of rentable office space.

Gunman Kills 6 at a Sikh Temple Near Milwaukee

A vigil in downtown Milwaukee for the dead and the wounded. “Everyone here is thinking this is a hate crime for sure,” said Manjit Singh, who goes to a different temple in the region. “People think we are Muslims.”

By STEVEN YACCINO, MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ and MARC SANTORA

Published: August 5, 2012

OAK CREEK, Wis. — The priests had gathered in the lobby of the sprawling Sikh temple here in suburban Milwaukee, and lunch was being prepared as congregants were arriving for Sunday services.

Instead of worshipers, though, an armed man stepped through the door and started firing.

In an attack that the police said they were treating as “a domestic terrorist-type incident,” the gunman stalked through the temple around 10:30 a.m. Congregants ran for shelter and barricaded themselves in bathrooms and prayer halls, where they made desperate phone calls and sent anguished texts pleading for help as confusion and fear took hold. Witnesses described a scene of chaos and carnage.

Jatinder Mangat, 40, who was on his way to the temple when he heard reports about the shooting, said he had tried to call his uncle, the temple’s president, but reached the head priest, Gurmail Singh, instead. “He was crying. Everyone was screaming,” Mr. Mangat said. “He said that my uncle was shot and was lying on the floor and asked why you guys are not sending an ambulance and police.”

Mr. Singh, he said, had locked himself in a bathroom with four other people, including two children.

Six people were killed and three others were wounded on Sunday at the 17,000-square-foot Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, a city of about 35,000 just south of Milwaukee, officials said.

The gunman’s rampage ended when one of the first police officers to arrive shot and killed him. Another police officer, who tried to aid a victim, was ambushed by the gunman and shot multiple times. He was in critical condition but was expected to survive, the authorities said.

The police did not release any details about the gunman or a possible motive for the shooting, beyond raising the prospect of terrorism. Thomas Ahern, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the killer was a 40-year-old white man.

John Edwards, the police chief in Oak Creek, said at a news conference that weapons had been found at the scene. He said the F.B.I. would lead the investigation.

“This remains an active investigation in its early stages,” Teresa Carlson, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Milwaukee division, said in a statement. “While the F.B.I. is investigating whether this matter might be an act of domestic terrorism, no motive has been determined at this time.”

The shootings reverberated from this small community to Washington and beyond, including India, where the religion was founded and many of the congregants have family ties.

President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, released statements on Sunday expressing sorrow.

“Michelle and I were deeply saddened to learn of the shooting that tragically took so many lives in Wisconsin,” the president said. “At this difficult time, the people of Oak Creek must know that the American people have them in our thoughts and prayers, and our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who were killed and wounded.”

Mr. Romney called the shootings “a senseless act of violence and a tragedy” that he said should never befall any house of worship.

“Our hearts are with the victims, their families and the entire Oak Creek Sikh community,” Mr. Romney said. “We join Americans everywhere in mourning those who lost their lives and in prayer for healing in the difficult days ahead.”

Many members of the close-knit Sikh community here said the attack had shattered their sense of security.

“Everyone here is thinking this is a hate crime for sure,” said Manjit Singh, who goes to a different temple in the region. “People think we are Muslims.”

Though violence against Sikhs in Wisconsin was unheard of before the shooting, many in this community said they had sensed a rise in antipathy since the attacks on Sept. 11 and suspected it was because people mistake them for Muslims. Followers of Sikhism, or Gurmat, a monotheistic faith founded in the 15th century in South Asia, typically do not cut their hair, and men often wear colorful turbans and refrain from cutting their beards.

“Most people are so ignorant they don’t know the difference between religions,” said Ravi Chawla, 65, a businesswoman who moved to the region from Pakistan in the 1970s. “Just because they see the turban they think you’re Taliban.”

There are around 314,000 Sikhs in the United States, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. The temple in Oak Creek, one of two large congregations in the Milwaukee area, was founded in 1997 and has about 400 worshipers.

Threats against Sikh-Americans have become acute enough that in April, Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York and co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on Indians and Indian-Americans, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. urging the F.B.I. to collect data on hate crimes committed against them. In the previous year alone, he said in the letter, two Sikh men in a Sacramento suburb were slain, a Sikh temple in Michigan was vandalized, and a Sikh man was beaten in New York.

“The more information our law enforcement agencies have on violence against Sikh-Americans, the more they can do to help prevent these crimes and bring those who commit them to justice,” Mr. Crowley said in a statement at the time.

By Sunday evening, the F.B.I. had cordoned off a street in Cudahy, a town about five miles from the temple, where it was executing a search warrant related to the shooting, Ms. Carlson said at a news conference. “It’s going to be a long night,” she said, declining to give further details. A law enforcement official said some residents on the street had been ordered to leave their homes.

At a news conference, Chief Edwards described a dramatic scene when officers arrived at the temple soon after the first 911 call. After the gunman ambushed the first officer, Chief Edwards said, another police officer exchanged fire with the gunman, bringing him down.

Bradley Wentlandt, the chief of police in nearby Greenfield, said the wounded officer was a 20-year veteran whose actions probably saved many lives.

Four bodies were found inside the temple and three outside, including that of the gunman, Chief Wentlandt said.

Three men with gunshot wounds were admitted to Froedtert Hospital, the Milwaukee region’s main trauma center, said Nalissa Wienke, a spokeswoman for the hospital. One victim had been shot in the head and extremities and another in the abdomen. The third was described as having neck wounds.

There were initially conflicting reports about whether there was more than one gunman and whether hostages had been taken inside the temple. Local news agencies, citing text messages from people inside, reported that two or more gunmen could have been involved.

“The best information is that there was only one gunman,” Chief Edwards said at a news conference.

The shooting came about two weeks after a gunman killed 12 people and wounded nearly 60 in an attack at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.

In response to the shooting on Sunday, the police in New York said security was being increased at Sikh temples in the city. “There is no known threat against Sikh temples in New York City; however, the coverage is being put in place out of an abundance of caution,” the New York police said in a statement.

Outside the temple here, friends and relatives were struggling to understand what had happened. Many in the community had contacted friends and family who were in the temple when the violence broke out.

Harpreet Singh, a nephew of the temple president, said his aunt, the president’s wife, was in the kitchen with other women preparing food for services when they heard gunshots.

“She said they heard a bang, bang, bang,” Mr. Singh, 36, said in a telephone interview from the basement of a bowling alley near from the temple, where the police and F.B.I. agents were interviewing survivors.

Mr. Singh, recounting the shooting as told to him by his aunt Satpal Kaleka, said the women had hidden in a nearby pantry. The women escaped, witnessing the gunman’s carnage along the way, he said.

Mr. Singh was on his way to services with his wife, his two children and his parents when the police stopped them outside the parking lot. “There were police cars running into the complex,” he said. “A couple of weeks ago, some kid had set off a fire alarm, so we thought something like that had happened.”

People begin gathering at the temple as early as 6:30 a.m. on Sundays, but most arrive around 10:30 or 11 for services, Mr. Singh said. He believed about 30 to 35 people were inside when the shooting began, but had the gunman arrived just 15 minutes later, Mr. Singh said, 100 to 150 people would have been inside.

Steven Yaccino reported from Oak Creek, and Michael Schwirtz and Marc Santora from New York. Ray Rivera and Jack Begg contributed reporting from New York.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 9, 2012

An article on Monday about the fatal shooting at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee misidentified the location where two Sikh men were killed last year in California. The killings took place in the Sacramento suburb of Elk Grove, not in Sacramento.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 5, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the first name of a congregant who was on his way to the temple when the shooting began. He is Jatinder Mangat, not Jatindev.

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New Jersey Teacher Is Charged With Sexual Assault of 5 Students

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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NEWARK — A high school teacher in northern New Jersey who was arrested this week on charges that she had sexually assaulted three students is facing additional charges involving two more students.

Essex County authorities announced the new charges on Friday. The teacher, Nicole Dufault, 35, worked at Columbia High School in Maplewood.

Ms. Dufault, of Caldwell, pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges involving the original three students. The authorities said the acts took place on school property and in her car.

She faces counts of aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child and is being held on $500,000 bail.

Ms. Dufault has been a language arts teacher at the school for about nine years.

Her lawyer, Timothy Smith, said the charges “run contrary to her commendable background and unblemished work performance.” Mr. Smith said he would seek a bail reduction.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: New Jersey Teacher Is Charged With Sex Assault of 5 Students. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Fashion & Style | Fashion Review

A Different Declaration of Independence

At Milan Fashion Week, Fendi, Alberta Ferretti, Max Mara

By VANESSA FRIEDMANSEPT. 18, 2014

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Photo

At Fendi, some styles were sliced by a strip of black patent that looked dip-dyed but was rather a entirely different texture.

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MILAN — Whether or not the pundits are right and the Scottish situation goes viral across Europe and beyond, with other nationalist groups announcing their intentions to leave whatever union they happen to be in (the Catalans, Spain; the Veneto, Italy; the Québécois, Canada; the Texans, the United States — it could happen), one thing is certain: Fashion has seen independence as a potential trend.

“Trend” being the operative word. Because that makes it fair game for the industry.

So here was Alberta Ferretti saying her collection was about expressing “the sense of freedom possessed by women who think for themselves.”

And there was Max Mara, claiming as inspiration “unconventional women who redefined the concept of beauty.”

Here was Brunello Cucinelli pursuing his single-minded quest to disprove the idea comfort dressing can’t be elegant, seaming cashmere sweatshirts and sweatpants in silver chain, laser-cutting lattice patterns into mink vests, waxing ostrich feathers until they resembled raffia and layering slouchy sweaters over tulle evening skirts — best worn with sparkling, chain-mail sneakers.

Photo

Alberta Ferretti  took a look back to the romantic hippie tribes of the late 1960s and early ’70s. Or rather, their uniforms.

And there was Fendi, taking its own road (you couldn’t miss it — it came in the shape of the catwalk) to the future.

You can understand the impulse: What’s on the runways reflects the zeitgeist — at least when it’s successful, which is a clichéd way of saying what’s on the runways works when it reflects what the people who might wear it are thinking about. Otherwise it would be irrelevant; pretty perhaps, but pointless.

The tricky thing, for designers at least, is figuring out what, exactly, “independence” means for them. Is it a direct riposte to the sartorial status quo? A smorgasbord of offerings, one for every taste? A break with their own well-worn signatures?

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Slide Show|16 Photos

The Look of Milan

The Look of Milan

Actually, at least as the Milan shows kicked off and the audience surreptitiously checked Twitter feeds for exit polls from Scotland, it seemed to mean ... the 1970s! (Well, we are dealing with trend here.)

It may have begun with Gucci, but Ms. Ferretti also took a look back to the romantic hippie tribes of the late 1960s and early ’70s. Or rather, their uniforms. To be specific: Juliet-worthy mousseline nightie gowns, occasionally sprinkled with blooms for an extra dose of flower power; flesh-colored macramé pants and lace-edged jumpsuits; long fringed suede vests and floral ponchos; faded denim (denim!) albeit done the Ferretti way, laser-cut in florals and finished invisibly in chiffon; and simple silk dresses made from a bright, afghan-like patchwork print.

Presumably the designer was connecting with the idea of rejecting the establishment and those who did it in days of yore (even if they did it while skipping through the fields). And the focus on the casual, albeit the subtly extravagant casual, marked a positive change from Ms. Ferretti’s more complicated, and occasionally fussy, red carpet looks.

Photo

Max Mara, head-to-toe florals for spring 2015.

On the other hand, however, while laying yourself bare and putting your cards on the table (visually speaking anyway) may be an admirable goal, nude is not necessarily the most effective color. And it’s unclear how dressing just like a whole bunch of individuals who came before represents a woman thinking for herself. O.K., she’s not in a business suit. But still.

So what if she dresses like one individual instead? Such was the approach of Max Mara, which mined the 1970s of Anjelica Huston for its show, complete with head-to-toe Marimekko-like prints on everything from floppy rain hats to mid-calf georgette dresses and matching boots.

The stylized florals came in black-on-white or white-on-black (or variations on the same in pink/rose or green/blue or mustard/brown); for evening, they appeared on skirts and coats smocked with silver thread, or spotted with pearls.

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Fashion Week Now Milan

Notable moments from Milan Fashion Week

It made a statement, unquestionably, and reduced to its elements could be charming (in real life, as opposed to runway life, a little print goes a long way). But natty taupe jackets and dusters piped in white were even more so; ditto light suede trench coats.

In their classicism, they transcended their roots, and were the better for it. They didn’t break with tradition, but they did modernize it — an operating principle that was fully on view at Fendi.

“Forget the past, forget vintage,” Silvia Fendi said backstage, referring to the creative director Karl Lagerfield’s favorite dictum, which provoked something of a sigh of relief. Off the chains of history! Forward, march.

And then the models did, in abbreviated A-line minidresses marked by a geometric maze of sheer insets, tiny leather skirts and tinier leather jackets laser-cut into three-dimensional orchids, and over-blown suede jodhpurs sliced by a strip of black patent that looked dip-dyed but was rather a entirely different texture.

There were shaved and sculpted mink bombers in an orchid print (it may be a spring collection but this is a skins house, after all), and “cage” minidresses made from strips of leather sporting multicolored organza feathers mixed with tufts of fox, as well as pieced together from different strips of patterned dove grey mink and overlaid with a slither of paper-thin — what was it? clear plastic? — for shine.

Some of it worked (especially the simpler activewear shapes paired with intense fabric treatments) and some of it tipped over into sci-fi territory (the cage), but as a whole it conveyed a confidence and point of view that didn’t belong to any time but the present. And it began to seem like, when it comes to dress, perhaps liberation from any obvious reference may be the most effective declaration of independence of all.

Follow our Fashion Week coverage on Twitter at @nytfashion.

Interested in Fashion Week? Follow the conversation at nytimes.com/fashionweeknow.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: A Backward-Looking Theme Emerges. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Music | Music Review

Where Drums Glow, and Dreams Go Dark

Eighth Blackbird Performs ‘Colombine’s Paradise Theater’

By ANTHONY TOMMASINISEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

The percussionist Matthew Duvall of the ensemble Eighth Blackbird, in Amy Beth Kirsten's "Colombine's Paradise Theater," on Thursday at the Miller Theater.

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For centuries, the archetypal characters of commedia dell’arte have been mined so thoroughly by composers, dancers and dramatists that you would think that there is nothing fresh to uncover. Thankfully, the composer Amy Beth Kirsten did not feel this way.

After talking with Eighth Blackbird, the brilliant and adventurous six-member instrumental ensemble from Chicago, Ms. Kirsten was inspired to do a 21st-century fantasia on commedia dell’arte. Working with the director and stage designer Mark DeChiazza, Ms. Kirsten wrote “Colombine’s Paradise Theater,” a 60-minute work that combines instrumental music, singing, speaking, sputtering, movement, dance and all manner of comedic and intense physical gyrations.

This dark, wild and engrossing piece, completed last year, had its New York premiere on Thursday night to open the 26th season of Miller Theater, which under its executive director, Melissa Smey, continues to be a hotbed of bold programming and contemporary music. The 688-seat theater, on the campus of Columbia University, was sold out for this performance, which was, alas, the only one.

Photo

From left, Matthew Duvall, Tim Munro, Nicholas Photinos, Michael J. Maccaferri, Lisa Kaplan and Yvonne Lam in “Colombine’s Paradise Theater.”

The overall program was titled “Heart & Breath,” after a short instrumental duo by Richard Reed Parry, of the indie-rock group Arcade Fire, that opened a set of four works presented before the intermission. Mr. Parry’s pensive, wistful piece required the pianist Lisa Kaplan to play recurring long-short patterns of notes and chords in sync with her own pulse, for which she needed to wear a stethoscope, while Yvonne Lam played sustained violin tones following her own cycles of breathing. The effect was haunting and set the mood for the entire evening. It was followed by inventive new arrangements of vocal works by Monteverdi and Gesualdo, concluding with a fractured, hazy arrangement of the Bon Iver song “Babys.”

The insight Ms. Kirsten brings to the heritage of commedia dell’arte was fostered by her respect for the game musicians of Eighth Blackbird. Like members of a commedia dell’arte troupe, all musicians, in a sense, don masks when they play, becoming myriad characters.

In Ms. Kirsten’s fantasia, Ms. Kaplan portrays the archetypal Colombine, traditionally a feisty servant, as a woman caught in a “haunted repetitive loop,” to quote the composer’s note, lingering between life and death. While pursued by the manic Harlequin, who is determined to have her, she hears warnings from the meek Pierrot, the percussionist Matthew Duvall, who mostly appears in a monklike white frock.

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Interactive Feature: Fall Arts Preview - Times 100

The story of these entangled characters, such as it is, is driven by the cellist Nicholas Photinos as the Harbinger, who begins and ends the work with an insistent, rising three-note riff, and plays ominous stirrings throughout.

With Ms. Kirsten’s wondrously eclectic score, which combines spiky modernism, breezy pop, hints of Indian music, percussion wildness and more, this fantasia blurs the distinctions among the characters. Harlequin is mostly played by the charismatic flutist Tim Munro, a lanky, physically agile performer who dispatches the gnarly, alluring and frenzied music, but also sings in a piercing falsetto and struts about the stage. At times, though, his character is also played by the clarinetist Michael J. Maccaferri and by Ms. Lam, wearing similar masks and checked Harlequin coats.

An especially intriguing element of the work is the way it taps into the interpersonal dynamics of chamber music. During whole stretches, individual performers are just that: musicians playing their instruments. Then someone will put on a mask and start trailing, serenading or needling a colleague.

In Part 1, when Mr. Munro’s Harlequin sings a pining song to Colombine, with words adapted by Ms. Kirsten from the 16th-century poet Isabella Andreini, his innocent falsetto phrases are creepy. The episode explores the subtext of players in an ensemble, who, through music, alternately support, rattle and even seduce one another.

In the concluding section, titled “she comes undone,” Ms. Kaplan, just in concert wear and seated at the piano, played oscillating chords and plunked notes and aimless-sounding fragments. She was both Colombine trying to make sense of what has happened, and a musician taking refuge at her instrument after an arduous performance. She stopped and looked expectantly at the Harbinger playing his cello. I will not soon forget that final image.

The next concert at the Miller Theater is on Oct. 2, a Composer Portraits program featuring the work of Chou Wen-chung; 212-854-7700, millertheater.com.

A version of this review appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Where Drums Glow, and Dreams Go Dark. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Arts

Fall Arts Preview - Times 100

SEPT. 4, 2014

- Complete Listings

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The Times 100

- How to wade through the crush of culture coming your way this season? Here’s a guide to 100 events that have us especially excited, in order of appearance:

- 1.Ernest Cole’s photographs of life under apartheid.

- 2.Postmodern dance meets 1960s vogueing at Crossing the Line.

- 3.Robert Plant aims for alchemy on a new album.

- 4. Philip Glass and Steve Reich in a rare onstage reunion.

- 5.Ira Glass in a dance collaboration?

- 6.Tavi Gevinson and Michael Cera, young and confused on Broadway.

- 7.Black metal and ambient pop at Basilica Soundscape.

- 8.Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader get dramatic.

- 9.Teenage patients keep each other smiling in a new series on Fox.

- 10.The Replacements reunite in Queens.

- 11.Jason Bateman, Tina Fey and Adam Driver sit shiva with Jane Fonda.

- 12.Téa Leoni as secretary of state on CBS.

- 13.Will “The Good Wife” run for state’s attorney?

- 14. Classics from the Classical Age at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

- 15.James Levine conducts “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

- 16.Gotham City before Batman.

- 17.The frontman of the Strokes goes in a different direction.

- 18.Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga sing the standards.

- 19.Coltrane live in ’66, fearless and fearsome.

- 20.The Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan steps out.

- 21.Anthony Anderson is “Black-ish.”

- 22. Anna Netrebko sleepwalks into “Macbeth.”

- 23.Viola Davis joins Shonda Rhimes Night on ABC.

- 24. Meet “The Boxtrolls.”

- 25.Celebrating Henry Threadgill.

- 26.René Pape roars solo on the Met stage.

- 27.“Become Ocean,” the CD.

- 28.Blake Shelton is “Bringing Back the Sunshine.”

- 29.Kyle Abraham reflects on civil rights struggles, past and present.

- 30.Politicians (try) to say they’re sorry on stage.

- 31.Alan Gilbert closes out a Carl Nielsen cycle.

- 32.Simon Rattle opens the Carnegie Hall season with four concerts.

- 33.“Broadchurch” gets an American accent.

- 34.“Genius” flutist Claire Chase begins an ambitious 22-year project.

- 35.A rare solo by Eiko.

- 36.“Gone Girl” gives up its secrets.

- 37.A MoMA retrospective for the multifarious Robert Gober.

- 38.A stand-up sitcom that’s not “Louie.”

- 39.“Homeland” after Brody.

- 40.“The Curious Incident” comes to the stage.

- 41.Peter Sellars fills the Park Avenue Armory with “St. Matthew Passion.”

- 42.A premiere by Jodi Melnick at BAM’s Next Wave Festival.

- 43.Trisha Brown and Mark Morris at “Fall For Dance.”

- 44.Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick await their next review.

- 45. Drum, kid, drum.

- 46.James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain break up three times.

- 47.The music of South Africa, with films by William Kentridge.

- 48.More Matisse cut-outs than you’ve ever seen in one place.

- 49.Growing up to be Billy Porter.

- 50.Dominic West and Ruth Wilson in a Showtime drama.

- 51.Another feeding frenzy on “The Walking Dead.”

- 52.Maximum Goya in Boston.

- 53.“Jane the Virgin,” from telenovela to the CW.

- 54.Cecilia Bartoli sings — in Russian.

- 55.Mary Lambert’s debut album.

- 56.A sitcom proposal: “Marry Me.”

- 57.A master puppeteer takes on Stravinsky.

- 58. “On the Town” in New York City.

- 59.Michael Keaton, from Batman to “Birdman.”

- 60.Farewell to Wendy Whelan at New York City Ballet.

- 61.Trailing controversy, “The Death of Klinghoffer” arrives at the Met.

- 62.Braque, Gris, Picasso and more.

- 63.Will this be the last ride for the Allman Brothers at the Beacon?

- 64.A bratty new album from Charli.

- 65.Jonathan Lethem gets the musical treatment.

- 66. Chelsea Manning, set to music at BAM.

- 67.The Pulitzer Prize-winning “Disgraced” on Broadway.

- 68.The sculptor Judith Scott has her day at the Brooklyn Museum.

- 69.Sting, shipbuilding, a Broadway debut.

- 70.Joyce DiDonato provides “Perspectives.”

- 71.Taylor Swift goes pop.

- 72.The last (?) of Lil Wayne.

- 73.Another try for “Side Show.”

- 74.Is Chris Ofili still a “Sensation”?

- 75.Choreographer Troy Schumacher acts on “Impulse.”

- 76.My son the guru? Sarah Ruhl wonders.

- 77.Tig Notaro and Bill Cosby take the mike.

- 78.Holly Hunter and Bill Pullman enlist in a Vietnam-era drama.

- 79.Christopher Nolan goes “Interstellar” in his follow-up to “Dark Knight Rises.”

- 80.Young Jean Lee at the Public.

- 81.A screen portrayal of Stephen Hawking’s extraordinary life.

- 82.A MoMA show says to hell with originality.

- 83.The return of Valerie Cherish.

- 84.What was Bunny Mellon keeping in those closets?

- 85.Artists inspired by “Ebony” and “Jet” magazines.

- 86.Blood and wrestling: Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in “Foxcatcher.”

- 87.Hugh Jackman goes down to “The River.”

- 88.“Seeds” from TV on the Radio.

- 89.Glenn Close and John Lithgow take on Albee.

- 90.Katniss. Peeta. And Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his last roles.

- 91.An artist who likes blurring the boundaries.

- 92.The Ailey troupe pays tribute to Odetta.

- 93.Reese Witherspoon in a Nick Hornby adaptation of “Wild.”

- 94.Paul Thomas Anderson takes Joaquin Phoenix into the 1970s.

- 95.Bradley Cooper brings “The Elephant Man” to Broadway.

- 96.The Cooper Hewitt reopens with a show selected by Maira Kalman.

- 97.An “Annie” for the 21st century.

- 98.Angelina Jolie directs the story of a survivor among survivors.

- 99.No one is alone, not even Meryl Streep, in “Into the Woods.”

- 100.What’s next for U2?

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF FALL ARTS

Produced by Alastair Coote, Chase Davis, Alicia DeSantis

IMAGE CREDITS: 1. Ernest Cole Family Trust/Hasselblad Foundation; 2. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 3. Nonesuch; 4. Betania Sikora; 6. Michael Brosilow; 7. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 9. Annette Brown/Fox; 10. Katie Stratton/Getty Images; 11. Warner Bros. Pictures; 12. Craig Blankenhorn/CBS via Associated Press; 13. Jeff Neumann/CBS; 14. Bruce White/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 15. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times; 16. Jessica Miglio/Fox; 18. Jamie Mccarthy/Getty Images; 21. Adam Taylor/ABC; 22. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; 23. Nicole Rivelli/ABC; 24. Focus Features; 25. Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times; 26. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; 28. Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times; 31. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 33. Ed Araquel/Fox; 34. Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times; 35. William Johnston; 36. Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox, via Associated Press; 37. Robert Gober/K. Ignatiadis, via Matthew Marks Gallery; 38. Ray Mickshaw/Fox, via Associated Press; 39. Joe Alblas/Showtime; 40. Manuel Harlan; 41. TT News Agency/Reuters; 42. Ruby Washington/The New York Times; 43. Paula Lobo for The New York Times; 44. Getty Images; 45. Daniel McFadden/Sony Pictures Classics; 46. Weinstein Company; 48. Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 50. Steven Lippman/Showtime; 51. Gene Page/AMC; 52. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 53. JSquared/CW; 54. Decca; 55. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 56. Colleen Hayes/NBC; 57. Richard Termine; 58. Kevin Sprague; 59. Alison Rosa/Fox Searchlight Pictures; 60. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 61. Richard Hubert Smith; 62. Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 63. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 64. Erin Baiano for The New York Times; 66. Patrick Semansky/Associated Press; 68. Brooklyn Museum; 69. Marco Gualazzini for The New York Times; 70. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 71. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters; 72. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 74. Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures; 75. Erin Baiano; 79. Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures; 80. Richard Termine for The New York Times; 81. Liam Daniel/Focus Features; 82. Thomas Mueller/Estate Sturtevant, Paris; 83. Kevork Djansezian/Reuters; 84. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times; 85. Jeremy Okai Davis/Studio Museum of Harlem; 86. Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures Classics; 87. Neilson Barnard/Getty Images; 90. Murray Close/Lionsgate; 91. Pierre Huyghe/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 92. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 93. Anne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight Pictures; 94. Fernando Ariza/The New York Times; 95. Rob Kim/Getty Images; 96. Angel Franco/The New York Times; 97. Barry Wetcher/Columbia Pictures; 98. David James/Universal Pictures; 99. Peter Mountain/Walt Disney Pictures

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Music | Music Review

Vocabulary Renewed, a Dialogue Continues

Jazz at Lincoln Center Opens Its Season at Rose Theater

By BEN RATLIFFSEPT. 19, 2014

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Dreiser Durruthy Bambolé dances at the Jazz at Lincoln Center season opener, which featured Chucho Valdés, Pedrito Martinez and Wynton Marsalis.

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Cuban music tends to involve a direct discussion: between voice and drums, between voice and chorus, between horn sections. Jazz tends to spread a discussion around, or build a hive of many discussions at once.

The explicit merger of the two traditions at Rose Theater on Thursday night both amplified and streamlined the discussion. The conversation made for an ambitious season-opening collaboration for Jazz at Lincoln Center between the pianist Chucho Valdés, the percussionist and singer Pedrito Martinez, the trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The best parts of the sprawling suite were about calling the deities of the Santeria religion with six drumming hands and one clarion voice, and also about sound and resonance.

The two traditions are so interconnected in a general sense, through social and aesthetic history, that no part of either needs to be off the table for a project like this. The idea of big-band swing arrangements mixed with Afro-Cuban rhythm is about 70 years old, and Mr. Marsalis has dealt with that in many Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts. But there’s also a tradition of the religious chanting-and-drumming music of Santeria in a jazz-related context.

It might have started with Mr. Valdés’s father, Bebo, who in the early 1950s introduced the sacred double-headed batá drums into a jazz-influenced dance band at the Tropicana club in Havana, where he was musical director. Chucho did something similar, starting in 1972, including batá drums with jazz trio on his landmark record “Jazz Batá.”

More recently, the percussionist Román Díaz and the pianist David Virelles have been moving this tradition into avant-garde waters. Mr. Díaz, a teacher and elder among rumberos and Afro-Cuban drummers in New York, was there on Thursday, in the middle of a percussion trio with Clemente Medina on the left, and Mr. Martinez on the right. Wherever the music went, through the dynamics and virtuosity of Mr. Valdés or the jazz orchestra players, they were its cool-tempered power center.

The suite, called “Ochas,” after La Regla de Ocha, another name for Santeria, fell into eight parts dedicated to different orishas, or saints, in the Yoruba religion. Each part — for the trickster Elegua, the blacksmith Ogún, the elder Obatalá, and so on — started with an opening invocation and established its own distinct sound world, through Mr. Marsalis’s arrangements for standard jazz-band instrumentation; many of them rose to some sort of dramatic peak of drumming, chanting and improvising. As it stands, the suite is probably too long: 2 hours 45 minutes, with two intermissions. But it didn’t flag.

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Universalizing jazz is Mr. Marsalis’s mission. And some of his writing in the first and second halves — an elegant, whirling language perhaps drawing on Ellington and Basie and Moacir Santos but pushed to original results — was a recognizable and nameable flag planting: Here stands jazz, and here stands Mr. Marsalis’s compositional style.

When that style retreated a bit, and the arrangements simplified, narrowing down into six-eight grooves and call-and-response riffs, modes and vamps built on perfect fourths — at times not far from middle-period Coltrane — the music grew into something greater.

Mr. Valdés boosted the energy for a few of those passages, making the piano talk with great, hard, ringing chords and single notes like rapid-fire arrow shots. The force and charisma in his technique never really get old. (Despite top billing on the program, he wasn’t onstage for very long; the orchestra’s regular pianist, Dan Nimmer, took over for most of the concert, playing with far more neutral affect.)

The program notes could have been a book. This is a world of contexts: those of the three principal musicians, as well as the meanings of various rhythms, Lucumí chants and movements in Santeria. But when Mr. Martinez opened his mouth to sing — in the invocations for each part of the suite, and in the musical discussions that followed with chorus singers and the orchestra — no context was needed to understand the power of his voice slicing through a mass of sound, his phrasing intricately weaving through the rhythmic accents.

Chucho Valdés, Pedrito Martinez and Wynton Marsalis continue through Saturday at the Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway; 212-721-6500, jalc.org.

A version of this review appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Vocabulary Renewed, a Dialogue Continues. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pushing Boundaries of Rumba Fervor

Pedrito Martínez Takes Next Step in Debut CD With Band

The Cuban percussionist Pedrito Martínez and his band at Guantanamera in Midtown Manhattan.

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: October 7, 2013

It has become a familiar question backstage at festivals, concert halls or anywhere else that musicians gather on the road: Have you heard that amazing Cuban percussionist in New York City? Pedrito Martínez may not yet be known to the public, but among his peers, he is firmly established as a source of rhythmic delight and inspiration.

Fifteen years after arriving from Havana, Mr. Martínez, 40, is a first-call player for recording sessions of all types, and his three-nights-a-week residency at Guantanamera in Manhattan has made that small restaurant-club a favorite hangout for visiting pop, rock and jazz stars. On Tuesday, he takes another step forward, with the release of his first CD as a bandleader, accompanied by a celebratory show at City Winery.”Pedrito’s got a unique combination of forces coming together in him,” said the musician and writer Ned Sublette, author of “Cuba and Its Music.” “He’s a percussionist with deep drum knowledge, and also a singer and bandleader, but he’s also something over and above that — the flowering of a new creative spirit of rumba, breaking out of the traditional context and taking it to a larger audience.”

Mr. Martínez was born and raised in a Havana neighborhood called Cayo Hueso, a traditional center of the family of African-derived rhythms known as rumba. Not only did he have uncles who played the music, but he also grew up just a block away from the Palacio de la Rumba and sneaked into that theater to watch top orchestras rehearse when he was a child.

Initially, though, because Mr. Martínez could not qualify for government programs to train musicians, which are limited in number, he thought about becoming an athlete. He boxed for a while, but focused on judo, which gave him stamina and made him limber, two qualities that have served him well in coping with the physical demands of playing the congas and the two-headed batá drum, his main instruments.

“I never went to music school, because in Cuba, at that time, to get in, you needed a connection, some clout, and I never had that kind of connection,” he said in a recent interview. “But at the same time, I’m happy with the way I learned things on the street, because they teach you things you can’t learn in school.”

As a teenager, Mr. Martínez began working as a musician and performed with top ensembles, like those of Tata Güines and Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. But he found the routine, playing in hotels for a dollar a month, he said, enervating and demeaning.

“If you wanted a ham sandwich, you had to eat it on the sly, in the kitchen, because if the manager of the hotel saw you eating in front of the foreigners, you’d get fired,” he recalled. “And then, at 2 in the morning, I’d have to walk home carrying my congas or my batá, because there was no bus. When I got home, there was no light, water or gas, so I’d eat some cold food, amid a terrible heat. It was the worst time of my life.”

In 1998, the Canadian jazz saxophonist Jane Bunnett, a frequent visitor to Havana, invited Mr. Martínez to join her touring band, which allowed him to leave Cuba. When the group got to New York, and his contract ended, he decided to stay on, “because of all the musical opportunities here,” and played with local bands.

Breezy, outgoing and relentlessly optimistic, Mr. Martínez said he thought making his mark would be easy. But he went to a jazz show and had an unpleasant revelation: after he was invited to jam onstage, the band, led by the trumpeter Brian Lynch, promptly launched into a tune that began in a 5/4 time signature and then shifted to 9/8, and he was lost.

“You hardly ever see that kind of irregular time in Cuban music, so I had no idea what to do,” he recalled. “It was the biggest embarrassment I’ve been through as a musician, but it’s what made me say to myself, ‘This city is a place that can teach you a lot of things, and I’m going to learn how to play this.’ ”

So Mr. Martínez embarked on an intense program of instruction, learning to read music and studying composition. He also took private lessons with a fellow Cuban, Román Díaz, a master percussionist and Santería priest whom he describes as a mentor.

A strong religious element pervades Mr. Martínez’s own music. At his home in Union City, N.J., where he lives with his wife, daughter and parents, a room is set aside as a shrine to Santería deities, and he said it is there, practicing on the batá, often used in Santería ceremonies, that he perfects many of the innovative rhythms he plays onstage.

Mr. Martinez said one big challenge he faced in making the new CD, called simply “The Pedrito Martínez Group” (Motéma Music), was translating the dynamism of the band’s live performances. The record includes several songs the group regularly plays live, both originals and Cuban standards, as well as Afro-Cubanized versions of Robert Johnson’s “Travelling Riverside Blues” and the Jackson 5 favorite “I’ll Be There.”

All four members of the group sing, with Mr. Martínez doing lead vocals on most tracks. The record also features guest appearances by Wynton Marsalis, John Scofield and Steve Gadd, the ace American drummer who also produced the record with Mr. Martínez.

“It’s pretty extraordinary what they do,” Mr. Gadd said. “The rhythms that Pedrito is singing are complicated themselves, and then to be able to play other complicated rhythms around that, it’s special. This is a real band, singing and playing rhythmically advanced music of the highest order.”

When Mr. Gadd stops by Guantanamera, he occasionally joins the group onstage, but most visiting musical luminaries, perhaps as intimidated as Mr. Martínez was when he first encountered jazz, are content to remain in their seats. On successive nights last month, members of Earth, Wind & Fire and a Spanish flamenco troupe showed up, and Mr. Martínez’s manager, Paul Siegel, also remembers visits by Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Paul Simon, Roger Waters, Billy Cobham and Stanley Clarke.

“Over the last six to eight years, I’ve taken every band I’ve been with to see him, because his musicality is just staggering,” said the guitarist Derek Trucks, who has played with the Allman Brothers and Eric Clapton bands. “After Allmans’ rehearsals, three or four of us will head there, and it’s funny how many other musicians you’ll see. You know that everybody is going to go through New York, so you say ‘You’ve got to see this guy, you’ve got to go to Guantanamera and see Pedrito whipping it.’ ”

Listening With: Bebo Vald�s

Far From Cuba, but Not From His Roots

By BEN RATLIFF

Published: October 13, 2006

BRANDBERGEN, SWEDEN

THE Cuban pianist Bebo Vald�s, who will receive a proper welcome from Jazz at Lincoln Center this weekend, lives here, just outside Stockholm, with his wife, Rose Marie, in a small ground-floor apartment. Its shelves and walls serve as a kind of index to his remarkable life.

There are books of sheet music by Rachmaninoff and Chopin; a photo of him in a tuxedo, tall and commanding, on the cover of �Cha Cha Cha & Mambo for Small Dance Bands,� a book he wrote and published in Havana in the 1950�s, aiming at the English-language market; paintings by Haitian artists; Joseph Schillinger�s �System of Musical Composition,� the dense theoretical books beloved by intellectual musicians of the 1940�s and 50�s that break down melody, harmony and rhythm into mathematic logic. There is, incongruously, a shelf of pop-music lead-sheet books like �100 of the Greatest Easy Listening Hits,� all well thumbed. Then there are some recent awards, including several Grammys, and a ceremonial key to the city of Miami.

To explain all this requires going back a bit. Slavery officially ended in Cuba in 1886. Ramon Vald�s, universally known as Bebo, was born in 1918. His mother came from a Spanish family, and his paternal grandfather was a slave. Afro-Cuban jazz is the ultimate mixture of African, European and New World culture. It is not at all uncommon for a Latin jazz group now to put the bat�, the two-headed drum of Yoruban religious music, alongside elements of European harmony and American swing. But hand drums were effectively prohibited in Cuba in the early 20th century, and Mr. Vald�s remembers a time when the bat� was never, ever used in dance music. He reckons he was the first to do so, in 1952.

He graduated from the Conservatorio Municipal in Havana. �It was the poor man�s conservatory, and the best,� he insists. A gifted arranger, he worked with his hero, Ernesto Lecuona � probably the greatest Cuban composer of the 20th century � after graduating in the mid-40�s.

Mr. Vald�s was in the inner circle of musicians who developed the mambo, along with the multi-instrumentalist Orestes Lopez and his brother, the bassist Israel (Cachao) Lopez. For much of the 1950�s, during the height of the mambo�s popularity, Mr. Vald�s was the pianist of the house orchestra at the Tropicana, the biggest nightclub in Havana, and the club�s musical adviser. He played with, or arranged for, most of Cuba�s star singers and musicians, including Beny More (who sang with the orchestra at Tropicana), Miguelito Vald�s, P�o Leyva and Chano Pozo. When Nat King Cole, a habitu� of the Tropicana, came to Havana to record his Spanish-language record �Cole Espa�ol,� Mr. Vald�s played piano and arranged the album. He was the epicenter of a thriving world.

He had five children in Cuba, including Chucho Vald�s, who has since become one of the greatest pianists in the world. In 1960, after the revolution, the senior Mr. Vald�s fled Cuba � first to Mexico, where he worked in television and in the recording studios, and then to Spain. In Stockholm, on a European tour with a group called Lecuona�s Cuban Boys, he met and fell in love with Rose Marie Pehrson. He was 44, and she was 18.

It was 1963. He wanted to relocate to New York, but, as a black man with a white wife, he was warned by friends against moving to the United States. For a while he bided his time: he remembers being of the opinion that Castro�s regime would not last much longer.

He has never returned to Cuba. He stayed in Stockholm, starting a new family and playing piano in hotel lounges for more than 30 years. (Hence the easy-listening songbooks.) He has a working musician�s pride, and no regrets.

His reputation flourished again at a point in his life when most musicians are busy resisting decline. In 1994, at the behest of the Cuban jazz saxophonist Paquito D�Rivera, he recorded �Bebo Rides Again,� his first album in three decades. It was to be a loose, jam-session record, but Mr. Vald�s insisted on structure. He arranged nine of his own songs for a nonet in two days.

In 2000 he took part in �Calle 54,� Fernando Trueba�s documentary film about Latin jazz. Subsequently Mr. Trueba formed a record label with the film and music historian Nat Chediak and made a series of recordings involving Mr. Vald�s. One of them, �L�grimas Negras,� an album of boleros by Mr. Vald�s and the flamenco singer Diego El Cigala, sold nearly a million copies, mostly in Europe. In Madrid and Barcelona particularly, crowds have started to applaud him on the street and in restaurants. He has done better financially in his 80�s than at any other time in his life.

He has released three more albums since �L�grimas Negras,� including �Bebo de Cuba,� a double disc that won a Grammy and a Latin Grammy last year. It includes his �Suite Cubana,� which will be performed tonight and tomorrow at Rose Theater with Jazz at Lincoln Center�s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra.

Mr. Vald�s turned 88 on Monday. He and Rose Marie live not far from their two Swedish-born sons, Rickard and Raymond.

He is cheerful, and extremely punctual. He takes small steps and moves quickly, especially toward his piano. He claims he is never tired. (�And I�m not bragging,� he said.) He practices scales and arpeggios for 30 minutes daily and prefers to eat one meal, around lunchtime. He talks about rhythm analytically and does not dance well; he seems to take a kind of pride in this. He does not drink alcohol but takes in prodigious amounts of American coffee.

Mr. Vald�s spoke in Spanish, with a translator, with little sprays of English. His memory for names and dates is sharp, and for a journalist�s visit, he prepared a precise list of music to listen to, each piece keyed to particular fascinations.

The first piece was by his hero, Ernesto Lecuona. We heard Lecuona himself play his short piece �La Paloma,� which incorporates late-Romantic rhapsodies and elegant dance rhythms in flexible tempo.

�I first heard of Lecuona when I was in conservatory, in 1934,� Mr. Vald�s said. Was his music taught in conservatories then? �Oh, no, no,� he said, surprised by the idea. �Only classical. Everything we learned in conservatory was before Cervantes.�

He was speaking of Ignacio Cervantes, the Cuban composer who died in 1905. A conversation with Mr. Vald�s goes this way. You are immersed in about 150 years of Cuban music, stretching from African- derived abaku� chants to contradanzas to boleros to mambo and modern Latin jazz. At the mention of Cervantes�s name, Mr. Vald�s sits at the piano and performs all of Cervantes�s short, stately �Danza No. 1.�

�He was Lecuona�s favorite,� he remembered. �You couldn�t criticize Cervantes around him. He did wonderful things, but rhythmically, he copied Saumell.� (The reference was to Manuel Saumell Robredo, considered the father of Cuban contradanza.) He played part of �Danza No. 1� again, emphasizing the syncopated five-note pattern called the cinquillo, which he says is what makes the contradanza particularly Cuban.

He got back to the Lecuona. �He�s doing three things at the same time. The left hand plays the rhythm, the accompaniment, and the right hand the melody. On top of that there�s a lot of improvising.�

Mr. Vald�s revered Lecuona for the prodigious keyboard talents lying underneath his gifts as a composer: he was performing at the age of 5.

�He was a great person, Ernesto, and a great musician. When he won a piano competition in Paris, in 1928, they asked him to play something of his own, and he played �La Comparsa.� The ovation was enormous. With the money he made from winning the competition, he bought himself a farm, which he called La Comparsa. I think maybe it�s spiritual. When we were filming �Calle 54,� I didn�t know what to play. So I played �La Comparsa,� and for a lot of people, it�s their favorite part of the movie.�

We moved on to Art Tatum. �My favorite pianist,� he boomed. �He and Bill Evans.� Unstoppable, he played Evans�s �Waltz for Debby,� complete with a full chorus of rigorous improvisation. �I love to improvise,� he said.

We listened to Tatum playing �Without a Song,� solo, from the 1955 recordings made at a private party in Beverly Hills. It is fully animated, never staying in one rhythm, with tremendous, crashing, full-keyboard runs � always through appropriate chord changes � functioning as steppingstones. �It�s virtuosic in technique � totally classical, with modern harmony,� he said. �He was the first pianist I ever heard playing modern harmonies and playing them with heart.�

Tatum, he added, �was always improvising. He would change time signatures, put one harmony on top of another. I try to imitate him at times, but who am I?�

When Mr. Vald�s was solidifying his reputation in Havana, several of his compatriots were making waves in New York. (Mr. Vald�s never spent time there: offered a visa for only 29 days in the 40�s, he decided against such a short stay.) In 1947 Dizzy Gillespie�s big band was joined by the conga player Chano Pozo, who drilled the band in how to play the tumbao, the conjunction of rhythm-section lines in Cuban music. The band�s great document of the period is the song �Manteca,� which became a hit in the United States.

Mr. Vald�s maintains that Gillespie�s American band played the Cuban rhythms perfectly. He put the track on. �What I hear most is the conga, and the changes in the bass. And the boom-bah, boom-bah,� he sang, imitating the baritone saxophone.

�That�s all the tumbao of mambo,� he said. �It�s completely the mambo style of Cachao.� Halfway through, the song lifts out of Cuban rhythm into jazz swing, with more arranged harmony, and he savored the shift.

Right after this, he put on a Frank Sinatra track from 1960, �Nice �n� Easy,� arranged by Nelson Riddle. It has the midtempo bounce of Sinatra records at the time, a rhythmic feeling that thrills Mr. Vald�s. �Nobody can play music like that except in America, that kind of swing, that time,� he said. �It�s impeccable. The most difficult thing in the world is to play slowly and keep time. When I listen to this, I see American black people dancing.�

�Even though I�m Cuban, I�m really an American arranger,� he reflected. �Because the way I write has as much to do with American music as it does with Cuban music. And at the same time it has to do with the fugue.� (An example of his fugue writing comes in the middle of �Devoci�n,� a beguiling part of his �Suite Cubana.�)

It was pointed out to him that fugues have little to do with Cuban or American music. �Yes, but I do it anyway,� he said. �Why shouldn�t I, if I know how?�

He brought out the sheet music to Rachmaninoff�s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, to use as a reference as we listened to it. �I was studying composition and harmony when I heard this performed by the Havana Symphony, in the 40�s,� he said.

What he wanted to show, in the third movement of the piece, was how the composer builds a beautiful, fragile melody, then protects it as the orchestra swells around it. �When I hear the music build to a crescendo, I feel like crying,� he said.

I asked if he was able to use this device in his own arranging. �Whenever I can get away with it,� he thundered. He put on �Copla No. 4,� the guajira section of his �Suite Cubana,� to demonstrate. It has the same effect: big, brass-heavy crescendos, building in intensifying shades and colors around the melody.

�When you know classical music, you can do what you want to do,� Mr. Vald�s said, and then he recited an old maxim to indicate that he had succeeded on his own terms: �Es mejor ser la cabeza de un perro que la cola de un tibur�n.� It�s better to be the head of a dog than the tail of a shark.

Bebo Vald�s performs with Jazz at Lincoln Center�s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra tonight and tomorrow night at 8 in the Rose Theater, Broadway and 60th Street, (212) 721-6500. He will repeat the program in Miami at the Jackie Gleason Theater on Thursday.

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Music | Music Review

And Then the Singer Dances in a Hooded Leopard Suit

Román Díaz as Part of El Gallo Místico at Minton’s

By BEN RATLIFFJULY 16, 2014

Inside

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El Gallo Místico The Cuban percussionist and singer Román Díaz, foreground, performed with others at Minton’s in Harlem as part of this project, which combines jazz and ritualized Afro-Cuban traditions.

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The Cuban percussionist and singer Román Díaz spreads a strong, cool presence evenly through a room. When he’s a sideman, he makes the side fold into the center; when he’s the center, he radiates power without anxiety, letting the focus shift.

He’s been living in New York since the late 1990s and plays a weekly rumba gig at midnight on Thursdays at Zinc Bar in Greenwich Village. But uptown at Minton’s, the revived historic jazz club and restaurant in Harlem, he’s been presenting a new and slightly different concept called El Gallo Místico (the Sacred Rooster), involving a crew of singers, drummers, dancers and the pianist David Virelles. Their performance was part of Jazz at the Crossroads: The Dance of Eleggua, a summerlong Tuesday night series at the club (organized by the curator, Dita Sullivan) that combines Afro-Cuban and jazz traditions. Mr. Díaz performed there in May and again on Tuesday night; the show was powerful and generous, even when formatted into the dynamics of the multiple 75-minute set and dinner service.

Mr. Díaz, dressed in white, stayed at center stage, singing and performing ritual chants; playing batá and kankomó hand drums; and, near the end, dancing in a costume from the Afro-Cuban brotherhood of Abakuá: a hooded leopard suit, a belt of bells. What happened around him changed constantly, involving seven or more musicians playing shakers, bells, flute and the wooden box called the cajón.

Much of the performance referred to traditions of Afro-Cuban music, dance and religious culture, in which there’s significance on top of significance in instruments, rhythms, movements, words and costumes. It was layered and mysterious, and meant to be. But it was also directly provocative as rhythm and song, and as a complete set with a forward momentum.

A young Cuban singer, Melvis Santa, performed two songs with ’70s soul underpinnings; these were the least ritual stretches of the set, yet they belonged in it. Otherwise, three percussionists played batá drums together for an intense period; the dancer Stevie Insua came from the stage into the audience, making loose-limbed, elbows-out, circular movements; José Real, better known as El Chino, sang lead for a few minutes. Mr. Virelles can deal with a great range of jazz and Afro-Latin idioms, but here he was, in a group with piano but no bass, no horns and no trap-set drums, creating on an open canvas, playing voluminous solos and vamps with a dark tonality, rhythmically strong, giving rise to 6/8 polyrhythmic drumming and vocal choruses.

If you saw Mr. Virelles’s band, including Mr. Díaz, perform at the Village Vanguard last year or if you heard his recent record “Continuum,” you might recognize this gig as something like the converse of that, with Mr. Díaz in the primary role. But there was some connection between the two in what Mr. Díaz did in both situations. It was his material, with certain set rhythms and chanting references, all of it modular and changeable. The whole thing was a hybrid deeply inscribed with history and meaning: not jazz, not typical rumba, not a nightclub set per se, not dance-floor music per se, not experimental improvising, not a workshop. It pulled you in as it resisted definition.

The series Jazz at the Crossroads: The Dance of Eleggua continues every Tuesday night at Minton’s, 206 West 118th Street, Harlem, with Brian Lynch’s Spheres of Influence performing next week; 212-243-2222, mintonsharlem.com.

A version of this review appears in print on July 17, 2014, on page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: And Then the Singer Dances in a Hooded Leopard Suit. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Music Review

A Melting Pot of Sounds, With Latin Spices

David Virelles Continuum, at the Village Vanguard

By BEN RATLIFF

Published: February 1, 2013

You might have to contain your need for immediate comprehension when you hear David Virelles’s music at the Village Vanguard this week. It won’t slot easily into what you know.

There’s much in it that is composed and precise, but it comes in episodes that aren’t clearly marked or forecast, in great, shifting stacks of musical language. It’s got roots in the open-ended jazz of Andrew Hill and Cecil Taylor, in Afro-Cuban rumba, and, in bits and pieces, contemporary classical music; maybe even Bill Evans too.

But cumulatively it sounds apart from all of that. It’s not free jazz, but it roams all over the place.

Mr. Virelles is a young Cuban-born pianist who has moved quickly within New York jazz circles since he arrived in 2009. (He’s already played at the Vanguard in bands led by Mark Turner, Chris Potter and Ravi Coltrane.) His own band, Continuum, includes Ben Street on bass, Andrew Cyrille on drums and Román Díaz as a kind of drum-and-voice integrated hybrid: conga playing, chanted singing, rhythmic poetry.

The alto saxophonist Román Filiú briefly joined the quartet on Tuesday and will again over the weekend; in Thursday’s second set, the saxophonist and composer Henry Threadgill, one of Mr. Virelles’s mentors, was the fifth member, playing his own music with the band.

This group is evolving: that’s both a judgment and a description. What it played in its first set on Tuesday night seemed to me far more settled and confident than what I heard 16 months ago at the Jazz Gallery, when the group really was new. Its sound will grow stronger by the end of the week — I’m almost certain of that.

But there is also a real-time evolution that’s intrinsic to this music. It’s always on the way to becoming something else; that may be why it gives the impression of having no clear antecedents.

Mr. Díaz is not a detachable part of the project, as percussionists sometimes can be in ensembles that you hear at jazz clubs. He’s at the center of it. A former member of the Cuban rumba group Yoruba Andabo, he’s been a New Yorker since the late ’90s, a performer and a scholar. At times during the set, when he floated a slow chant over a fast drum rhythm or when he improvised some Afro-Cuban chanting, something was being enacted. All music is ritual, but this, at times, felt more so.

And Mr. Cyrille, who is 73, is a whole other story: a New York jazz drummer of Haitian roots who learned on the bandstand in the 1950s with Coleman Hawkins and Nellie Lutcher, then played through half a century of changes in experimental jazz. From the start on Tuesday, his playing was generous: light and specific syncopated cymbal and tom-tom hits, bubbling permutations of six-eight rhythm, everything in loose combination with Mr. Díaz and Mr. Street. It was vaguely Antillean, vaguely swinging, funky in quiet ways, unlimited by the history of trap-set drumming or rumba or really anything else.

Mr. Virelles’s slowly unfolding compositions, some of which came from his recent album with the group (“Continuum,” on Pi Recordings) and some of which were new, cast a shadowy, mysterious feeling in the room. As they changed, he fed them with percussive playing, delicate harmonies and clusters played carefully with a flat hand or a forearm.

He’s never haphazard: he’s got a sure touch and multiple musical vocabularies, of which he seems determined to create a synthesis that isn’t schematic or obvious. That he’s choosing to perplex a little, rather than dazzle you, might be one of the best reasons to see him.

Continuum performs through Sunday at the Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue  South, at 11th Street, West Village; (212) 255-4037, villagevanguard.com.

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Fall Arts Preview - Times 100

SEPT. 4, 2014

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The Times 100

- How to wade through the crush of culture coming your way this season? Here’s a guide to 100 events that have us especially excited, in order of appearance:

- 1.Ernest Cole’s photographs of life under apartheid.

- 2.Postmodern dance meets 1960s vogueing at Crossing the Line.

- 3.Robert Plant aims for alchemy on a new album.

- 4. Philip Glass and Steve Reich in a rare onstage reunion.

- 5.Ira Glass in a dance collaboration?

- 6.Tavi Gevinson and Michael Cera, young and confused on Broadway.

- 7.Black metal and ambient pop at Basilica Soundscape.

- 8.Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader get dramatic.

- 9.Teenage patients keep each other smiling in a new series on Fox.

- 10.The Replacements reunite in Queens.

- 11.Jason Bateman, Tina Fey and Adam Driver sit shiva with Jane Fonda.

- 12.Téa Leoni as secretary of state on CBS.

- 13.Will “The Good Wife” run for state’s attorney?

- 14. Classics from the Classical Age at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

- 15.James Levine conducts “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

- 16.Gotham City before Batman.

- 17.The frontman of the Strokes goes in a different direction.

- 18.Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga sing the standards.

- 19.Coltrane live in ’66, fearless and fearsome.

- 20.The Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan steps out.

- 21.Anthony Anderson is “Black-ish.”

- 22. Anna Netrebko sleepwalks into “Macbeth.”

- 23.Viola Davis joins Shonda Rhimes Night on ABC.

- 24. Meet “The Boxtrolls.”

- 25.Celebrating Henry Threadgill.

- 26.René Pape roars solo on the Met stage.

- 27.“Become Ocean,” the CD.

- 28.Blake Shelton is “Bringing Back the Sunshine.”

- 29.Kyle Abraham reflects on civil rights struggles, past and present.

- 30.Politicians (try) to say they’re sorry on stage.

- 31.Alan Gilbert closes out a Carl Nielsen cycle.

- 32.Simon Rattle opens the Carnegie Hall season with four concerts.

- 33.“Broadchurch” gets an American accent.

- 34.“Genius” flutist Claire Chase begins an ambitious 22-year project.

- 35.A rare solo by Eiko.

- 36.“Gone Girl” gives up its secrets.

- 37.A MoMA retrospective for the multifarious Robert Gober.

- 38.A stand-up sitcom that’s not “Louie.”

- 39.“Homeland” after Brody.

- 40.“The Curious Incident” comes to the stage.

- 41.Peter Sellars fills the Park Avenue Armory with “St. Matthew Passion.”

- 42.A premiere by Jodi Melnick at BAM’s Next Wave Festival.

- 43.Trisha Brown and Mark Morris at “Fall For Dance.”

- 44.Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick await their next review.

- 45. Drum, kid, drum.

- 46.James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain break up three times.

- 47.The music of South Africa, with films by William Kentridge.

- 48.More Matisse cut-outs than you’ve ever seen in one place.

- 49.Growing up to be Billy Porter.

- 50.Dominic West and Ruth Wilson in a Showtime drama.

- 51.Another feeding frenzy on “The Walking Dead.”

- 52.Maximum Goya in Boston.

- 53.“Jane the Virgin,” from telenovela to the CW.

- 54.Cecilia Bartoli sings — in Russian.

- 55.Mary Lambert’s debut album.

- 56.A sitcom proposal: “Marry Me.”

- 57.A master puppeteer takes on Stravinsky.

- 58. “On the Town” in New York City.

- 59.Michael Keaton, from Batman to “Birdman.”

- 60.Farewell to Wendy Whelan at New York City Ballet.

- 61.Trailing controversy, “The Death of Klinghoffer” arrives at the Met.

- 62.Braque, Gris, Picasso and more.

- 63.Will this be the last ride for the Allman Brothers at the Beacon?

- 64.A bratty new album from Charli.

- 65.Jonathan Lethem gets the musical treatment.

- 66. Chelsea Manning, set to music at BAM.

- 67.The Pulitzer Prize-winning “Disgraced” on Broadway.

- 68.The sculptor Judith Scott has her day at the Brooklyn Museum.

- 69.Sting, shipbuilding, a Broadway debut.

- 70.Joyce DiDonato provides “Perspectives.”

- 71.Taylor Swift goes pop.

- 72.The last (?) of Lil Wayne.

- 73.Another try for “Side Show.”

- 74.Is Chris Ofili still a “Sensation”?

- 75.Choreographer Troy Schumacher acts on “Impulse.”

- 76.My son the guru? Sarah Ruhl wonders.

- 77.Tig Notaro and Bill Cosby take the mike.

- 78.Holly Hunter and Bill Pullman enlist in a Vietnam-era drama.

- 79.Christopher Nolan goes “Interstellar” in his follow-up to “Dark Knight Rises.”

- 80.Young Jean Lee at the Public.

- 81.A screen portrayal of Stephen Hawking’s extraordinary life.

- 82.A MoMA show says to hell with originality.

- 83.The return of Valerie Cherish.

- 84.What was Bunny Mellon keeping in those closets?

- 85.Artists inspired by “Ebony” and “Jet” magazines.

- 86.Blood and wrestling: Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in “Foxcatcher.”

- 87.Hugh Jackman goes down to “The River.”

- 88.“Seeds” from TV on the Radio.

- 89.Glenn Close and John Lithgow take on Albee.

- 90.Katniss. Peeta. And Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his last roles.

- 91.An artist who likes blurring the boundaries.

- 92.The Ailey troupe pays tribute to Odetta.

- 93.Reese Witherspoon in a Nick Hornby adaptation of “Wild.”

- 94.Paul Thomas Anderson takes Joaquin Phoenix into the 1970s.

- 95.Bradley Cooper brings “The Elephant Man” to Broadway.

- 96.The Cooper Hewitt reopens with a show selected by Maira Kalman.

- 97.An “Annie” for the 21st century.

- 98.Angelina Jolie directs the story of a survivor among survivors.

- 99.No one is alone, not even Meryl Streep, in “Into the Woods.”

- 100.What’s next for U2?

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF FALL ARTS

Produced by Alastair Coote, Chase Davis, Alicia DeSantis

IMAGE CREDITS: 1. Ernest Cole Family Trust/Hasselblad Foundation; 2. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 3. Nonesuch; 4. Betania Sikora; 6. Michael Brosilow; 7. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 9. Annette Brown/Fox; 10. Katie Stratton/Getty Images; 11. Warner Bros. Pictures; 12. Craig Blankenhorn/CBS via Associated Press; 13. Jeff Neumann/CBS; 14. Bruce White/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 15. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times; 16. Jessica Miglio/Fox; 18. Jamie Mccarthy/Getty Images; 21. Adam Taylor/ABC; 22. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; 23. Nicole Rivelli/ABC; 24. Focus Features; 25. Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times; 26. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; 28. Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times; 31. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 33. Ed Araquel/Fox; 34. Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times; 35. William Johnston; 36. Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox, via Associated Press; 37. Robert Gober/K. Ignatiadis, via Matthew Marks Gallery; 38. Ray Mickshaw/Fox, via Associated Press; 39. Joe Alblas/Showtime; 40. Manuel Harlan; 41. TT News Agency/Reuters; 42. Ruby Washington/The New York Times; 43. Paula Lobo for The New York Times; 44. Getty Images; 45. Daniel McFadden/Sony Pictures Classics; 46. Weinstein Company; 48. Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 50. Steven Lippman/Showtime; 51. Gene Page/AMC; 52. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 53. JSquared/CW; 54. Decca; 55. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 56. Colleen Hayes/NBC; 57. Richard Termine; 58. Kevin Sprague; 59. Alison Rosa/Fox Searchlight Pictures; 60. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 61. Richard Hubert Smith; 62. Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 63. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 64. Erin Baiano for The New York Times; 66. Patrick Semansky/Associated Press; 68. Brooklyn Museum; 69. Marco Gualazzini for The New York Times; 70. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 71. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters; 72. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 74. Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures; 75. Erin Baiano; 79. Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures; 80. Richard Termine for The New York Times; 81. Liam Daniel/Focus Features; 82. Thomas Mueller/Estate Sturtevant, Paris; 83. Kevork Djansezian/Reuters; 84. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times; 85. Jeremy Okai Davis/Studio Museum of Harlem; 86. Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures Classics; 87. Neilson Barnard/Getty Images; 90. Murray Close/Lionsgate; 91. Pierre Huyghe/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 92. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 93. Anne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight Pictures; 94. Fernando Ariza/The New York Times; 95. Rob Kim/Getty Images; 96. Angel Franco/The New York Times; 97. Barry Wetcher/Columbia Pictures; 98. David James/Universal Pictures; 99. Peter Mountain/Walt Disney Pictures

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Theater | Theater Review

Two Couples, Refracted Through a Prism of Emotion

‘Illusions,’ a Tale of Two Couples Who Are Lifelong Friends

By NEIL GENZLINGERSEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

Four lives from different perspectives: Annie Purcell in Ivan Viripaev's play "Illusions," which is making its New York debut at the Jerome Robbins Theater at Baryshnikov Arts Center.

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Ivan Viripaev, a well-regarded Russian playwright and screenwriter, apparently likes a challenge. He certainly sets himself one with “Illusions,” his New York debut, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. It’s as if he asked himself, “Can I create a play out of four actors who don’t act so much as recite, and who never address one another?”

He can, and he did, and it makes for a surprisingly engaging, oddly moving work about love, commitment and missed opportunities. The piece, translated and directed by Cazimir Liske, presents the fragmentary tale of two married couples who were lifelong friends. Four actors (Anthony Gaskins, Stephanie Hayes, Annie Purcell and Mickey Solis) relate the intertwined stories of their lives, not so much portraying the four as embodying their perspectives.

And those, it turns out, are radically, sometimes heartbreakingly different from one another, and from what each presented to the world. The play begins at the deathbed of a man named Denny, 82, who in his final moments addresses his wife, Sandra, expressing gratitude for their long years together.

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“Everything I have gained in this life, I did all of it thanks to you, Sandra,” he is said to have told her. “I found I was loved by a woman like you, and I wanted to be the man who was worth your love.”

It’s a moving declaration, but it’s just the beginning of this intricate, four-cornered tale. Soon we hear Sandra’s story, and those of their friends Albert and Margaret, stretching back half a century, to when they all first met. Two seemingly stable and enduring marriages turn out to be more complex than they seemed, and no one in this close-knit foursome fully knew the others or their innermost feelings.

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A complex web of relationships in which no one person fully knows the others: Anthony Gaskins in “Illusions.”

Mr. Viripaev could have told this tale the conventional way — with four actors playing the four characters — but instead he has the actors speak in what are essentially monologues, relating someone else’s story. (“Hello,” the play begins. “I want to tell you about a married couple.”) At first this seems like a recipe for a rather static 80 minutes, but the technique ultimately draws you in, helping to conjure the two couples and their states of mind.

It’s a sketchy picture in many ways — we don’t learn where the four are geographically, or even in time. But it’s a complex picture as well, because beneath the surface of these two long marriages and friendships, the web of who loved whom is rather tangled.

There is little in the way of scenery in this production, but the stories are augmented with clever projections (Vladimir Gusev is the video director) that are sometimes trustworthy and at other times optical tricks. You can trust neither what you’re seeing nor what you’re hearing, a reflection of the masks that these four presented to one another and that we all present to the world.

Mr. Viripaev’s reflections on love may be a bit windy and clichéd, but the piece is full of gentle humor, and he leaves you with plenty to reflect upon. By the end, you may be envious of Denny, Sandra, Margaret and Albert and their long marriages, but also sad for them, and sad for yourself. Any life, no matter how contented, is full of missed opportunities.

“Illusions” runs through Wednesday at the Jerome Robbins Theater, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37th Street, Manhattan; 866-811-4111, bacnyc.org.

A version of this review appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Two Couples, Refracted Through a Prism of Emotion. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Arts

Fall Arts Preview - Times 100

SEPT. 4, 2014

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The Times 100

- How to wade through the crush of culture coming your way this season? Here’s a guide to 100 events that have us especially excited, in order of appearance:

- 1.Ernest Cole’s photographs of life under apartheid.

- 2.Postmodern dance meets 1960s vogueing at Crossing the Line.

- 3.Robert Plant aims for alchemy on a new album.

- 4. Philip Glass and Steve Reich in a rare onstage reunion.

- 5.Ira Glass in a dance collaboration?

- 6.Tavi Gevinson and Michael Cera, young and confused on Broadway.

- 7.Black metal and ambient pop at Basilica Soundscape.

- 8.Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader get dramatic.

- 9.Teenage patients keep each other smiling in a new series on Fox.

- 10.The Replacements reunite in Queens.

- 11.Jason Bateman, Tina Fey and Adam Driver sit shiva with Jane Fonda.

- 12.Téa Leoni as secretary of state on CBS.

- 13.Will “The Good Wife” run for state’s attorney?

- 14. Classics from the Classical Age at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

- 15.James Levine conducts “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

- 16.Gotham City before Batman.

- 17.The frontman of the Strokes goes in a different direction.

- 18.Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga sing the standards.

- 19.Coltrane live in ’66, fearless and fearsome.

- 20.The Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan steps out.

- 21.Anthony Anderson is “Black-ish.”

- 22. Anna Netrebko sleepwalks into “Macbeth.”

- 23.Viola Davis joins Shonda Rhimes Night on ABC.

- 24. Meet “The Boxtrolls.”

- 25.Celebrating Henry Threadgill.

- 26.René Pape roars solo on the Met stage.

- 27.“Become Ocean,” the CD.

- 28.Blake Shelton is “Bringing Back the Sunshine.”

- 29.Kyle Abraham reflects on civil rights struggles, past and present.

- 30.Politicians (try) to say they’re sorry on stage.

- 31.Alan Gilbert closes out a Carl Nielsen cycle.

- 32.Simon Rattle opens the Carnegie Hall season with four concerts.

- 33.“Broadchurch” gets an American accent.

- 34.“Genius” flutist Claire Chase begins an ambitious 22-year project.

- 35.A rare solo by Eiko.

- 36.“Gone Girl” gives up its secrets.

- 37.A MoMA retrospective for the multifarious Robert Gober.

- 38.A stand-up sitcom that’s not “Louie.”

- 39.“Homeland” after Brody.

- 40.“The Curious Incident” comes to the stage.

- 41.Peter Sellars fills the Park Avenue Armory with “St. Matthew Passion.”

- 42.A premiere by Jodi Melnick at BAM’s Next Wave Festival.

- 43.Trisha Brown and Mark Morris at “Fall For Dance.”

- 44.Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick await their next review.

- 45. Drum, kid, drum.

- 46.James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain break up three times.

- 47.The music of South Africa, with films by William Kentridge.

- 48.More Matisse cut-outs than you’ve ever seen in one place.

- 49.Growing up to be Billy Porter.

- 50.Dominic West and Ruth Wilson in a Showtime drama.

- 51.Another feeding frenzy on “The Walking Dead.”

- 52.Maximum Goya in Boston.

- 53.“Jane the Virgin,” from telenovela to the CW.

- 54.Cecilia Bartoli sings — in Russian.

- 55.Mary Lambert’s debut album.

- 56.A sitcom proposal: “Marry Me.”

- 57.A master puppeteer takes on Stravinsky.

- 58. “On the Town” in New York City.

- 59.Michael Keaton, from Batman to “Birdman.”

- 60.Farewell to Wendy Whelan at New York City Ballet.

- 61.Trailing controversy, “The Death of Klinghoffer” arrives at the Met.

- 62.Braque, Gris, Picasso and more.

- 63.Will this be the last ride for the Allman Brothers at the Beacon?

- 64.A bratty new album from Charli.

- 65.Jonathan Lethem gets the musical treatment.

- 66. Chelsea Manning, set to music at BAM.

- 67.The Pulitzer Prize-winning “Disgraced” on Broadway.

- 68.The sculptor Judith Scott has her day at the Brooklyn Museum.

- 69.Sting, shipbuilding, a Broadway debut.

- 70.Joyce DiDonato provides “Perspectives.”

- 71.Taylor Swift goes pop.

- 72.The last (?) of Lil Wayne.

- 73.Another try for “Side Show.”

- 74.Is Chris Ofili still a “Sensation”?

- 75.Choreographer Troy Schumacher acts on “Impulse.”

- 76.My son the guru? Sarah Ruhl wonders.

- 77.Tig Notaro and Bill Cosby take the mike.

- 78.Holly Hunter and Bill Pullman enlist in a Vietnam-era drama.

- 79.Christopher Nolan goes “Interstellar” in his follow-up to “Dark Knight Rises.”

- 80.Young Jean Lee at the Public.

- 81.A screen portrayal of Stephen Hawking’s extraordinary life.

- 82.A MoMA show says to hell with originality.

- 83.The return of Valerie Cherish.

- 84.What was Bunny Mellon keeping in those closets?

- 85.Artists inspired by “Ebony” and “Jet” magazines.

- 86.Blood and wrestling: Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in “Foxcatcher.”

- 87.Hugh Jackman goes down to “The River.”

- 88.“Seeds” from TV on the Radio.

- 89.Glenn Close and John Lithgow take on Albee.

- 90.Katniss. Peeta. And Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his last roles.

- 91.An artist who likes blurring the boundaries.

- 92.The Ailey troupe pays tribute to Odetta.

- 93.Reese Witherspoon in a Nick Hornby adaptation of “Wild.”

- 94.Paul Thomas Anderson takes Joaquin Phoenix into the 1970s.

- 95.Bradley Cooper brings “The Elephant Man” to Broadway.

- 96.The Cooper Hewitt reopens with a show selected by Maira Kalman.

- 97.An “Annie” for the 21st century.

- 98.Angelina Jolie directs the story of a survivor among survivors.

- 99.No one is alone, not even Meryl Streep, in “Into the Woods.”

- 100.What’s next for U2?

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF FALL ARTS

Produced by Alastair Coote, Chase Davis, Alicia DeSantis

IMAGE CREDITS: 1. Ernest Cole Family Trust/Hasselblad Foundation; 2. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 3. Nonesuch; 4. Betania Sikora; 6. Michael Brosilow; 7. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 9. Annette Brown/Fox; 10. Katie Stratton/Getty Images; 11. Warner Bros. Pictures; 12. Craig Blankenhorn/CBS via Associated Press; 13. Jeff Neumann/CBS; 14. Bruce White/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 15. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times; 16. Jessica Miglio/Fox; 18. Jamie Mccarthy/Getty Images; 21. Adam Taylor/ABC; 22. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; 23. Nicole Rivelli/ABC; 24. Focus Features; 25. Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times; 26. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; 28. Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times; 31. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 33. Ed Araquel/Fox; 34. Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times; 35. William Johnston; 36. Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox, via Associated Press; 37. Robert Gober/K. Ignatiadis, via Matthew Marks Gallery; 38. Ray Mickshaw/Fox, via Associated Press; 39. Joe Alblas/Showtime; 40. Manuel Harlan; 41. TT News Agency/Reuters; 42. Ruby Washington/The New York Times; 43. Paula Lobo for The New York Times; 44. Getty Images; 45. Daniel McFadden/Sony Pictures Classics; 46. Weinstein Company; 48. Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 50. Steven Lippman/Showtime; 51. Gene Page/AMC; 52. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 53. JSquared/CW; 54. Decca; 55. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 56. Colleen Hayes/NBC; 57. Richard Termine; 58. Kevin Sprague; 59. Alison Rosa/Fox Searchlight Pictures; 60. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 61. Richard Hubert Smith; 62. Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 63. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 64. Erin Baiano for The New York Times; 66. Patrick Semansky/Associated Press; 68. Brooklyn Museum; 69. Marco Gualazzini for The New York Times; 70. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 71. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters; 72. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 74. Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures; 75. Erin Baiano; 79. Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures; 80. Richard Termine for The New York Times; 81. Liam Daniel/Focus Features; 82. Thomas Mueller/Estate Sturtevant, Paris; 83. Kevork Djansezian/Reuters; 84. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times; 85. Jeremy Okai Davis/Studio Museum of Harlem; 86. Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures Classics; 87. Neilson Barnard/Getty Images; 90. Murray Close/Lionsgate; 91. Pierre Huyghe/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 92. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 93. Anne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight Pictures; 94. Fernando Ariza/The New York Times; 95. Rob Kim/Getty Images; 96. Angel Franco/The New York Times; 97. Barry Wetcher/Columbia Pictures; 98. David James/Universal Pictures; 99. Peter Mountain/Walt Disney Pictures

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Art & Design

Themes for a March: Solar City, Natural Haven

By MELENA RYZIKSEPT. 19, 2014

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Rodolfo Velazquez working on the Ropavejeros collective’s float for the People’s Climate March.

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When the Workers Arts Coalition, a group of union members and artists, gathered to plan their float for the People’s Climate March this Sunday, they had no shortage of design ideas: A sculpture of a human body decorated with different ecosystems? A performance piece with union guys singing in light-up vests? There was a robot, of course, said Jaime Lopez, an electrician and a founder of the group. “A ‘Climatron,’ ” Mr. Lopez said, “built out with all kinds of awesome weapons, fighting climate change.”

In the end, they settled on a simpler but still grand vision. “We’re going to make our own little city,” Mr. Lopez, 28, said, “using different elements of green power.”

Made of sheet metal — courtesy of Local 28, a sheet metal workers’ union, and others — their float has a mini-Empire State Building, a mini-Chrysler Building and a mini-Freedom Tower. A model of the Brooklyn Bridge has a sign with W.P.A.-era lettering, “We Build the Future,” on a green sunburst background.

The message, said Bobby Andrew, a member of Local 28, is one of confidence. Organized labor is already “using green technology,” said Mr. Andrew, 54. The float will be pulled by a biodiesel truck, with its lights powered by workers on bicycles.

For those planning to participate in the march on Sunday, which its promoters are calling the world’s largest action against climate change, much of the building and fine-tuning has come in just these last few weeks.

Making the floats narratively accessible and visually appealing — not to mention carbon-neutral — has been a challenge. “This is the hardest issue I’ve ever worked on,” said Raquel de Anda, an organizer and a gallery curator, whose task was to recruit diverse artists for the march.

She approached Raúl Ayala, a Brooklyn muralist and member of Ropavejeros, a collective of Latin American immigrant artists, to create a piece about immigration and climate change.

Mr. Ayala, 34, and the six other members of his group, who hail from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Mexico, and who met working on construction sites around the city, came up with an allegorical float. The centerpiece is a tree, made of papier-mâché and discarded construction materials. Recycling, Mr. Ayala said, is part of his group’s ethos. (Ropavejeros translates to “rag-and-bone men,” merchants who sell scavenged goods.) The tree’s trunk is pierced with black axes.

“The tree represents nature; the axes represent the corporations that are trying to destroy nature,” said Mr. Ayala, who grew up the son of Ecuadorean farmers. “The idea was to use symbols to represent our shared struggles.”

Ms. de Anda introduced him to Heather Henson, a daughter of Jim Henson, who helped add an interactive element to the bicycle-powered float.

Atop the tree sits a nest; Ms. Henson designed bird kites that will fly around it. Mr. Ayala and his group made smaller mechanical birds, called ornithopters, to take wing from the nest. Powered by springing rubber bands, the ornithopters contain their builders’ stories and poems about immigration.

“We want to portray ourselves as birds, because we also fly, we also migrate, we also look for shelter in other lands,” Mr. Ayala said.

The uprooted tree, and its circling birds seeking haven, tackle the issues in an elegant way. (After the march, elements will be exhibited at Windows on Amsterdam, a community gallery at City College.) “Climate change is terrifying,” Ms. de Anda said, but with this float, “there’s still some fun and poetics to it.”

It resonated with the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, who plans to march with Ropavejeros. “If I was in Paris, I would be marching; if I was in Rio, I would be marching,” Mr. Salgado said through a spokesman. “With no exception, we must come together, as this has to rise to the top of our leaders’ agenda.”

Mr. Ayala hopes it also entrances kids. “We wanted to make it playful,” he said, “but at the end we want to have a clear message: Protect our home. Our planet is our nest.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C2 of the New York edition with the headline: Themes for a March: Solar City, Natural Haven. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Busy Days Precede a March Focusing on Climate Change

By LISA W. FODERAROSEPT. 17, 2014

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Organizers for the People’s Climate March are using a warehouse to create and store their large banners and signs.

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In a three-story warehouse in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, hundreds of people are working to turn the People’s Climate March planned for Sunday into a visual spectacle.

There were victims of Hurricane Sandy from the Rockaways toiling with artists on a 30-foot inflatable life preserver, and immigrant artists constructing a papier-mâché tree embedded with axes. Elsewhere, religious leaders were building an ark and scientists were constructing a chalkboard covered with calculations about carbon.

The run-up to what organizers say will be the largest protest about climate change in the history of the United States has transformed New York City into a beehive of planning and creativity, drawing graying local activists and young artists from as far away as Germany.

“This is the final crunch, the product of six months of work to make the People’s March a big, beautiful expression of the climate movement,” said Rachel Schragis, a Brooklyn-based artist and activist who is coordinating the production of floats, banners and signs.

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Manhattan

Assembly area

Broadway

Central

ParK

W. 65TH St.

Parade route

The march, organized by more than a dozen environmental, labor and social justice groups, is planned to wend its way through Midtown Manhattan along a two-mile route approved by the city’s Police Department last month. It will start at 11:30 a.m. at Columbus Circle, then move east along 59th Street, south on Avenue of the Americas and west on 42nd Street, finishing at 11th Avenue and West 34th Street.

Unlike the nuclear disarmament demonstration that drew more than 500,000 people to Central Park for speeches in 1982, the event on Sunday will rely on the marchers themselves to broadcast a message of frustration and anger at what organizers describe as a lack of action by American and world leaders.

At 1 p.m., after a moment of silence, marchers will be encouraged to use instruments, cellphone alarms and whistles to make as much noise as possible, helped by at least 20 marching bands and the tolling of church bells across the city.

“We’re going to sound the burglar alarm on people who are stealing the future,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of the group 350.org, which is helping to organize the march, and the author of several books about climate change, notably “The End of Nature,” published 25 years ago.

“Since then we’ve watched the summer Arctic disappear and the ocean turn steadily acidic,” Mr. McKibben said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “It’s not just that things are not getting better. They are getting horribly worse. Unlike any other issue we have faced, this one comes with a time limit. If we don’t get it right soon, we’ll never get it right.”

Organizers say it is impossible to predict how many people could show up. But 1,400 “partner organizations” have signed on, ranging from small groups to international coalitions. In addition, students have mobilized marchers at more than 300 college campuses, and more than 2,700 climate events in 158 countries are planned to coincide with the New York march, including rallies in Delhi, Jakarta, London, Melbourne and Rio de Janeiro.

In New York, organizers are expecting 496 buses from as far away as Minnesota and Kansas to bring marchers.

“The most useful gallon of gasoline anyone will ever burn is the one that gets them to the march,” Mr. McKibben said. (By contrast, all floats will be pulled by biodeisel-powered cars and trucks or by hand, organizers said.)

Photo

The march, organized by over a dozen groups, will take place on Sunday in Manhattan.

The forecast called for mostly sunny weather with a high temperature of 81, which would encourage a larger turnout. In February 2013, more than 40,000 protesters turned out in Washington to demand action on climate change and to challenge the contentious Keystone XL pipeline.

The police are closing off Central Park West north of Columbus Circle, and organizers are asking marchers to gather from West 65th to West 86th Street, before the start of the march.

Leslie Cagan, a longtime New York activist who coordinated the nuclear disarmament demonstration in 1982, has met numerous times with the Police Department to iron out the logistics of Sunday’s march. “That area on Central Park West can hold a lot of people — we believe between 80,000 and 100,000,” she said. The police would not provide estimates of the number of expected attendees.

Organizers have asked marchers to go to various themed staging areas along Central Park West depending on their leanings.

For example, a contingent of labor, families, students and older adults can congregate north of West 65th Street under the rubric “We Can Build the Future.”

Organizers have run phone banks, blanketed subway stations with fliers and issued weekly news releases.

They also produced a 52-minute documentary, “Disruption,” about planning the march. The film, released on Sept. 7, includes footage of meetings and pre-march rallies — interspersed with lessons on climate change and the lagging efforts so far to stop it.

Organizers say they chose Sunday because it comes ahead of a climate summit at the United Nations on Tuesday. World delegates are expected to hold high-level discussions about climate change that will lay the groundwork for a potential global agreement on emissions next year in Paris. (Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced on Tuesday that he planned to join the march.)

“When the secretary general invited world leaders to this summit, all of us in the climate justice movement thought, ‘Left to their own devices, these guys will do the same thing they’ve done for 25 years — i.e., nothing,’ ” Mr. McKibben said. “So we thought, we better go to New York, too.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Busy Days Precede Protest on Climate. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Music | Music Review

A Band of Many Identities, but Always Furious

King Crimson Plays at the Best Buy Theater

By JON PARELESSEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

King Crimson, with a new seven-man lineup, started a four-night stand at the Best Buy Theater on Thursday night with its credentials still intact.

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The calm, professorial demeanor of Robert Fripp — King Crimson’s founder, guitarist, composer and core member since 1968 — may well be rock’s longest-running feat of misdirection. Starting the band’s four-night stand at Best Buy Theater on Thursday night, Mr. Fripp sat in the back row of King Crimson’s new seven-man lineup, facing the band more than the audience and directing most of his attention to his guitar throughout the concert.

Yet as cerebral as King Crimson’s music is, with its mandatory virtuosity and its mathematical systems within systems, what comes across first and last is fury. The compositions hurl notes with maniacal relentlessness, the harmonies bristle with dissonance, and the lyrics, when they occasionally appear, are bleak. Then there’s Mr. Fripp’s own guitar tone: an implacable barrage of staccato arpeggios or lines that are sustained and abrasive, cold enough to burn.

The current King Crimson, designated by Mr. Fripp as Mark VIII, puts the band’s rhythmic impact literally up front. This King Crimson, the band’s largest lineup ever, has three drummers — Pat Mastelotto, Bill Rieflin and Gavin Harrison — bashing away at the front of the stage. Behind them, on a riser, are Mr. Fripp, the guitarist and singer Jakko Jakszyk, Tony Levin on bass and Chapman stick and the saxophonist and flutist Mel Collins.

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Interactive Feature: Fall Arts Preview - Times 100

The lineup gathers members from most of King Crimson’s phases, spanning Mr. Collins, a King Crimson member in the early 1970s, and Mr. Jakszyk, who performed with former King Crimson members as 21st Century Schizoid Band and released an album with Mr. Fripp and Mr. Collins in 2011, “The Scarcity of Miracles.” Although at the time, Mr. Fripp described the album as a “Crimson ProjeKct” rather than King Crimson itself — a typically precise distinction — two songs from that album were in the set.

For much of the concert, King Crimson was a fearsome rhythmic juggernaut, flaunting odd meters and whipsawing between slow, bruising riffs and pinging, syncopated volleys in pieces like “Level Five” and “The ConstruKction of Light.” Mr. Fripp’s compositions often have the guitarists hocketing — interlacing single staccato notes — and in this King Crimson, the drummers did the same thing, in round-robin passages of cymbal taps or drum strokes. They also offered hints of international exotica, like the gamelan-tinged opening of “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part One” and some unrecorded percussion-group pieces.

With Mr. Collins in the group, King Crimson also tilted toward jazz. He got the longer improvisational stretches — far more than the guitarists, whose efforts were applied more often to executing the music’s written passages, making every angle sharp. But just when it seemed the concert would be all onslaught, a craggy melody, like “Starless” or “The Letters,” would arrive. Songs like “One More Red Nightmare” and “Vrooom” also held glimmers of the British blues-rock from which King Crimson made its initial quantum leap into progressive rock, a limited term for Mr. Fripp’s own adamantine compound of rock, metal, classical music, Celtic music, Minimalism, world music and more. An ideal King Crimson concert would have had Mr. Fripp as a less circumspect bandleader, brandishing his lead guitar as well as his compositions. (The concert could also have skipped its cutesy between-song interludes: recordings of hapless interviewers.)

When this King Crimson tour was announced, it was billed as a farewell tour. That designation has disappeared; now it’s just called “The Elements of King Crimson.” May there be further permutations.

A version of this review appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Band of Many Identities, but Always Furious. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Arts

Fall Arts Preview - Times 100

SEPT. 4, 2014

- Complete Listings

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The Times 100

- How to wade through the crush of culture coming your way this season? Here’s a guide to 100 events that have us especially excited, in order of appearance:

- 1.Ernest Cole’s photographs of life under apartheid.

- 2.Postmodern dance meets 1960s vogueing at Crossing the Line.

- 3.Robert Plant aims for alchemy on a new album.

- 4. Philip Glass and Steve Reich in a rare onstage reunion.

- 5.Ira Glass in a dance collaboration?

- 6.Tavi Gevinson and Michael Cera, young and confused on Broadway.

- 7.Black metal and ambient pop at Basilica Soundscape.

- 8.Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader get dramatic.

- 9.Teenage patients keep each other smiling in a new series on Fox.

- 10.The Replacements reunite in Queens.

- 11.Jason Bateman, Tina Fey and Adam Driver sit shiva with Jane Fonda.

- 12.Téa Leoni as secretary of state on CBS.

- 13.Will “The Good Wife” run for state’s attorney?

- 14. Classics from the Classical Age at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

- 15.James Levine conducts “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

- 16.Gotham City before Batman.

- 17.The frontman of the Strokes goes in a different direction.

- 18.Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga sing the standards.

- 19.Coltrane live in ’66, fearless and fearsome.

- 20.The Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan steps out.

- 21.Anthony Anderson is “Black-ish.”

- 22. Anna Netrebko sleepwalks into “Macbeth.”

- 23.Viola Davis joins Shonda Rhimes Night on ABC.

- 24. Meet “The Boxtrolls.”

- 25.Celebrating Henry Threadgill.

- 26.René Pape roars solo on the Met stage.

- 27.“Become Ocean,” the CD.

- 28.Blake Shelton is “Bringing Back the Sunshine.”

- 29.Kyle Abraham reflects on civil rights struggles, past and present.

- 30.Politicians (try) to say they’re sorry on stage.

- 31.Alan Gilbert closes out a Carl Nielsen cycle.

- 32.Simon Rattle opens the Carnegie Hall season with four concerts.

- 33.“Broadchurch” gets an American accent.

- 34.“Genius” flutist Claire Chase begins an ambitious 22-year project.

- 35.A rare solo by Eiko.

- 36.“Gone Girl” gives up its secrets.

- 37.A MoMA retrospective for the multifarious Robert Gober.

- 38.A stand-up sitcom that’s not “Louie.”

- 39.“Homeland” after Brody.

- 40.“The Curious Incident” comes to the stage.

- 41.Peter Sellars fills the Park Avenue Armory with “St. Matthew Passion.”

- 42.A premiere by Jodi Melnick at BAM’s Next Wave Festival.

- 43.Trisha Brown and Mark Morris at “Fall For Dance.”

- 44.Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick await their next review.

- 45. Drum, kid, drum.

- 46.James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain break up three times.

- 47.The music of South Africa, with films by William Kentridge.

- 48.More Matisse cut-outs than you’ve ever seen in one place.

- 49.Growing up to be Billy Porter.

- 50.Dominic West and Ruth Wilson in a Showtime drama.

- 51.Another feeding frenzy on “The Walking Dead.”

- 52.Maximum Goya in Boston.

- 53.“Jane the Virgin,” from telenovela to the CW.

- 54.Cecilia Bartoli sings — in Russian.

- 55.Mary Lambert’s debut album.

- 56.A sitcom proposal: “Marry Me.”

- 57.A master puppeteer takes on Stravinsky.

- 58. “On the Town” in New York City.

- 59.Michael Keaton, from Batman to “Birdman.”

- 60.Farewell to Wendy Whelan at New York City Ballet.

- 61.Trailing controversy, “The Death of Klinghoffer” arrives at the Met.

- 62.Braque, Gris, Picasso and more.

- 63.Will this be the last ride for the Allman Brothers at the Beacon?

- 64.A bratty new album from Charli.

- 65.Jonathan Lethem gets the musical treatment.

- 66. Chelsea Manning, set to music at BAM.

- 67.The Pulitzer Prize-winning “Disgraced” on Broadway.

- 68.The sculptor Judith Scott has her day at the Brooklyn Museum.

- 69.Sting, shipbuilding, a Broadway debut.

- 70.Joyce DiDonato provides “Perspectives.”

- 71.Taylor Swift goes pop.

- 72.The last (?) of Lil Wayne.

- 73.Another try for “Side Show.”

- 74.Is Chris Ofili still a “Sensation”?

- 75.Choreographer Troy Schumacher acts on “Impulse.”

- 76.My son the guru? Sarah Ruhl wonders.

- 77.Tig Notaro and Bill Cosby take the mike.

- 78.Holly Hunter and Bill Pullman enlist in a Vietnam-era drama.

- 79.Christopher Nolan goes “Interstellar” in his follow-up to “Dark Knight Rises.”

- 80.Young Jean Lee at the Public.

- 81.A screen portrayal of Stephen Hawking’s extraordinary life.

- 82.A MoMA show says to hell with originality.

- 83.The return of Valerie Cherish.

- 84.What was Bunny Mellon keeping in those closets?

- 85.Artists inspired by “Ebony” and “Jet” magazines.

- 86.Blood and wrestling: Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in “Foxcatcher.”

- 87.Hugh Jackman goes down to “The River.”

- 88.“Seeds” from TV on the Radio.

- 89.Glenn Close and John Lithgow take on Albee.

- 90.Katniss. Peeta. And Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his last roles.

- 91.An artist who likes blurring the boundaries.

- 92.The Ailey troupe pays tribute to Odetta.

- 93.Reese Witherspoon in a Nick Hornby adaptation of “Wild.”

- 94.Paul Thomas Anderson takes Joaquin Phoenix into the 1970s.

- 95.Bradley Cooper brings “The Elephant Man” to Broadway.

- 96.The Cooper Hewitt reopens with a show selected by Maira Kalman.

- 97.An “Annie” for the 21st century.

- 98.Angelina Jolie directs the story of a survivor among survivors.

- 99.No one is alone, not even Meryl Streep, in “Into the Woods.”

- 100.What’s next for U2?

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF FALL ARTS

Produced by Alastair Coote, Chase Davis, Alicia DeSantis

IMAGE CREDITS: 1. Ernest Cole Family Trust/Hasselblad Foundation; 2. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 3. Nonesuch; 4. Betania Sikora; 6. Michael Brosilow; 7. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 9. Annette Brown/Fox; 10. Katie Stratton/Getty Images; 11. Warner Bros. Pictures; 12. Craig Blankenhorn/CBS via Associated Press; 13. Jeff Neumann/CBS; 14. Bruce White/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 15. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times; 16. Jessica Miglio/Fox; 18. Jamie Mccarthy/Getty Images; 21. Adam Taylor/ABC; 22. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; 23. Nicole Rivelli/ABC; 24. Focus Features; 25. Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times; 26. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; 28. Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times; 31. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 33. Ed Araquel/Fox; 34. Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times; 35. William Johnston; 36. Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox, via Associated Press; 37. Robert Gober/K. Ignatiadis, via Matthew Marks Gallery; 38. Ray Mickshaw/Fox, via Associated Press; 39. Joe Alblas/Showtime; 40. Manuel Harlan; 41. TT News Agency/Reuters; 42. Ruby Washington/The New York Times; 43. Paula Lobo for The New York Times; 44. Getty Images; 45. Daniel McFadden/Sony Pictures Classics; 46. Weinstein Company; 48. Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 50. Steven Lippman/Showtime; 51. Gene Page/AMC; 52. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 53. JSquared/CW; 54. Decca; 55. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 56. Colleen Hayes/NBC; 57. Richard Termine; 58. Kevin Sprague; 59. Alison Rosa/Fox Searchlight Pictures; 60. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 61. Richard Hubert Smith; 62. Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 63. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 64. Erin Baiano for The New York Times; 66. Patrick Semansky/Associated Press; 68. Brooklyn Museum; 69. Marco Gualazzini for The New York Times; 70. Brian Harkin for The New York Times; 71. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters; 72. Chad Batka for The New York Times; 74. Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures; 75. Erin Baiano; 79. Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures; 80. Richard Termine for The New York Times; 81. Liam Daniel/Focus Features; 82. Thomas Mueller/Estate Sturtevant, Paris; 83. Kevork Djansezian/Reuters; 84. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times; 85. Jeremy Okai Davis/Studio Museum of Harlem; 86. Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures Classics; 87. Neilson Barnard/Getty Images; 90. Murray Close/Lionsgate; 91. Pierre Huyghe/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 92. Andrea Mohin/The New York Times; 93. Anne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight Pictures; 94. Fernando Ariza/The New York Times; 95. Rob Kim/Getty Images; 96. Angel Franco/The New York Times; 97. Barry Wetcher/Columbia Pictures; 98. David James/Universal Pictures; 99. Peter Mountain/Walt Disney Pictures

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Dance | Dance Review

In a Daze, Reaching for Clarity

‘More Than Just a Piece of Sky’ Examines Queer Identity

By BRIAN SEIBERTSEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

Marissa Perel, center, deconstructs queer identity in “More Than Just a Piece of Sky,” a meditative performance at the Chocolate Factory Theater.

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Marissa Perel has a show at the Chocolate Factory Theater, but she won’t get out of bed. It isn’t a case of indolence, exactly, or even fatigue. The bed is onstage, and her lying in it is the central conceit of “More Than Just a Piece of Sky.” The work, which I saw on Thursday, is supposed to be like a dream.

The performers Lindsay Reuter and Jumatatu Poe are there, too. They introduce themselves by those names, but also by the names of the main characters in “Yentl,” the 1983 Barbra Streisand film about a young woman who pretends to be male in order to attend a yeshiva. The boyish Ms. Reuter, in a tuxedo shirt worn backward, says she is Yentl. Mr. Poe, wearing his lace-fringed blouse the same way, says he is Avigdor. They lean in toward a microphone as if to share a kiss, but they say little else about the story.

Most of what they say in this meditatively paced, hourlong work, presented as part of the Queer New York International Arts Festival, can’t be found in the movie or in the Isaac Bashevis Singer tale on which it was based: “I didn’t use my privilege the way she wanted.” “What does it take to be totally evil?” “I was his colon.”

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Interactive Feature: Fall Arts Preview - Times 100

Some of this text is by Ms. Perel, who is mainly a writer. Some is read aloud from the books around her, stacks of bedtime reading that include Frantz Fanon, Roland Barthes and tomes of queer theory. Mr. Poe slips under the sheets with Ms. Perel so they might read together. The way they overlap and swallow words doesn’t aid comprehension. Nor does Ms. Perel’s habit of softly echoing the others’ speech. But both modes of delivery contribute to an impression of Ms. Perel’s mind working something out as she sleeps.

Despite talk of bodies, the action is minimal. Mr. Poe disrobes for a desultory, languorous dance to a recording of Miguel Gutierrez singing “Smalltown Boy,” a gay anthem by Bronski Beat, from 1984. Those lyrics of escape — added to Mr. Poe’s recitation of a rape scene from David Wojnarowicz’s “Waterfront Journals,” rising to a hysterical pitch — build up a kind of understory of a gay coming of age.

After Ms. Perel has played “A Piece of Sky,” the breaking-free climax of “Yentl,” on a Fisher-Price turntable that makes it sound as if Ms. Streisand were on a roller coaster, Ms. Reuter and Mr. Poe roll on the floor, tenderly and equably exchanging the positions of top and bottom. It feels like a happy ending, and as they exit like laughing yeshiva students, Ms. Perel smiles sweetly at what has turned out to be little more than a pleasant dream.

“More Than Just a Piece of Sky” continues through Saturday at the Chocolate Factory Theater, 5-49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens; 718-482-7069, chocolatefactorytheater.org.

A version of this review appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C4 of the New York edition with the headline: In a Daze, Reaching for Clarity. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Arts

Fall Arts Preview - Times 100

SEPT. 4, 2014

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The Times 100

- How to wade through the crush of culture coming your way this season? Here’s a guide to 100 events that have us especially excited, in order of appearance:

- 1.Ernest Cole’s photographs of life under apartheid.

- 2.Postmodern dance meets 1960s vogueing at Crossing the Line.

- 3.Robert Plant aims for alchemy on a new album.

- 4. Philip Glass and Steve Reich in a rare onstage reunion.

- 5.Ira Glass in a dance collaboration?

- 6.Tavi Gevinson and Michael Cera, young and confused on Broadway.

- 7.Black metal and ambient pop at Basilica Soundscape.

- 8.Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader get dramatic.

- 9.Teenage patients keep each other smiling in a new series on Fox.

- 10.The Replacements reunite in Queens.

- 11.Jason Bateman, Tina Fey and Adam Driver sit shiva with Jane Fonda.

- 12.Téa Leoni as secretary of state on CBS.

- 13.Will “The Good Wife” run for state’s attorney?

- 14. Classics from the Classical Age at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

- 15.James Levine conducts “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

- 16.Gotham City before Batman.

- 17.The frontman of the Strokes goes in a different direction.

- 18.Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga sing the standards.

- 19.Coltrane live in ’66, fearless and fearsome.

- 20.The Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan steps out.

- 21.Anthony Anderson is “Black-ish.”

- 22. Anna Netrebko sleepwalks into “Macbeth.”

- 23.Viola Davis joins Shonda Rhimes Night on ABC.

- 24. Meet “The Boxtrolls.”

- 25.Celebrating Henry Threadgill.

- 26.René Pape roars solo on the Met stage.

- 27.“Become Ocean,” the CD.

- 28.Blake Shelton is “Bringing Back the Sunshine.”

- 29.Kyle Abraham reflects on civil rights struggles, past and present.

- 30.Politicians (try) to say they’re sorry on stage.

- 31.Alan Gilbert closes out a Carl Nielsen cycle.

- 32.Simon Rattle opens the Carnegie Hall season with four concerts.

- 33.“Broadchurch” gets an American accent.

- 34.“Genius” flutist Claire Chase begins an ambitious 22-year project.

- 35.A rare solo by Eiko.

- 36.“Gone Girl” gives up its secrets.

- 37.A MoMA retrospective for the multifarious Robert Gober.

- 38.A stand-up sitcom that’s not “Louie.”

- 39.“Homeland” after Brody.

- 40.“The Curious Incident” comes to the stage.

- 41.Peter Sellars fills the Park Avenue Armory with “St. Matthew Passion.”

- 42.A premiere by Jodi Melnick at BAM’s Next Wave Festival.

- 43.Trisha Brown and Mark Morris at “Fall For Dance.”

- 44.Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick await their next review.

- 45. Drum, kid, drum.

- 46.James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain break up three times.

- 47.The music of South Africa, with films by William Kentridge.

- 48.More Matisse cut-outs than you’ve ever seen in one place.

- 49.Growing up to be Billy Porter.

- 50.Dominic West and Ruth Wilson in a Showtime drama.

- 51.Another feeding frenzy on “The Walking Dead.”

- 52.Maximum Goya in Boston.

- 53.“Jane the Virgin,” from telenovela to the CW.

- 54.Cecilia Bartoli sings — in Russian.

- 55.Mary Lambert’s debut album.

- 56.A sitcom proposal: “Marry Me.”

- 57.A master puppeteer takes on Stravinsky.

- 58. “On the Town” in New York City.

- 59.Michael Keaton, from Batman to “Birdman.”

- 60.Farewell to Wendy Whelan at New York City Ballet.

- 61.Trailing controversy, “The Death of Klinghoffer” arrives at the Met.

- 62.Braque, Gris, Picasso and more.

- 63.Will this be the last ride for the Allman Brothers at the Beacon?

- 64.A bratty new album from Charli.

- 65.Jonathan Lethem gets the musical treatment.

- 66. Chelsea Manning, set to music at BAM.

- 67.The Pulitzer Prize-winning “Disgraced” on Broadway.

- 68.The sculptor Judith Scott has her day at the Brooklyn Museum.

- 69.Sting, shipbuilding, a Broadway debut.

- 70.Joyce DiDonato provides “Perspectives.”

- 71.Taylor Swift goes pop.

- 72.The last (?) of Lil Wayne.

- 73.Another try for “Side Show.”

- 74.Is Chris Ofili still a “Sensation”?

- 75.Choreographer Troy Schumacher acts on “Impulse.”

- 76.My son the guru? Sarah Ruhl wonders.

- 77.Tig Notaro and Bill Cosby take the mike.

- 78.Holly Hunter and Bill Pullman enlist in a Vietnam-era drama.

- 79.Christopher Nolan goes “Interstellar” in his follow-up to “Dark Knight Rises.”

- 80.Young Jean Lee at the Public.

- 81.A screen portrayal of Stephen Hawking’s extraordinary life.

- 82.A MoMA show says to hell with originality.

- 83.The return of Valerie Cherish.

- 84.What was Bunny Mellon keeping in those closets?

- 85.Artists inspired by “Ebony” and “Jet” magazines.

- 86.Blood and wrestling: Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in “Foxcatcher.”

- 87.Hugh Jackman goes down to “The River.”

- 88.“Seeds” from TV on the Radio.

- 89.Glenn Close and John Lithgow take on Albee.

- 90.Katniss. Peeta. And Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his last roles.

- 91.An artist who likes blurring the boundaries.

- 92.The Ailey troupe pays tribute to Odetta.

- 93.Reese Witherspoon in a Nick Hornby adaptation of “Wild.”

- 94.Paul Thomas Anderson takes Joaquin Phoenix into the 1970s.

- 95.Bradley Cooper brings “The Elephant Man” to Broadway.

- 96.The Cooper Hewitt reopens with a show selected by Maira Kalman.

- 97.An “Annie” for the 21st century.

- 98.Angelina Jolie directs the story of a survivor among survivors.

- 99.No one is alone, not even Meryl Streep, in “Into the Woods.”

- 100.What’s next for U2?

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF FALL ARTS

Produced by Alastair Coote, Chase Davis, Alicia DeSantis

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Bridge

Chairman’s Team Wins Commonwealth Championship

SEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Bridge

By PHILLIP ALDER

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The 48-board final of the fourth Commonwealth Nations Bridge Team Championship in Glasgow last week was between Wales (Gary Jones, Tim Rees, Patrick Jourdain, Tony Ratcliff, John Salisbury and Mike Tedd) and the Chairman’s team (David Bakhshi, Andrew McIntosh, David Mossop and Paul Hackett and his twin sons, Jason and Justin, all from England).

The diagramed deal occurred during the first quarter.

At the other table, Mossop (South) and Paul Hackett (North) had this uncontested auction: one diamond-two clubs-two spades-three spades-three no-trump-four hearts-four spades-pass.

West led a low diamond. South took East’s king with his ace, played a spade to dummy’s ace and returned a spade to his jack. Declarer drove out the club ace and lost only two tricks: one club and one spade.

In the given auction, South opened one no-trump, indicating 11 to 14 points. North responded three hearts, showing a diamond shortage and denying four hearts. Three spades was natural. Four clubs was also natural but promised four-card spade support and slam interest. Four diamonds and four hearts were control-bids (cue-bids). Four no-trump was Roman Key Card Blackwood. When North showed only two key cards (one ace and the spade king or two aces), South signed off in five spades.

Photo

You would have expected Justin Hackett (West) to start the defense with the ace and another club, confident that partner was ruffing the second round. However, West chose to lead the club deuce.

Declarer won with dummy’s king, played a heart to his king and ran the spade queen. Now Jason Hackett (East) did well. He won with his king and shifted to a low diamond, putting South on the spot. To make the contract with this layout, declarer had to finesse his diamond queen. But not expecting the bad club break, he won with his diamond ace, drew trumps ending in his hand (West discarded a diamond) and led the club nine.

West realized that he could not afford to win this trick. And if he had covered with his ten, he would have defeated contract — but he played his eight! Understandably, though, South did not run the nine; he put up dummy’s queen. The contract was now unmakable. South could take only four spades, three hearts, one diamond and two clubs.

Plus 450 and plus 50 gave the Chairman’s team 11 international match points on the board.

The Chairman’s team won each of the four quarters to take the first prize by 132 imps to 62.

Making a play so crazy that declarer will never take advantage of it, like West’s club eight here, is called a Grosvenor Gambit. It was first described by Frederick B. Turner in the June 1973 issue of The Bridge World magazine.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C4 of the New York edition. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Music | Music Review

Bach, Played in Living Color

From Christian Tetzlaff, Violin Sonatas and Partitas

By JAMES R. OESTREICHSEPT. 19, 2014

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The juxtaposition was peculiar, no question. Hearing Christian Tetzlaff play Bach’s sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin, some of the most intellectually stimulating and emotionally fulfilling music ever written, on Thursday evening, I kept thinking of a child’s coloring book. Bach drew those wildly imaginative and fanciful but spare lines of melody and counterpoint, leaving it to the player to add color.

The analogy is seriously flawed, of course, if only because the player also has to recreate Bach’s lines to begin with, and for many, that is task enough. And, yes, black-and-white performances are common.

But Mr. Tetzlaff, who has performed these works many times and recorded them twice, has become a master colorist, injecting nuances of articulation, inflection, bowing and ornamentation: a nudging appoggiatura here, a melodic twist there. He also colors inside the lines very well — but enough of that.

This was the season-opening concert at the 92nd Street Y, where Mr. Tetzlaff played the sonatas and partitas in 2009. Those performances, which lived happily if dimly in memory, have now been eclipsed. Mr. Tetzlaff’s approach to these works has, in the meantime, become much freer and more playful, more involved, more given to risk.

Indeed, at times he played with outright abandon, whether in tempo, for a blazing account of the Courante Double in the First Partita, or in mood, adding vehemence to the Fugue in the Third Sonata. This was virtuosity of the highest order, though he made no show of it: His stage manner throughout was one of elegant restraint and dispatch.

Mr. Tetzlaff needed every ounce of his remarkable composure to get through the Chaconne that ends the Second Partita, the high point in the collection, if not in all of music. As if that movement’s sheer technical challenges were not enough, he had to compete with an ugly noise, a grinding mechanical sound that intruded three times: loudest and longest at the very heart of the piece, a moment of inmost quiet. Astoundingly, Mr. Tetzlaff didn’t miss a beat through any of it.

The noise, a spokeswoman for the hall said the next morning, had come from drilling in the basement. As it happens, the matter was made worse because Mr. Tetzlaff had requested beforehand that the air-conditioning be turned off for the night to avoid distracting sound. The end result was to make all the extraneous sounds from inside and outside the hall, and there were many, that much worse.

It is surely unfair to wish that Mr. Tetzlaff, after his long, arduous night of Bach and a nerve-rattling incident, had repeated the Chaconne as an encore. I wish it, anyway; it would have made a memorable night wholly unforgettable.

A version of this review appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C5 of the New York edition with the headline: Bach, Played in Living Color. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Music Review | Christian Tetzlaff

Emphasizing Bach�s Unity

By ALLAN KOZINN

Published: October 26, 2009

Hearing one of Bach’s sonatas or partitas for unaccompanied violin in a recital is usually a treat, if the violinist has the technique and imagination to surmount its difficulties and give it a richly characterized performance. And with that same qualification, hearing all six of these works in an afternoon is a kind of classical music nirvana.

Christian Tetzlaff, who has made two superb recordings of these works (on Virgin Classics in 1993 and on Hänssler Classic in 2005), played all six at the 92nd Street Y on Sunday afternoon, and his performances supported an argument he made in the program book: “These six pieces are a cycle, a very clearly indicated cycle,” he said, with a distinct architecture and a series of musical connections — key relationships and thematic overflow among works, for example — that cannot be accidental.

One of his main contentions is that the monumental Chaconne that closes the Partita No. 2 in D minor (BWV 1004) is the set’s dramatic and emotional center of gravity, and he has a point: the next movement in the set, the opening Adagio of the Sonata No. 3 in C (BWV 1005) is overshadowed by the Chaconne’s dark mood. Even though Mr. Tetzlaff stopped for applause and a moment offstage between the two works, his use of exactly the same coloration he brought to the Chaconne at the start of the Adagio drove home the point almost as clearly as if he had moved directly from the partita into the sonata.

Mr. Tetzlaff proved his broader point too — that the works expand in seriousness as they approach the Chaconne and lighten thereafter, as they head toward the ebullient Partita No. 3 in E (BWV 1006) — though there was room for debate. Yes, that final partita has the sunniest Prelude and is devoted mostly to zesty dance movements. But Mr. Tetzlaff did not shy away from deep introspection in the Loure, and he showed that the variations in the spirited Gavotte en Rondeau are hardly trifles.

He also demonstrated that the fugues in each of the three sonatas give the Chaconne serious competition in weightiness and grandeur, and simply in formal terms, a fugue trumps a chaconne any day. For that matter, Mr. Tetzlaff’s performances were reminders that there are no insignificant movements in this set: few listeners would single out the Doubles of the Partita No. 1 in B minor (BWV 1002) as particular favorites, yet Mr. Tetzlaff’s phrasing made them more magnetic than ever. And you don’t normally hear the closing Presto of the Sonata No. 1 in G minor (BWV 1001) played with the sheer fury he brought to it.

Technique is never an issue with this violinist. The clarity and solidity he brings to the music’s chordal writing remain among the most striking characteristics of his Bach playing, as does the sharp articulation he uses to suggest independent lines of counterpoint. What has deepened is the intensity of the emotional charge he draws from this music, in readings that match Bach’s 18th-century ingenuity with passion and warmth in the here and now.

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Television

What’s on TV Saturday

By KATHRYN SHATTUCKSEPT. 20, 2014

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7 P.M. (HBO) THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (2013) Ben Stiller, who also directed this adaptation of the James Thurber short story, stars as Walter, a dutiful drone in the photography department of Life magazine who finds himself on a caper far beyond his wildest imagination when the negative for the publication’s final print edition goes missing. Kristen Wiig plays the crinkly-nosed co-worker on whom Walter has a crush; Adam Scott is the leader of the new tech-jerk bosses who have Walter’s job on the line. And Sean Penn is the mysterious photographer behind Walter’s travels to Iceland, Afghanistan and other stunning far-off places. “Though it is a celebration of modesty, there is also quite a lot of vanity in ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,’ ” A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times. There is also a contradiction: “An ordinary fellow should not have to be quite so special to win our admiration. And this version of Walter Mitty undermines some of the democratic whimsy that has made his story such an appealing and durable modern myth. He used to be one of us: a self-deluded dreamer charmed by his unruly creative powers, a willing prisoner of his appetite for escapism. But now our identification gives way to envy, and he is another one of those enchanted people the rest of us can only dream of becoming.” The movie is followed at 9 by “On the Run Tour: Beyoncé and Jay Z,” a concert special filmed on Sept. 12 and 13 at the Stade de France, near Paris, featuring performances of more than 40 songs during the couple’s only stop outside North America on the tour.

10:30 A.M. (13) RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY David Tereshchuk reports on the efforts of Robin Reineke, an anthropologist, to identify the remains of immigrants who died while journeying through the Arizona desert.

NOON (13) RICHARD HEFFNER’S OPEN MIND Alexander Heffner interviews Paul Rieckhoff, the chief executive and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, who presents his plan to rid the Department of Veteran Affairs of corruption, improve the care of service members and reduce the suicide rate among veterans.

8 P.M. (Lifetime) THE ASSAULT (2014) After being sexually assaulted by members of the high school football team, a cheerleader (Makenzie Vega) is subjected to public shaming while trying to piece together a night she cannot remember.

8 P.M. (13, 49) THE ROOSEVELTS: AN INTIMATE HISTORY “A Strong and Active Faith (1944-1962),” the conclusion to Ken Burns’s documentary series, picks up with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt (the voice of Edward Herrmann) to his fourth term in 1944 and his death in April 1945. It also follows the life of the widowed Eleanor (Meryl Streep), a skilled political negotiator and champion of civil rights, until her death in November 1962.

9 P.M. (CNN) WHITEY: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. JAMES J. BULGER (2014) Joe Berlinger traverses the life and crimes of Mr. Bulger, the South Boston mob boss and longtime fugitive who at one point was second only to Osama bin Laden on the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted list and was convicted last year of 11 brutal murders. This documentary also uses Mr. Bulger’s 2013 trial to examine corruption within the American legal system, focusing on evidence that he may have worked as an F.B.I. informant and that law enforcement agencies helped cover up his crimes. The survivors of Mr. Bulger’s victims despise him, “but they are also angry at the government and at what they see as the prosecution’s attempt to minimize the extent of the F.B.I.’s involvement with Mr. Bulger,” A. O. Scott wrote in The Times. “Many journalists who covered Mr. Bulger for years feel the same way.”

10 P.M. (Fox News) GRETA INVESTIGATES: ISIS Greta Van Susteren reports on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL); the group’s use of social media; and its recruiting methods in the United States.

What’s Streaming Now

BLADE MAN A tortured video game executive (Lee Dong-wook) suddenly develops supernatural powers: His anger and heartbreak result in knives sprouting from his body, leaving him covered in scars in this South Korean television series. Shin Se-kyung plays the beautiful game developer with a heart of gold who helps heal his wounds. (dramafever.com)

A version of this schedule appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C6 of the New York edition with the headline: What’s On TV Saturday. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Business Day

- Common Sense: Thinking Twice on Alibaba

- Big Factories Go to Work on Biofuel

- Your Money: Parents, the Children Will Be Fine. Spend Their Inheritance Now.

- Union Reaches Tentative Deal With Airlines

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Business Day |NYT Now

Thinking Twice on Alibaba

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Common Sense

By JAMES B. STEWART

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Investors love a good story.

They lined up hundreds deep at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York earlier this month to hear Alibaba’s executive chairman, Jack Ma, promote the Chinese Internet retailer’s initial public offering.

“It was a zoo,” said Vincent Rivers, senior portfolio manager for the London-based investment firm J. O. Hambro Capital Management. “There must have been 400 people waiting in line. Everybody was there. It was like a social event.”

The shy, somewhat awkward Mr. Ma opened by saying that he’d first come to the United States 15 years ago looking for about $2 million in capital. “Now,” he said, "I’m asking for slightly more.”

The line drew a knowing laugh from the crowd — Alibaba was asking for nearly $22 billion, the biggest I.P.O. ever in the United States — but Mr. Ma should probably keep his day job. What the crowd really wanted to hear about was Alibaba’s growth, and Mr. Ma didn’t disappoint them.

A few vivid charts and statistics told the story. Alibaba is already the world’s largest Internet commerce company, with 231 million active buyers using its site, 11.3 billion annual orders and $296 billion in annual merchandise sales, a measure Alibaba uses instead of revenue.

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Investors and Alibaba employees arrive at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Monday for a presentation by Jack Ma.

To put this in perspective, Amazon has less than $82 billion in revenue. EBay has just over $17 billion.

But what excites Alibaba’s potential investors isn’t only its size, but its prospects for getting bigger. China currently has 302 million Internet shoppers. That’s less than half the country’s 618 million Internet users. And Internet penetration in China is less than half the country’s population of about 1.35 billion. Competition from brick-and-mortar retailers in China is far less than in the United States, which should also drive increases in Internet shopping.

“The potential is absolutely massive,” Mr. Rivers said. “The real question isn’t whether they’ll have more users. It’s how much will they spend.” Chinese Internet shoppers spend far less per person than in the United States. “If you look long term and they can close that gap, you can get to some huge numbers,” he said.

Alibaba also has enviably high profit margins of more than 40 percent, which even by Internet standards, let alone retail, is extraordinary. Amazon has struggled for decades to eke out a slender profit. EBay has an operating margin of 20 percent and Google 23 percent.

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Behind the Appeal of Alibaba

Behind the Appeal of Alibaba James B. Stewart discusses on CBNC the reasons for investor interest in Alibaba, as well as the reasons for concern. Publish Date September 19, 2014.

Alibaba is the dominant e-commerce company in China by far, which, along with the high margins, suggests that it’s the kind of natural monopoly beloved by investors. Alibaba itself attributes this to the so-called network effect. “The interactions between buyers and sellers create network effects in that more merchants attract more consumers, and more consumers attract more merchants,” the company asserts in its prospectus.

And Alibaba keeps profits large by dispensing with the high-cost, low-margin businesses that have dogged Internet retailers in the United States. Alibaba is simply a platform for connecting buyers and sellers. “We do not engage in direct sales, compete with our merchants or hold inventory,” the prospectus notes.

I was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday morning, where the excitement of newly minted billions was palpable. The Alibaba trading station occupied the center of the floor, where it was surrounded by a throng of “V.I.P. guests” squeezed behind velvet ropes. The street outside was packed, the balconies were crowded with onlookers and cheers went up every time the indicated opening price was adjusted upward. Mr. Ma rang the opening bell and dropped in on the on-floor set of CNBC.

Alibaba was priced on Thursday night at $68 a share. And on Friday, pent-up demand drove the opening price to $92.70. The stock immediately rose from there and ended the day at $93.89.

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Jack Ma, the chief executive of Alibaba, outside the New York Stock Exchange Friday morning.

Perhaps some stocks should reflect what I’ll call an “excitement premium,” which in Alibaba’s case is surely significant. That’s fine until the excitement wears off. For a more sobering view, I turned to Bruce Greenwald, co-author of “Competition Demystified” and “Value Investing,” and a finance professor at Columbia Business School. Value investors like Professor Greenwald, by nature, tend to be skeptical of stories, especially when those stories are as rosy as Alibaba’s. Still, Professor Greenwald said he agreed with much of the Alibaba thesis. “There’s no doubt they benefit from a network effect and they have growth potential,” he said.

But value investors tend to prefer numbers to words, and Alibaba’s numbers, impressive as they are, may give some investors pause.

At $68 a share, Alibaba’s market capitalization is about $168 billion. It’s hard to find a United States company that’s directly comparable, but Professor Greenwald said eBay comes the closest. Like Alibaba, it has an auction site that benefits from a powerful network effect, it offers a vast e-commerce site and it has a pay system, PayPal. (While Alibaba spun off its payment system, Alipay, Alibaba will get a share of the proceeds from any sale or public offering of Alipay.) EBay’s market capitalization is about $65 billion.

Of course, eBay doesn’t dominate e-commerce in the United States to the degree that Alibaba does in China. But is it reasonable to assume such dominance will persist as the Chinese market matures? No one company dominates e-commerce in the United States or in Europe, and none are as large as old-economy Walmart. China may now be underserved by national brick-and-mortar chains, but that could change. Professor Greenwald said he believed that Alibaba deserved a premium to eBay — perhaps twice eBay’s market capitalization. “But three times? That’s really pushing it,” he said.

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Alibaba’s Shareholders

Closing price

Change From I.P.O. Price

Major Shareholders

Share value

Jack Ma

Co-founder and chairman

Joseph Tsai

Co-founder and vice chairman

Yahoo

Search and tech. company

SoftBank

Japanese telecomm.

Updated

Then, there‘s the most common valuation metric, the price-to-earnings ratio. At $68 a share, Alibaba’s is just over 40. EBay had a loss in its most recent quarter, so it has no P/E ratio. But over eBay’s life as a publicly traded company, its P/E ratio has averaged a little over 26.

No Chinese Internet company is quite like Alibaba, so comparisons with Chinese stocks are difficult. But Baidu, China’s version of Google, which also benefits from network effects and the growth in Chinese Internet use, has a market capitalization of about $80 billion, and a P/E ratio of 45. Tencent Holdings, which is classified as social media rather than e-commerce, although it has elements of both, is even further afield. Its market capitalization of $147 billion is also smaller than Alibaba’s, although its P/E ratio is a steep 51.

Alibaba’s valuation may not be outrageous, but to Professor Greenwald, these comparisons are “pretty scary.” He added, “There’s a lot of hype in Alibaba, and that’s what you’re seeing in the price.”

That doesn’t change the Alibaba story, and sometimes a story is enough. Amazon is the leading example, a company that barely earns a profit and drives value investors crazy. Its market capitalization is $150 billion, nearly as big as Alibaba’s, and its P/E ratio is over 500. Investors buy the Amazon story, which is that Internet commerce dominance is just over the horizon, along with huge profits.

After Alibaba’s presentation in New York, “I’d say the mood was excitement,” Mr. Rivers said. “There really wasn’t much new, but there was significant buzz that this is a great growth opportunity."

Investors, Mr. Rivers added, "want to be able to say they’d been there.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: After the Party, Some Sober Reflections. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Energy & Environment

Big Factories Go to Work on Biofuel

By DIANE CARDWELLSEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

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King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, center, toured the ethanol refinery run by Poet and Royal DSM in Emmetsburg, Iowa, at its grand opening this month.

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EMMETSBURG, Iowa — Charlie Kollasch, a farmer supplying raw material to a huge new ethanol factory here, stood inside a big red shed on his property, showing off the V-shaped metal frame studded with prongs that he and his son had installed on top of a flatbed truck.

The contraption — “our little Star Wars deal,” he called it — is meant to grip tightly packed bales of corn cobs, husks and leaves, known as stover, on their journey from field to refinery, one of the many logistical tasks that has proved unexpectedly difficult in transforming agricultural waste into biofuel.

“I hope it works,” he said with a shrug, laughing.

He could have been speaking of the industry as a whole. With three major commercial plants in some stage of opening, the business finally appears poised to take off.

For example, the factory that Mr. Kollasch is helping to supply, a joint venture between the ethanol producer Poet and Royal DSM, the Dutch life and materials sciences company, held its grand opening here this month, drawing the king of the Netherlands to this town of roughly 3,800 set among rolling fields of head-high corn.

But the industry still faces deep uncertainties.

The federal government is considering pulling back from an important mandate, one that producers say is necessary if their large-scale plants are to succeed.

At the same time, the market is struggling to absorb the ethanol already in production.

And many technical hurdles remain, which is where farmers like Mr. Kollasch come in.

It has taken years of expensive bioengineering to figure out how to break down tough natural material meant to give plants enough structure to stand upright and convert it to sugars that can be fermented into fuels.

Ethanol producers have also had to persuade farmers to accommodate the collecting and bundling of the agricultural waste they were generally accustomed to tilling under the field or leaving on top to help enrich the soil or control its erosion.

Feeding a new generation of factories that can consume hundreds of thousands of tons of biomass to produce 20 million to 30 million gallons of ethanol a year has meant new costs in labor and equipment.

“Farmers don’t give it away,” said Wallace E. Tyner, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue, and transportation and storage have added even more expense.

Early estimates put the cost of the waste material at $30 a ton, Mr. Tyner said, but his department now puts it closer to $80.

As a result, the first wave of plants is relying heavily on subsidies, and the Agriculture Department is helping pay some of the costs of obtaining the feedstock.

There are other supports as well. The recently opened Poet-DSM project, for instance, received roughly $20 million from Iowa and about $100 million in grants from the Energy Department.

Ethanol executives say they are working to reduce the costs to make their fuel economically competitive.

“We have to find efficiencies to get the costs in the area that they need to be,” said John Pieper, who manages feedstock operations at DuPont.

The company, he said, has been working closely with PacificAg, a leading biomass harvester, to develop and streamline the supply chain.

“I believe fully this is the way we’ll farm one day,” he said. “It’s just a question of how quickly will we grab that future and maybe bring it into today.”

Hundreds of farmers have signed up to supply the stover, though Mr. Kollasch said the refinery here might have trouble getting all it needs.

For him, the benefits include new income as well as better management of crop residue, which has been increasing over the years as farmers plant each acre of prized black soil here ever more intensively.

There is some debate over the potential harm or benefit of taking the stover away from the fields, and questions remain about how tilling, taking certain amounts of the material or leaving just the stalks and roots affects soil health and productivity.

Also up in the air is the best shape for bales — square or round — to ease transportation and storage and reduce the risk of fires like one that started at the Poet-DSM plant in July.

“We’re tackling a brand-new collection process, a brand-new feedstock, a brand-new production process, brand-new enzymes, brand-new yeast,” Jeff Broin, Poet’s founder, said at the refinery. “You can see, there’s a lot of learning going on.”

The uncertainties have some producers already looking to what’s next.

DuPont plans to market a cellulosic ethanol byproduct from its factory in Nevada, Iowa, as a solid fuel that could be used in place of coal. And it may move into making other products there as well, said Jan Koninckx, global business director of advanced biofuel.

Most of the companies making biofuel from sugars, including Beta Renewables, which operates a large cellulosic plant in Northern Italy, are involved in or are seeking partnerships to allow them to move into the chemicals market, said Andrew Soare, a senior analyst who leads alternative fuels and bio-based materials and chemicals research at Lux Research.

It is the same approach, he said, that many companies making other kinds of biofuel pursued when they shifted their focuses to chemicals that could fetch higher prices than fuel.

“They could just get much higher value for a gallon or a kilogram of their product,” he said.

And Tom Vilsack, the secretary of the Agriculture Department, recently urged a group of ethanol producers to focus their businesses on exports, the Defense Department and ethanol byproducts.

That shift is being driven partly by the ebbing demand for gasoline from consumers, who are driving more efficient cars, and industry, which is enjoying the benefits of surging domestic oil production. On top of this, the Environmental Protection Agency is considering cutting by more than 40 percent the amount of advanced biofuels that must be blended into vehicle fuel. A decision, which has been delayed, is still pending.

Still, executives like Mr. Broin are pushing ahead with their projects, expressing confidence that the technologies and processes they have developed over the years, at great public and private expense, will prevail.

In addition to Poet-DSM, giants like Abengoa and DuPont expect to start producing significant quantities of cellulosic ethanol, made from the nonfood parts of the corn plant, in the Midwest within months.

In an office at the Poet-DSM refinery in July, when smoke from the fire still shrouded the fields, Mr. Broin talked about the huge investment of money in explaining why, this time, the business would work.

“There’s, right out the window here, $250 million all ready to roll,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Big Factories Go to Work on Biofuel. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Estate Planning |NYT Now

Parents, the Children Will Be Fine. Spend Their Inheritance Now.

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Your Money

By RON LIEBER

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Once people hit retirement, they do not know how long they will live or how long their money will last. Still, the vast majority of retirees with children cling to an intention to leave something behind, even though many of those offspring have no expectation of receiving an inheritance.

This parental instinct might seem loving and generous, but there is another way to look at it. All of this devotion to the next generation may also be the height of foolishness. After a few decades of spending well into the six figures to rear and educate each child (and increasingly, years more backstopping young adults who are not quite financially independent), the parents probably ought to cease feeling this sense of obligation. Far better to spend their retirement money in the present on making meaningful memories with family members or on top-notch care that can help make aging more comfortable and graceful — in their own home if possible.

So how can we middle-aged kids convince our parents that they are officially off the hook?

First, consider the state of the generational disconnect. In an article that the journal The Gerontologist published last year, Kyungmin Kim and four colleagues took the unusual step of using polling data from both older Americans and their adult children about whether they expected to leave or receive an inheritance.

Ms. Kim, a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas, reported these results. Among the parents, ages 59 to 96, 86.2 percent expected to leave a bequest. But just 44.6 percent of the children, ages 40 to 60, thought they would get one. As for the most agonizing possible mismatch, where parents had no intention of leaving money behind but their children were expecting some, just 2.4 percent of the parent-child pairs had that disconnect.

Economists who study the motivation for inheritance intentions tend to probe two general areas. The first involves the moral obligation that parents feel toward their offspring, no matter how much support they may have given to them already. A subset of adult children seem to understand this innately. In Ms. Kim’s study, the adult children who were getting money from their aging parents while they were still alive had a higher expectation of getting more once they were dead than other adult children. Entitlement, anyone?

The other inheritance theory relates to exchanges. The assumption here is that parents wish to reward children who help them while they are still alive with an inheritance after they’ve died. They may even subtly (or not so subtly) dangle the prospect of a bequest in front of the children while they are still living to encourage the desired behavior or assistance. What Ms. Kim and her colleagues found, however, was that the adult children who were providing more support were less likely to expect an inheritance, even though their parents were indeed more likely to intend to give them one.

The message here would seem to be that aging parents are generous to a fault, if a bit manipulative on occasion. Adult children, meanwhile, accept their obligations to care for their parents with little expectation of receiving anything in return, though some who remain on the dole well into adulthood expect their parents to provide for them from the grave too.

The study’s yes-no questions, however, are relatively limiting. Many parents may be hoping to leave just a token amount, after all. Adult children might lie about their expectations to please the researchers, too. And besides, even if you expect nothing it doesn’t mean that you don’t badly want that very thing.

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For more insight on this, I turned to an academic who has recently gotten into the business of trying to get older Americans to tap into their home equity during their retirement years. Christopher Mayer is an economist at Columbia Business School with an expertise in housing finance and policy. But he’s also the chief executive at a new reverse mortgage company called Longbridge Financial.

Reverse mortgages, which allow people 62 and older to tap some of the equity in their homes without having to make any loan payments until they die or move out, are roughly half as popular as they were before the housing crisis. Plenty of bad actors persuaded elderly homeowners to take lump sum loan distributions and plow them into inappropriate annuities or other financial products. As a result, protective adult children often come with their parents to discuss reverse mortgages with the person pitching the loan.

But who exactly are they protecting? “It’s hard to have more than three or four conversations with a family before the inheritance topic comes up,” Mr. Mayer said of the children who try to talk their parents out of tapping their home equity. “There are times when they say `Mom and Dad, that could be useful money for me.’”

Hoarding home equity certainly seems prudent. After all, the money tied up in a home can be awfully useful for people who suddenly need $200 a day for in-home care or to enter a nursing facility. Having that source of capital at hand means that they won’t be a financial burden to their children or have to take their chances with Medicaid. Anything left over can go toward an inheritance.

Mr. Mayer is fighting another fact, too, which is the significant percentage of people for whom real wages have not been rising much. “You can look at the next generation and wonder whether your kids will be in a position to do much better than you did,” Mr. Mayer said. So older people scrimp and save and aim to leave some money behind to try to give the younger set a boost.

Adult children who are trying to talk their parents out of a goal like this face long odds. “When people see their time horizon shrinking, they tend to focus on goals that are emotionally meaningful as opposed to more practical ones,” said Laura L. Carstensen, a psychologist who runs the Stanford Center on Longevity. “For the most part, it’s a focus on what or who matters most, and it’s family and family.”

So noted. But in the very least, the generational disconnect in expectations around inheritance need not exist. Ms. Kim chalks this up to the age-old problem of families having trouble initiating forthright conversations about money. And given that older people tend to be more old-fashioned about this sort of thing, it’s on us kids to declare our expectations and begin persuading our parents to worry less about having much of anything left over after they’re gone.

So here it goes. Mom and Dad: I expect nothing from you going forward except love, conversation, holiday meals and grandchild babysitting. Spend your money on your health and comfort and making the kinds of memories with close friends and family members that will last even as other, older ones, fade. Leave a bit aside for me or for charity if it truly makes you happy, requires no sacrifice or makes sense for tax reasons. But otherwise, spend what you have and have faith that the education and life skills you already gave me are more than enough.

I don’t want an inheritance, nor do I expect one. If any fellow adult children agree, go tell your parents the same thing this weekend.

Make the most of your money. Every Monday get articles about retirement, saving for college, investing, new online financial services and much more. Sign up for the Your Money newsletter here.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Children Will Be Fine. Spend Their Inheritance.. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Golden Opportunities

Tapping Into Homes Can Be Pitfall for the Elderly

Erika Baker says she was steered into a loan with high fees.

By CHARLES DUHIGG

Published: March 2, 2008

Erika Baker was 67 years old, divorced and worried about her job when a saleswoman showed up at her door in late 2006.

A reverse mortgage, the saleswoman explained, would give Ms. Baker instant access to hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in the value of her home. Such a loan, typically available only to homeowners in their 60s and older, would not have to be repaid until Ms. Baker moved out, the saleswoman said.

And if she never moved, the loan would be settled by selling her house after she died. “Your Home Pays You Cash!” read a brochure the saleswoman left behind.

Ms. Baker, who lives just outside San Diego, jumped at the offer, borrowing a little more than $200,000 through a company called Senior American Funding.

Then the problems began. The saleswoman pressured her to put the proceeds of the loan into complex investments that put her money out of reach, Ms. Baker said. She received only about $33,000 in cash, far less than she needed for her final years.

“I thought this was a safe way to make sure I’d never run out of money,” Ms. Baker said. “Then everything became so confusing. No matter where I turned for help, it seemed like things got worse.”

As the United States has become an older nation, reverse mortgages have grown into a $20-billion-a-year industry, with elderly homeowners taking out more than 132,000 such loans in 2007, an increase of more than 270 percent from two years earlier. In surveys, many borrowers say reverse mortgages have improved their lives and provided money they needed for retirement.

But hundreds of people who have sought reverse mortgages — in lawsuits, surveys and conversations with elder-care advocates — have complained about high-pressure or unethical sales tactics they say steered them toward loans with very high fees. Some say they were tricked into putting proceeds of their loans into unprofitable investments, while sales agents pocketed rich commissions.

“Every scam artist is getting into this business,” said Prescott Cole, an elder-care advocate who has worked with numerous reverse mortgage borrowers. “Because reverse mortgages are so complicated and give you money up front, years can pass before a senior realizes they’ve lost everything.”

Reverse mortgage lenders and brokers dispute those accusations, noting that the loans are heavily regulated and have helped hundreds of thousands of people.

“For a lot of elderly people, their only real asset is their house,” said Peter Bell, president of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association, a trade group. “A reverse mortgage is one of the few ways someone can access wealth that’s otherwise out of reach, while still living in their house for as long as they want.”

However, some borrowers find their wealth is still out of grasp, even after they have sought a reverse mortgage.

For example, Senior American Funding, the company that sold Ms. Baker her loan, has been sued three times in the last 13 months by clients who said they were misled. (Two of those cases were settled out of court for undisclosed sums. The third, filed by Ms. Baker in California state court last month, is pending.)

The company, which is licensed in 16 states, has originated mortgages worth more than $100 million since 2004.

“We never pressure clients,” said one of the company’s founders, Matthew Copley. “We just try to make sure they know about their options.”

However, a former sales agent, Hani Shenoda, and an agent who still works at the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution, said in interviews that managers at Senior American Funding encouraged them to pressure older homeowners into unwise loans and investments. The company disputes that assertion.

On Tuesday, after being contacted by a reporter, Senior American Funding announced it would no longer sell combinations of loans and investments like the one Ms. Baker had bought.

“When we make mistakes, we address them as responsibly as we can,” Mr. Copley added.

Ms. Baker owned a home worth about $600,000 but was living paycheck to paycheck, teaching child-rearing skills to low-income mothers for about $400 a week, when she was told in 2006 that her job was ending.

Months earlier, she had received a mailing from Senior American Funding, one of the hundreds of reverse mortgage companies that have emerged in the last several years. She scheduled an appointment with a saleswoman named Laurie Spencer. (Ms. Spencer no longer works at Senior American Funding, according to the company, and could not be located.)

“This saleswoman was so friendly and personable,” Ms. Baker said. “It was like God had sent me a friend to tell me how to survive.”

In the kitchen of the home, where Ms. Baker displays watercolors of dolphins and flowers she has painted, the saleswoman recommended a loan of $218,900, with a variable interest rate initially set at 6.57 percent.

Because reverse mortgages do not require borrowers to make immediate repayments, the interest charges are added to the debt every day, and the total amount owed grows over time. The saleswoman did not explain that within 10 years, Ms. Baker’s $218,900 loan could grow to as much as $400,000, Ms. Baker said. That debt would be paid by selling the house when she moved out or died.

The saleswoman also did not emphasize the high fees, Ms. Baker said. The loan’s fees cost her $17,100 — almost 8 percent of the total loan — which was paid out of the proceeds as soon as the loan closed.

To ensure that borrowers know such details, the federal government requires them to speak to an independent adviser before closing a reverse mortgage.

“We make potential borrowers talk to a counselor to make sure they understand what they are doing,” said Renée Shadel, an investigator with the Washington state attorney general’s office. “These can be great loans for some people, but only if they understand them.”

But critics say these counseling sessions are often brief and unhelpful. Some elderly borrowers, for instance, said their sessions lasted only 10 minutes, rather than the 60 to 90 minutes most counselors say they need to explain the loans.

Critics say some sessions are so brief because reverse mortgage companies are paying for the advice. One of the largest reverse mortgage counseling companies, Money Management International, often asks lenders to pay for providing advice to the lender’s clients, according to a company spokeswoman.

Money Management International, which is a nonprofit company, received $900,000 from reverse lenders last year. By regulation, counselors may not charge clients, though they are allowed to seek support from lenders.

“Anytime anyone gives a counselor a donation, they expect a quid pro quo,” said Buz Zeman, a reverse mortgage counselor with Housing Options Provided for the Elderly, a nonprofit group financed by government grants. “The point of counseling is to make people consider other options. That’s difficult if you feel like your next paycheck relies on convincing someone to get the loan.”

A spokeswoman for Money Management International says it seeks payments from lenders because government grants do not cover costs. The group’s counselors educate clients only about how loans work and do not recommend whether to proceed, she said, adding that the average time a counselor spends with a client is 58 minutes.

“There is no quid pro quo relationship with lenders,” a Money Management International spokeswoman, Catherine Williams, said in an e-mail message, adding that clients receive the same advice whether a lender pays for the session or not. “Funding is not tied to the outcome of any case.”

Even when lenders do not pay for counseling, it can still prove unhelpful. Ms. Baker’s counseling session, which was provided by an agency that does not accept money from lenders, lasted only about a half hour, and she walked away from the conversation still confused, she said.

Then the saleswoman persuaded her to sign the loan forms.

After the reverse mortgage closed, Ms. Baker used the proceeds to pay off a $68,000 traditional mortgage on her home, and she put about $33,000 into various savings accounts.

The remaining $100,000 was used to purchase, at the saleswoman’s urging, two deferred annuities — complex contracts that offer monthly income in exchange for a large lump-sum payment.

Those annuities prohibited Ms. Baker from gaining access to most of her funds for seven years unless she paid a stiff penalty.

Moreover, the annuities were likely to cost her money rather than pay her. Annuities are so complex that it is impossible to forecast precisely how much Ms. Baker will receive from them. However, based on recent payout data for similar products, she will probably earn about $520 a month from her annuities for the rest of her life. Ms. Baker’s mortgage debt is increasing by about $600 a month as the interest compounds on the money she used to purchase those annuities.

If Ms. Baker collected monthly income from her annuities for 10 years, she could receive $62,400. However, the debt she would owe over that period would likely increase by $79,000 to $300,000, depending on how her loan’s interest rate changed.

“Buying an annuity with the proceeds of a reverse mortgage is incredibly dangerous,” said Mr. Cole, a critic of reverse mortgages. Indeed, the practice is so troublesome that many annuity companies and states either tightly regulate or forbid it.

The salespeople at Senior American Funding were richly rewarded for their sales: the company received about $8,750 in commissions from Ms. Baker’s annuities, and $7,200 for processing her reverse mortgage.

Last month, Ms. Baker sued Senior American Funding, accusing it of fraud and elder abuse.

Mr. Copley, the Senior American Funding co-founder, defended the company’s actions and said Ms. Baker consented to every transaction.

However, Mr. Copley conceded that Ms. Baker was given documents with inaccurate numbers and that sales agents, including him, at the time did not fully understand the products they were selling her.

“If we made mistakes, I’m sorry,” he said.

Other lenders have also been accused of pushing older homeowners into unwise deals.

A survey released last year by AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, of more than 1,500 reverse mortgage borrowers found that almost one in 10 were urged to buy other financial products, like annuities.

Lawsuits against reverse mortgage companies, including the nation’s largest, Financial Freedom Senior Funding, contend that those firms helped pressure older Americans into bad investments.

In court filings, companies have denied those claims.

“Financial Freedom is not involved in selling annuities, does not recommend annuities, and won’t even allow borrowers to use reverse mortgage proceeds to buy an annuity at closing,” said Joel Schiffman, the company’s general counsel. “We only pursue a reverse mortgage when it is in a senior’s best interest.”

Some regulators and lawmakers, however, have said that more safeguards are needed, including giving borrowers more information about alternatives to reverse mortgages, disclosing fees more clearly and providing more government money to counselors, so that they do not seek payments from lenders.

New laws governing reverse mortgages are under consideration in Congress, though lobbyists for some lenders are mounting strong opposition, Congressional staff members say.

For Ms. Baker, now 68, such safeguards would come too late. She says she wakes up in the night, terrified there will not be enough money for food, gas or anything else. To cut her grocery bill, she stopped buying meat and fresh vegetables.

“Before, at least I knew my house was safe, and that no one would take that away from me,” she said. “Now, I don’t know if there is anything I can count on.”

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Business Day | Business Briefing

Union Reaches Tentative Deal With Airlines

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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A flight attendants’ union says it has a tentative contract covering crews at American Airlines and US Airways. The union, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, said on Friday that negotiators reached an agreement with the American Airlines Group with industry-leading terms. Those terms were not disclosed. The union says leaders will meet next week and decide whether to send the agreement to members for a ratification vote.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: American in Tentative Deal With Flight Attendants. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Business Day | Business Briefing

Prada Cuts Forecast as Profit Falls 21%

By REUTERSSEPT. 19, 2014

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The Italian luxury good company Prada cut its 2014 revenue guidance on Friday because of weaker-than-expected consumer demand, as it posted a decline of 21 percent in net profit for the first half. The company said it was hit by sluggish consumer demand in the middle of an uncertain economic outlook and unfavorable exchange rates. Its revenue this year is expected to be flat compared with 2013, the company said. Net revenue rose 1.3 percent, to 1.75 billion euros, or $2.25 billion, for the six months through July. The company forecast second-half sales broadly in line with the first six months. Net sales for leatherwear, which accounts for almost 70 percent of revenue, fell 5 percent year-on-year in the first half.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: Prada Cuts Forecast as Profit Falls 21% . Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Business Day | Business Briefing

Gauge of Economy Edged Up 0.2%. in August

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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The Conference Board said on Friday that its index of leading indicators rose 0.2 percent in August, the seventh consecutive increase. But that was much slower than the revised 1.1 percent gain in July. “The leading indicators point to an economy that is gaining traction, but most likely won’t repeat its stellar second-quarter performance in the second half,” Ken Goldstein, a Conference Board economist, said. As measured by gross domestic product, the economy grew at an annual rate of 4.2 percent in the April-June quarter. For August, the small gain in the leading index came from strength in financial market conditions as measured by low interest rates and a rise in factory orders.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: Gauge Of Economy Edged Up 0.2%. In August . Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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F.D.A. Plans to Revise Food Safety Rules

By SABRINA TAVERNISESEPT. 19, 2014

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The Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed changes to new rules that will govern food safety in the United States. In an effort to account for concerns raised by small brewers, artisanal cheese producers and other food producers, the agency revised provisions for water testing, as well as those on manure, compost and spent grains. Brewers had objected to rules requiring them to write food safety plans for the spent grain they sell as animal feed. The changes will be open to public comment for 75 days; final rules are to be issued in 2015.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: F.D.A. Plans To Revise Food Safety Rules . Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Markets NYT NOW

Europe’s Markets Rise, Then Sputter After Scotland Votes No

By Jenny Anderson

September 18, 2014 10:46 pmSeptember 18, 2014 10:46 pm

Photo

Companies heavily exposed to Scotland traded up.

Financial markets in Britain and around Europe generally welcomed Scottish voters’ rejection of independence on Friday, reflecting relief that the United Kingdom would not face a tumultuous breakup and a prolonged period of uncertainty.

Yet as the reality set in that Britain still had plenty of economic and political issues to grapple with, an early rally in the pound quickly faded. And stocks, which had been broadly higher early in the day, were soon mixed.

“We’ve taken what could have been an enormous amount of uncertainty and weighty issues and traded it for a smaller amount of uncertainty and weighty issues,” said Malcolm Barr, an economist at JPMorgan Chase.

For the markets, the uncertainty includes when the Bank of England will raise interest rates and what Britain’s future role in the European Union will be.

In addition, Prime Minister David Cameron promised Friday morning to honor the pledge that he and other party leaders made to give Scotland more autonomy in taxation and spending, but he suggested he would seek similar autonomy for England, too.

“Just as Scotland will vote separately in a Scottish parliament on their issues of tax, spending and welfare, so too England as well as Wales and Northern Ireland should be able to vote on these issues, and all this must take place in tandem with and at the same pace as the settlement for Scotland,” he said.

The British currency rose sharply in early Friday trading, reaching its highest level against the dollar in more than two weeks, before falling to $1.63, down about 0.7 percent for the day.

Stocks showed early gains in markets across Europe before settling down around midday. In London, the FTSE 100-stock index was up 0.3 percent, and the broader Euro Stoxx 50 index was up less than 0.1 percent. In the United States, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell less than 0.1 percent, or 0.96 points, to 2,010.40, but finished with its best weekly gain in a month. The Dow Jones industrial average rose less than 0.1 percent, or 13.75 points, to 17,279.74.

In the United States bond market, the yield on 10-year Treasury notes fell to 2.58 percent from 2.62 percent. The price rose by 11/32, to 98 8/32.

“As expected, there was a knee-jerk reaction up on the pound,” said Harry Adams, a managing director at Argentex, a currency advisory firm. “All those gains have been erased, and the reason for this is Westminster now has to deal with the hangover.”

Mr. Cameron’s comments after the vote surprised some. Although his Conservative Party was forced to offer Scotland more autonomy as part of a last-minute plea for it to remain a part of the United Kingdom, he has now proposed a significant overhaul in governance.

The so-called the West Lothian question, named after the constituency of the member of Parliament who posed it in 1977, relates to the fact that lawmakers who represent other parts of the United Kingdom — Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland — have a say in matters that affect only England, but English members of Parliament do not have a say on such matters in those areas. Some have called for a separate English Parliament.

“Millions of voices of England must not go ignored,” Mr. Cameron said.

Beyond the politics of Westminster looms the question of whether Britain will stay in the European Union.

Mr. Cameron has called for a referendum on European Union membership by 2017, and many economists believe that a Scottish vote for independence would have fueled support for an exit from the 28-nation bloc. Though it may not be accelerated, the issue is still on the table.

“I think the incremental movement is still in a direction making a referendum more likely rather than not,” said Mr. Barr of JPMorgan.

The results, announced in Scotland early Friday, showed 55 percent of voters against independence to 45 percent in favor.

With the referendum out of the way, the markets will refocus on every word from Mark J. Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, to try to figure out when the first interest rate increase will be.

A Scottish “yes” vote would have put off that day of reckoning. It is now expected in the first or second quarter of next year.

The pound was a gauge for sentiment on the vote, Mr. Adams of Argentex said. It started the year at $1.66 and rose as high as $1.72 in the first six months.

On Sept. 7, it fell sharply after one poll showed the independence camp pulling ahead. The sell-off reflected fears of a political breakup, uncertainty over what currency an independent Scotland would use and questions about what independence would mean for Britain’s membership in the European Union.

But as fears receded that the “yes” vote would prevail, the pound rallied against the dollar, peaking at about 5:30 a.m. on Friday, when the initial vote results came out.

Many economists were quick to note on Friday that the respite could be short.

“The U.K. has been changed forever by this referendum,” said Rob Wood, an economist with Berenberg Bank. “The majority of Scots have voted to remain in the U.K., but not under the old status quo.”

“The risk of huge disruption from Scottish independence is gone,” he said. “Not for good, given the still high support for a ‘no’ in the polls, but for a considerable time.”

Stanley Reed contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on 09/20/2014, on page B3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Europe’s Markets Rise, Then Sputter After Scotland Votes No.

Financial Services, Markets, British Pound (Currency), Cameron, David, Great Britain, Referendums, Scotland, Stocks and Bonds

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Business Day

Household Net Worth Has Rebounded

SEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Off the Charts

By FLOYD NORRIS

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

THE net worth of American households is now 20 percent higher than it was before it began to decline in 2007, the Federal Reserve reported this week. It said the households together were worth $81.5 trillion at the end of the second quarter, higher than ever and up 10 percent from a year earlier.

By another measure, household net worth is a little short of the record highs reached before the recession. It amounted to 471 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product in the second quarter, just short of the record 473 percent set in early 2007.

Those figures are not adjusted for inflation. But adjusted for the change in the Consumer Price Index, household wealth is also at a record high, 4 percent above the 2007 level.

The recovery in household wealth has come in ways that favor the wealthiest households. The Fed estimated that real estate owned by households is worth $22.9 trillion, 6 percent less than seven years earlier but 27 percent more than at the bottom of the real estate market in 2011.

Continue reading the main story

Richer Households, Thanks to Wall Street

Seven years after households’ financial conditions began to deteriorate in 2007, their net worth is 20 percent higher than the prerecession peak. Real estate values have not completely recovered, but households have a lot more money in the bank and have profited from rising stock prices. Their total debt is little changed from prerecession levels, but the makeup of that debt has changed. Households owe less in mortgage and credit card debts, but auto loans are up and student loan debt has doubled.

Percentage change from Q2 2007

TOTAL

2Q ’14

TRILLIONS

NET WORTH

OF HOUSEHOLDS

$81.5

$95.4

$14.0

ASSETS

LIABILITIES

+

20

%

+

10

0

–

10

–

20

’08

’09

’10

’11

’12

’13

’14

’08

’09

’10

’11

’12

’13

’14

’08

’09

’10

’11

’12

’13

’14

SELECTED ASSETS

Stocks and

Mutual funds

Fixed-income

assets

Real Estate

$22.9

$21.0

Deposits

$9.9

$3.5

+

40

%

+

20

0

–

20

+

120

%

–

40

’08

’10

’12

’14

’08

’10

’12

’14

’08

’10

’12

’14

’08

’10

’12

’14

+

80

SELECTED LIABILITIES

Home equity

loans

Student

loans

First mortgages

$8.7

$0.7

Credit cards

$0.8

Auto loans

$0.9

$1.3

+

40

%

+

20

0

–

20

–

40

’08

’10

’12

’14

’08

’10

’12

’14

’08

’10

’12

’14

’08

’10

’12

’14

’08

’10

’12

’14

Percentage change from Q2 2007

TOTAL

2Q ’14

TRILLIONS

$81.5

NET WORTH OF HOUSEHOLDS

+

20

%

+

10

0

–

10

–

20

’08

’09

’10

’11

’12

’13

’14

$95.4

ASSETS

+

20

%

+

10

0

–

10

–

20

’08

’09

’10

’11

’12

’13

’14

CHANGE IN SELECTED ASSETS

Real Estate

–

5.9

%

Stocks and mutual funds

+

36.8

Deposits

+

37.8

Fixed-income assets

–

0.1

$14.0

LIABILITIES

+

20

%

+

10

0

–

10

–

20

’08

’09

’10

’11

’12

’13

’14

CHANGE IN SELECTED LIABILITIES

First mortgages

–

5.8

%

Home equity loans

–

37.7

Credit cards

–

8.5

Auto loans

+

16.9

Student loans

+

116.1

Source: Federal Reserve Board, via Haver Analytics

The biggest gains for households came in the equity markets. The Fed said households now owned $21 trillion in stock and mutual fund shares, 37 percent more than seven years earlier and almost 160 percent more than they owned at the bottom of the bear market in 2009.

While many people own stocks and mutual fund shares, by far the largest holdings are among those who are the wealthiest. In 2012, more than a third of dividends reported on tax returns went to taxpayers earning at least $2 million a year. That is more than double the share of dividends that went to those with taxable incomes of $100,000 or less.

During the recession, many households moved into safer fixed-income assets, including bonds issued by companies and governments. But with speculation that interest rates will rise, reducing the value of outstanding bonds, households have reduced their holdings to $3.5 trillion, a few billion less than in 2007. Total debt for households and nonprofit organizations equaled 77 percent of G.D.P., the lowest level since 2002. That figure peaked at 96 percent in early 2009.

Debt has also fallen for other sectors of the economy. The financial sector, including banks, had total debt at the end of the second quarter equal to 81 percent of G.D.P., the lowest level since 2000 and down from a peak of 119 percent. Loans to nonfinancial businesses have been rising in recent quarters, and now equal 67 percent of G.D.P., but that is lower than the peak of 74 percent reached in 2009.

The decline in household debt is largely due to lower mortgage debt, particularly home equity loans. But consumer credit has continued to rise and now equals a record 19 percent of G.D.P.

That is largely because of the continued surge in student loan debt — an obligation concentrated in younger households and among those who are far from wealthy. It has more than doubled since 2007. In 2006, when the Fed began to report on student loan debt as a separate category, the debt totaled $509 billion, or 22 percent of total consumer debt. Now, it equals $1.3 trillion, a 40 percent share of consumer debt.

That is more than Americans owe either on credit card debts ($839 billion) or auto loans ($919 billion).

Auto debt, however, has recovered and is now 17 percent higher than it was before the recession. That is 5.3 percent of G.D.P., well below the 6.5 percent record set in 2003.

While private sector debt has generally declined, at least relative to the size of the economy, government debt has been rising. But with the federal budget deficit falling, the ratio of federal government debt to G.D.P. slipped to 72.9 percent in the second quarter from 73.6 percent three months earlier.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Household Net Worth Has Rebounded. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Business Day

Cadillac Makes Big Plan to Woo Luxury Market

By AARON M. KESSLERSEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

Cadillac’s president, Johan de Nysschen. The company's new car will take aim at the BMW 7 Series, Audi’s A8 and the Mercedes S-Class.

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General Motors’ struggling Cadillac division is hoping that bigger is better.

While luxury competitors have been scaling down their offerings, Cadillac announced on Friday that it would add a new, larger sedan to its lineup next year, which it hopes will lure wealthy trendsetters.

G.M. did not release specifics of the yet-unnamed flagship sedan, but the automaker described it as a “top end, high technology” car intended to compete with the best from German rivals.

“The objective for this upcoming model is to lift the Cadillac range by entering the elite class of top-level luxury cars,” Cadillac’s president, Johan de Nysschen, said in a statement.

The new car will take aim at the BMW 7 Series, Audi’s A8 and the Mercedes S-Class — the top of each competitor’s lineup. Those sedans carry price tags starting in the $75,000 range and can exceed $100,000 for the most feature-laden configurations.

But while the luxury auto market has been surging this year, Cadillac has been left behind.

Through August, Cadillac’s overall sales were down 5 percent this year compared with a year ago, and the company’s sedans have fared even worse, down a combined 15 percent through August. The entry-level ATS sedan, though widely praised, has not taken off with buyers. Its sales were down 20 percent; the larger CTS sedan was down 6 percent.

The entire market for luxury vehicles in the United States has risen 14 percent over the same period, according to the auto research firm AutoData. Audi sales are up 15 percent, BMW up 12 percent and Mercedes-Benz up 9 percent this year through August.

“Cadillac still suffers from more of an older demographic,” said Jessica Caldwell, senior analyst with Edmunds.com.

Cadillac has also suffered from a seemingly endless cast of executives rotating through its top positions. In July, the company looked to the outside, hiring Mr. de Nysschen from Nissan’s Infinity division in an attempt to bring fresh ideas and long-term stability to Cadillac’s leadership.

Mr. de Nysschen is best known for his work at Volkswagen. He played an important role in transforming Audi into a true luxury competitor. Cadillac wants to be seen similarly as among the best luxury brands in the world.

One bright spot for Cadillac is China, where it sold more than 50,000 vehicles last year. The new sedan aims to capitalize on that market, said Xavier Mosquet, head of the Boston Consulting Group’s automotive practice.

Mr. Mosquet said that the European market had no appetite for large cars, and while Americans did, the number willing to buy an ultraluxury Cadillac was not large enough to justify the investment in the new model. Chinese buyers, on the other hand, are not only snapping up larger, more luxurious vehicles, but are also open to switching from one auto brand to another.

“Many in China are now first-car owners,” he said. “People are now about to make new choices, and many of them want to upgrade.”

Mr. Mosquet said that even though only the elite in China were likely to be able to afford the new flagship Cadillac, the aspirational effect for lower-tier buyers would be important. With so much of the Chinese market up for grabs, and no long-ingrained loyalties to weigh down buyers’ decisions, Cadillac has a chance to establish a reputation in China that matches that of the Germans.

Production of the new Cadillac will begin next year in the fourth quarter. It will be assembled at G.M.’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant, which currently builds the Chevy Volt, Impala, Malibu and Cadillac ELR. The company plans to unveil the new model in the first half of 2015.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Cadillac Makes Big Plan to Woo Luxury Market. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Business Day

High Rollers in a Buying Mood

By JACLYN TROPJAN. 1, 2014

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Polishing a Bentley Continental GTC V8, priced at $226,000, at Morrie’s Luxury Auto in Minnesota, which sells two to four of the cars a month.

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DETROIT — Matt Hlavin, an entrepreneur in Cleveland who owns seven businesses, mostly in manufacturing, bought three Mercedes last year: a $237,000 SLS AMG and a $165,000 S63 AMG for himself, and a $97,000 GL550 sport utility vehicle for his wife.

“I look at it as, I don’t have a boat,” Mr. Hlavin said. “I feel confident about the economy and about my business.”

A legion of buyers like Mr. Hlavin, buoyed by a growing economy and a soaring stock market, are shedding whatever reluctance, or self-imposed restraint, they had during the recession by entering showrooms and leaving with trophy cars.

“Luxury is not a dirty word anymore,” said Robert Ross, an automotive consultant with Robb Report, a lifestyle magazine for wealthy readers. “In 2008, luxury was a dirty word.”

Maserati is opening dealerships around the United States, Rolls-Royce just finished its most profitable year ever and even mainstream luxury automakers like Mercedes and Jaguar are finding an eager market for their most expensive models, which push past $100,000.

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Dave Mulder, of Morrie’s Luxury Auto in Minnetonka, Minn., which sold 14 Maserati Ghibli sedans just before Christmas.

The sales gains at the highest end of the market are far outstripping those in the auto industry as a whole, which, because of easier credit and pent-up demand, have risen 8.4 percent from January through November.

Maserati has led the way, with a 55 percent sales increase this year, followed by double-digit gains from Rolls-Royce, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Porsche and Bentley, according to figures from the Autodata Corporation. Many of the brands sold more cars in the first 11 months of 2013 than they did in 2007 before the recession.

Among the hungriest consumers for luxury automobiles are entrepreneurs amassing new wealth in industries like technology and energy, and executives in Fortune 500 companies whose stocks have soared along with the broader market, analysts and industry executives say.

“People were pulling back when they had to let people go,” said Ken Gorin, chief executive and president of the Collection in Coral Gables, Fla. “They’d come in and buy, but it would be the same color and the same model so no one knew they got a new car.”

“Now it doesn’t matter,” Mr. Gorin said. “Yellow cars, blue cars, red cars, white cars, people are feeling better.”

Sales at the Collection’s Ferrari, Aston Martin, Maserati and McLaren dealerships are up 26 percent from 2012 and 94 percent from the depths of the recession in 2009, Mr. Gorin said.

Buyers at the top end of the market say the time feels right for a big-ticket purchase. And dealers across the country say that a majority of these purchases, especially for those above $150,000, are made in cash.

“It never would have crossed my mind to spend that kind of money on a car before,” said Steve Seidman, a radiologist from West Bloomfield, Mich., who bought a Tesla Model S electric sedan in February. “I’m not really confident in the economy, but I’m comfortable in the direction it’s going in.”

Tesla buyers including Mr. Seidman are spending well beyond the $70,000 Model S base price by opting for a larger battery pack and options, including upgraded interior and technology packages, that can move the price to six figures.

Photo

Mark Thomas, of Collection Auto Group in Ohio, watching a 2014 Rolls-Royce delivery. Rolls had its most profitable year in 2013.

“There seems to be some enthusiasm to take some more risk and say: ‘O.K., it’s time to buy a new car. I’m going to buy a luxury car,’” said Stephanie Brinley, an analyst with IHS Automotive. “You see people who have the ability to recover more strongly having the confidence to spend.”

Enthusiasm for luxury nameplates is also unfolding around the country, beyond areas of concentrated wealth like New York and Southern California. Outside of Minneapolis, for example, Morrie’s Luxury Auto received 16 of Maserati’s Ghibli sedans two days before Christmas and had two left on Dec. 26.

Morrie’s is also selling two to four Bentleys a month at an average price of $225,000. About 40 percent of those sales are to companies that use them to transport clients and executives, the dealership said. It has benefited from the rising fortunes of large public companies in the area like 3M, Target and General Mills.

During the recession, “we were lucky to get one out a month,” said Kenny Reller, a manager at the dealership.

A dealer near Cleveland, the Collection Auto Group, which owns 28 dealerships, including Porsche, Lotus, Maserati and Aston Martin, added Rolls-Royce last month, becoming the automaker’s 35th dealership in the United States.

“Cleveland is in a renaissance,” said Bernie Moreno, president of the dealership. “We call it the three Ms: medical, manufacturing and media.”

Rolls-Royce, which is owned by BMW, has bounced back since 2008, recovering in 2009 with the introduction of the Ghost, a smaller sedan with an average price above $300,000. The Ghost gave those interested in owning a Rolls-Royce an alternative to the Phantom, which has a base price of $402,940 and is designed for use with a chauffeur.

In October, with the company on its way to its fourth consecutive year of record sales, the automaker began selling its third model, the Wraith, a performance car with an average retail price of $340,000.

Eric Shepherd, Rolls-Royce’s president for North America, said that for many potential buyers in the six-figure market, the barrier to buying wasn’t an issue of dollars but of cultural sentiment.

“Our customers never lost the ability to buy,” he said. “They may have lost the appropriateness to buy.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 2, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: High Rollers in a Buying Mood. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Business Day

Seeking Revival, Cadillac Goes Outside for a Chief

By AARON M. KESSLERJULY 11, 2014

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Johan de Nysschen of the Infiniti Motor Company of Nissan is joining General Motors as president of its Cadillac division.

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Even as General Motors has rebounded from its bankruptcy in 2009, its Cadillac division has been a work in progress with the introduction of new models during a rotating cast of executives.

But on Friday, G.M. made what is perhaps its strongest move yet to bring stability to its luxury division, hiring Johan de Nysschen from Nissan’s Infiniti to lead Cadillac in an increasingly crowded luxury car market.

Before joining Nissan in 2012, Mr. de Nysschen built his reputation at the German automaker Volkswagen, where he played a key role in transforming its Audi brand from an also-ran in the United States into a true competitor with BMW and Mercedes-Benz. G.M. has long harbored similar ambitions for Cadillac.

By taking the unusual step of hiring an executive from outside the company, G.M. is hoping that Mr. de Nysschen can bring some of his Audi magic to Cadillac.

“His track record proves he is the perfect executive to lead Cadillac for the long term,” said G.M.’s president, Dan Ammann.

But in recent years there has been nothing long-term about Cadillac’s executive suite, where top officials have come and gone while the division has sought to revamp its offerings and burnish an image tarnished by decades of neglect starting in the mid-1970s.

Its most recent top executive, Robert Ferguson, shifted responsibilities within G.M. recently and is now overseeing lobbying efforts in Washington, a role he previously held before taking over Cadillac two years ago.

Mr. de Nysschen, 54, inherits a division that has stumbled in the first half of the year, with sales down nearly 2 percent in the United States compared with the same period a year earlier, during a surging luxury car market. Its flat performance comes after a banner 2013, when Cadillac sales rose 22 percent in the United States.

His biggest challenge will be competing at the highest levels of the luxury car market, against BMW, Mercedes and Audi. To that end, Cadillac has introduced sport sedans like the CTS and the smaller ATS to critical praise.

Tim Fleming, an analyst for the auto research firm Kelley Blue Book, said that while the ATS got off to a decent start, it had a long way to go. “Judging by its sales performance, it’s still nowhere close,” Mr. Fleming said. “It did well for them last year, but this year is a different story. It’s going to take years to build the brand.”

A potential boost for Cadillac is the next-generation 2015 Escalade, which is arriving at dealerships as demand surges for sport utility vehicles.

David Caldwell, a spokesman for Cadillac, said that Mr. de Nysschen’s experience cracking new markets could be crucial to Cadillac’s future. That is especially true in China, where Cadillac sales surpassed 50,000 last year.

“We’ve gotten more serious about global growth,” Mr. Caldwell said. “We’ve made a few steps in that direction, but it’s about taking things to the next level.” He said G.M. hoped to surpass 100,000 Cadillacs in China.

Mr. de Nysschen said in a statement released by G.M. that he believed the corporate and engineering pieces were in place to “restore Cadillac to its place among global premium brands.”

The departure of Mr. de Nysschen, a native of South Africa, could be a setback for Infiniti, which has struggled to define its identity. Nissan’s chairman, Carlos Ghosn, was said to have lured Mr. de Nysschen to Infiniti two years ago with promises of unfettered resources and control to remake a vehicle lineup that had failed to distinguish itself.

But Jessica Caldwell, a senior analyst at Edmunds.com, said Infiniti continued to wrestle with an inferior reputation among many luxury buyers. “There’s a bit of a stigma that Infiniti is what you wind up with when you can’t get a BMW or Lexus,” she said.

Mr. de Nysschen will leave behind at least one legacy at Infiniti: A lot of vehicles starting with the letter Q. He was still at Audi in 2005 when Infiniti took Audi to court to prevent it from using Q in its vehicle names. The lawsuit was ultimately settled the following year, and an agreement was reached under which Audi was able to use Q only on two of its sport utility vehicles.

Cut to 2012, when Mr. de Nysschen switched teams and joined Infiniti: One of his first official acts was to rename the brand’s offerings so that all of them started with a Q.

A version of this article appears in print on July 12, 2014, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Seeking Revival, Cadillac Goes Outside for a Chief. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Your Money

The Weighty Responsibility of Inheriting a Collection

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Jaye Smith's mother, Carol Carlisle, collected hundreds of photos over her career as a photographer and managing editor of Popular Photography.

Wealth Matters

By PAUL SULLIVAN

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AFTER her mother died, Jaye Smith surveyed the boxes around the big, rambling house where she had lived on Staten Island for 50 years and thought, “We’ll worry about them later.”

Ms. Smith’s mother, Carol Carlisle, a photographer and a former managing editor of Popular Photography magazine, had collected hundreds of photos over her nearly 35-year career. While Ms. Smith, an executive coach, appreciated her mother’s eclectic collection, she didn’t know much about its quality. Then a friend asked if she could have one of her mother’s old photos.

“I had this one that was an old man with some bird cages,” she said. “I had an eye disease at the time. I handed it to her and she turned it over and said, ‘It has Cartier-Bresson’s stamp on the back.’ ”

Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the great photojournalists of the 20th century, and the old man in that photo was Henri Matisse, the painter. Ms. Smith was shocked and had it authenticated. It was real and Christie’s later sold it privately for more than $14,000.

Photo

Images by W. Eugene Smith were among the photographs that Jaye Smith found in her mother’s home. While she sold some, she is holding on to the rest.

That was when she took a closer look at her mother’s boxes. There were four more Cartier-Bresson photos, 64 photos by W. Eugene Smith and a shot of Lower Manhattan at night in 1932 by Berenice Abbott, a pioneering female photographer. That one sold for more than $50,000.

There were also 1,200 to 1,400 other photos she didn’t know what to do with.

“I realized I didn’t have the time or the skill to go through this,” she said. Fortunately she had a friend who knew a professional archivist.

Ms. Smith’s inheritance is unique in the value of the works she didn’t know about in her mother’s attic. But her initial feeling of being overwhelmed and uncertain about what to do with a family member’s collection, whether valuable or sentimental, is not.

“With everyone there is stuff,” said Sallie Bernard, an entrepreneur in Colorado, who faced such a task when her son Jamie, an aspiring artist, committed suicide at age 22. “But in Jamie’s case there was creative output. I didn’t know what to make of the artwork or the writings he left behind.”

After talking to friends who had inherited similar collections and been equally overwhelmed, she decided to do something about it. Through the James Kirk Bernard Foundation, which she and her husband established in their son’s memory, she funded the creation of POBA, a nonprofit group that will display portfolios online but will also help people organize, archive and value a collection they inherit. The organization’s name is derived from a Tibetan phrase meaning the transformation of consciousness at death to begin a new life.

“I wanted to preserve his creativity,” she said. “I realized there were many other people who had a similar need that I had.”

One of the services of POBA, which was introduced over the summer, is a guide for handling a collection, whether the value is financial, emotional or a mix of the two.

Nothing can be done until the collection is fully and carefully cataloged. “Most collections that are left to heirs are not well organized,” said Jennifer Cohen, managing partner of Songmasters, which developed and designed POBA. “Each art work should be listed: what medium, what dimensions, the year it was created.”

It is a tedious process and one that is easy to put off. That is what the family of Clark Tippet, a principal dancer of the American Ballet Theater and an award-winning choreographer, did with his choreography, portfolio and performance videos after he died of AIDS at age 37 in 1992.

“They were in my dad’s house in Parsons, Kan., upstairs, close to the attic, just boxes and boxes,” said Janie Tippet, one of Mr. Tippet’s sisters.

While another sister had handled the royalties for performing his ballets, no one had done anything with the sketches, notes, drawings and photos that went into creating those dances. There were also three boxes full of videotaped recordings of his dances.

With plans to retire in the fall, Ms. Tippet began organizing the material this year. “It was sometimes emotionally hard,” she said. “But I wanted to do it because he was a very important person in my life and I loved him very much.”

She doesn’t expect to get much, if any, money from the archive but hopes it can be donated to a ballet group that will preserve it for future dancers.

The second step is to make sure the archive is preserved properly. Mrs. Bernard hired Rick Schmidlin, a film producer who has worked on the archives of The Doors and the filmmaker Erich von Stroheim, to organize her son’s paintings and drawings. It cost her about $3,000 for eight days of his time and travel expenses, but the work is now stored in the proper folders and at the right temperature.

Ms. Smith said her archivist charged her $25 an hour.

Ms. Cohen said there were ways to preserve an archive for less money, including doing a lot of the cataloging and photography yourself. “The budget is not what’s going to drive things, but understanding the breadth of the estate,” she said.

Of course, a big question with any estate is its value. Is there one, and if so how can heirs best manage the sale of works? This area is challenging.

“When you have an estate that is valuable, either generated by a family member or inherited, there is a proclivity to group the materials and sell them quickly,” Ms. Cohen said. “You want to close the estate. There are many cases where the value of the artists’ estates are eroded because too many pieces are being sold at once.”

Berta Walker, who owns an art gallery in Provincetown, Mass., and has worked with many estates, said heirs needed to be patient and find the right representative. “The first thing I’d advise anyone is to find out what the area of expertise is,” Ms. Walker said. “If you’re trying to sell a California artist, probably coming to Provincetown is not going to be useful.”

Ms. Smith said that if she had one regret with her mother’s photos it was selling some of them as quickly as she did. “I got caught up in the enthusiasm of Christie’s and the sale,” she said. “My family needed the money at the time. Maybe I would have waited a little bit longer. I might have ended up keeping them.”

Yet at least Ms. Smith sold them through a reputable auction house. Mr. Schmidlin said that in his work in Hollywood he often came across children and grandchildren of celebrities who got fleeced out of their inheritance.

Unscrupulous dealers say “look what the ruby red slippers did,” he said, referring to the shoes Judy Garland wore in "The Wizard of Oz."The last time a pair was offered at auction the presale estimate was $2 million to $3 million, though they ended up selling privately for an undisclosed sum. Then, Mr. Schmidlin said, the dealers come back from the auction and say " ‘It didn’t do what the ruby red slippers did, but here’s a check for $150.’ They’ve lost a very valuable piece of family history.”

His advice is no different from advice given to avoid investment schemes that are too good to be true: Go slowly in finding the expert and be honest with yourself.

“A lot of time they have something that they think is worth something, but it isn’t worth that much,” he said. “So you have to think, Is it worth losing it or should you preserve it for generations?”

Ms. Smith said that three years after her mother’s death she was taking her time going through the rest of her mother’s photos. “There is a sentimental legacy for me,” she said. And that includes holding onto the W. Eugene Smith photos that she could probably sell.

“They’re quite beautiful and all postcard-size,” she said. “It would be fun to find a way to display them.”

Correction: September 19, 2014

An earlier version of this column misstated, because of erroneous information given the reporter, the fee for Mr. Schmidlin’s services. It was about $3,000, including travel expenses, not $8,000.

Make the most of your money. Every Monday get articles about retirement, saving for college, investing, new online financial services and much more. Sign up for the Your Money newsletter here.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: The Weighty Responsibility of Inheriting a Collection. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Clark Tippet, Choreographer, 37; Ballet Theater Principal Dancer

By JENNIFER DUNNING

Published: January 30, 1992

Clark Tippet, a choreographer and principal dancer with American Ballet Theater, died on Tuesday at the Labette County Medical Center in Parsons, Kan. He was 37 years old.

He died of AIDS, said Kelly Fowler, his sister.

Mr. Tippet stood out onstage for his strong dramatic presence and a witty sense of style and theatricality that made him believable in a wide range of ballets, from the demanding pyrotechnics of Prince Siegfried in "Swan Lake" to the second male lead's slippery fast-moving part in Twyla Tharp's "Push Comes to Shove" to the brooding High Brahman in "La Bayadere" to Carabosse, the evil fairy, in "The Sleeping Beauty." He was also a performer who could unobtrusively bring nuance and color to insignificant roles.

He was considered one of the most promising ballet choreographers to emerge in the last decade. In 1988, writing of his "Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1," Anna Kisselgoff, the chief dance critic of The New York Times, called the work "downright terrific." Inspiration From Friends and Music

Mr. Tippet came to choreography relatively late in his career. He created his first ballet, "Enough Said," in 1986, 14 years after he made his debut as a corps dancer with Ballet Theater. His ballets, which included five choreographed for Ballet Theater, had the practicality and unassuming individuality of his dancing. His inspirations came, he said in an interview in 1988, from the lives of his friends, from admired pieces of music and from his interest in exploring the qualities and distinctive skills of the Ballet Theater dancers he admired.

Mr. Tippet was born in Parsons and began his dance training at age 5. Six years later, he came to New York and enrolled at Thalia Mara's National Academy of Ballet. He was made a soloist at Ballet Theater in 1975 and was promoted to principal in 1976. Battling a drug problem, Mr. Tippet took a leave of absence from the company in 1978 but returned in 1982, dancing in ballets by Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Antony Tudor, Jerome Robbins, Martine van Hamel, David Gordon and David Parsons.

Mr. Tippet's works for Ballet Theater also included "S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A (The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America)," "Rigaudon" and "Some Assembly Required." He also created ballets for the Pacific Northwest Ballet of Seattle and the Kansas City Ballet.

In addition to his sister Kelly Fowler, of Strong City, Kan., he is survived by his parents, David C. and Virginia L. Tippet of Parsons; four brothers: Casey, of Parsons, David, of Houston, Tracy, of New York City, and Jon, of Dallas, and five other sister:, Christine Cooper of Clarksville, Tex.; Michele St. Clair of Parsons; Patti Nutt of Parsons; Janie, of Lawrence, Kan., and Marce Modica of Overland Park, Kan.

Photo: Clark Tippet (Kenn Duncan, 1983)

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Your Money | Your Money Adviser

Rule Changes Increase Flexibility in Pretax Health Care Accounts

By ANN CARRNSSEPT. 19, 2014

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AS open enrollment season approaches for those with workplace health benefits, employees may want to take a fresh look at health care flexible spending accounts, if their employers offer them, because the rules for the accounts have changed.

Flexible spending accounts, or F.S.A.s, can help save money by letting people use pretax dollars to pay for costs a health plan doesn’t cover. That might include dental care, fertility treatments or equipment like blood pressure monitors. About 14 million families participate in health F.S.A.s, the federal government estimates.

While roughly 85 percent of big employers offer health care F.S.A.s, fewer than a quarter of eligible employees use them, according to 2013 data from the benefits consultant Mercer. One deterrent was the “use it or lose it” rule: If you set aside part of your salary in an F.S.A. but didn’t spend it, you would forfeit it at the end of the year. Even though many employers allow a two-and-a-half-month grace period for workers to submit claims, many employees remained cautious.

That’s changing, however. Late last year, the Treasury relaxed the rules and gave employers the option of letting workers carry over unused F.S.A. balances of up to $500 into the next year. Some employers made the change right away, but adoption was limited because the rule was announced after open enrollment was already underway at many workplaces. More employers are expected to adopt the carry-over for 2015, which means their workers will be made aware of it this fall. “Every indication is that most are choosing to offer the rollover opportunity,” said Robert Natt, executive chairman of Alegeus Technologies, which provides payment systems for employers and benefits administrators that offer various tax-favored accounts.

Just how many will in fact make the switch, however, remains to be seen. Steve Wojcik, vice president for public policy at the National Business Group on Health, which represents large employers, said that of 60 members responding to an internal poll, more than a third said they would adopt the change for 2015, and roughly a quarter more said they were considering it.

At PrimePay, a payroll services and human resources consultant, participation has increased by 17 percent at clients that have already made the switch, said Steve Jackson, the company’s senior vice president for strategic development.

“I honestly think it will make people more comfortable about putting money into F.S.A.s,” said Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits for the Society of Human Resource Managers.

One caveat: More companies are offering high-deductible health insurance plans, which are often paired with tax-advantaged health savings accounts, or H.S.A.s, to help pay for costs the plans don’t cover. If you have an H.S.A., you can’t also have an F.S.A., said Roy Ramthun, a health benefits consultant — unless the flexible spending account is limited to certain categories, like vision or dental costs.

Here are some questions about F.S.A.s:

■ Does my employer have to offer the carry-over option?

No. It’s optional. Employers may choose to allow a grace period instead (but they can’t offer both a carry-over and a grace period). Employers also can set a cap on the carry-over amount below $500, if they choose. Check with your human resources department for details.

■ How much income can I set aside in an F.S.A.?

The maximum annual contribution is $2,500, adjusted for inflation; employers can set a lower cap, if they choose. (The I.R.S. hasn’t announced the 2015 limit, but it’s likely to be $2,500 or slightly higher, Mr. Natt said.) Minimum contributions vary by employer. The federal government, which recently announced it would adopt the carry-over option for employees starting in 2015, also lowered the minimum contribution to $100 from $250, to encourage more federal workers to use the F.S.A. benefit.

■ How should I decide how much to contribute to my F.S.A.?

If you know you’ll have a big expense, you may want to set aside the maximum amount allowed. If a child needs braces, for instance, you could spend $2,500 fairly quickly. If you’re unsure, you could stick with $500, or whatever carry-over your employer allows, since you won’t risk losing access to the funds. You can also try using an online contribution calculator like the one at FSAstore.com, a website that sells F.S.A.-eligible items.

■ If I carry over $500, can I still contribute the annual maximum?

Yes. The carry-over amount is in addition to the maximum contribution amount set by your employer. So if you carry over $500, and the maximum contribution is $2,500, you’ll have $3,000 available in your account.

Email: yourmoneyadviser@nytimes.com

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A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Rule Changes Increase Flexibility in Pretax Health Care Accounts. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Business Day | Retiring

A 50th High School Reunion, and a Generation to Follow

By ROBERT STRAUSSSEPT. 19, 2014

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Barbara Smith Lombardi, left, and Gail Tanner-Skinner, center, on the dance floor at their 50th high school reunion in Cherry Hill, N.J.

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CHERRY HILL, N.J. — TONI DEGIROLAMO and Dick Worthington had been seeing each other for a while when they decided to go on a date to the Garden State Drive-In a half-century ago.

“We started smooching and looked up, and there was one of our teachers in the next car. A little uncomfortable,” Mr. Worthington, 68, said with a chuckle, as he reminisced recently about that evening.

Now they have been married for 45 years, and drive-in movies are mostly a distant memory. Today the drive-in spot is occupied by the Crowne Plaza hotel, where the Worthingtons, along with about 100 former classmates, gathered on a recent Saturday night for the 50th reunion of their Cherry Hill High School West graduating class.

Fiftieth reunions are not new, of course. They’ve been celebrated for decades — by small numbers at first, and larger numbers as more people lived long enough to put a party together. But this year, there is one difference: The Class of 1964 is the first graduating class of the post-World War II baby boom and the leading edge of the generation retreating — however reluctantly — from the center stage to the backlot of retirement.

Photo

Barbara Smith-Lombardi, center, with classmates Margie Masterosonato-Colby and Eugene Rambler.

When they graduated from high school, the Vietnam War was escalating, the Beatles were arriving, the cities were burning from the rage of race riots and Cassius Clay was becoming Muhammad Ali. Today, a black man is president, the climate is changing and the millennials are taking over.

Two future presidents were among the graduates that year — George W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton, although neither attended his 50th reunion, apparently. So were future stars like Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton and Dolly Parton.

Some of the graduates, like Mrs. Worthington, who moved to Cherry Hill from Camden, N.J., at age 15, started life in the cities and became part of the great suburban migration that helped create prosperous post-World War II communities like Cherry Hill, where housing tracts and shopping malls replaced the sprawling acres of family farms that had helped create New Jersey’s reputation as the Garden State.

Even without the special milestone this year, it’s not unusual for 50th high school reunions to be big sellers, said Dan Gottlieb, a psychologist and host of the program “Voices in the Family” on the Philadelphia National Public Radio affiliate WHYY, who comments on social trends.

People attend this one who have never gone before.

“I think there is an unspoken message. You don’t know whether you will ever see any of these people again,” said Mr. Gottlieb, adding that he reconnected with about 50 people at his Atlantic City High School 50th reunion this summer.

In Cherry Hill, Jean Benenson Hummel, 68, had never been to any of her reunions at the Cherry Hill High School West class of 1964, even though she lives only 15 miles away in the small town of Atco, N.J. (Back then there was only one high school. Now there is also a Cherry Hill High School East.)

But this year was different. “It’s hard to pin down,” she said by way of describing her lack of interest in the earlier gatherings. “Maybe I just didn’t know about some of them. Maybe I avoided it for no reason. But for some reason, when I found out we were having a 50th, I got all set to go.”

Mike Saltzburg, star baseball pitcher; Tommy May, all-South Jersey lineman; and basketball star Bill DeAngelis, a member of the Athletic Hall of Fame, were there, too. So was Susan Scott, now a United Church of Christ health care minister. “Back then, I was a little more conservative and tried to convert people,” she recalled. Katherine Goddard Adams and Ellen Glassman, who still live in town, were there, but so were classmates who flew in from California, Florida and the Midwest.

Barbara Smith-Lombardi, who became the committee chairwoman for the Cherry Hill reunion, had not been to any since her 25th, even though they had been celebrated every five years. Someone in the class obtained her email and got in touch, Ms. Smith-Lombardi said.

“It got around to talking about whether we would have a 50th and he said, ‘If you go, I will,’ ” she said. Then another friend encouraged her to organize it. “It’s funny, I was never that person in high school, but once I started looking up people, I couldn’t stop. Maybe it was just completing a cycle I wanted to do.”

Photo

Members of the Cherry Hill High School West class of 1964 pose for pictures.

Although there is only anecdotal evidence, Jane Bluestein, author of “High School’s Not Forever” said more people seemed to want to attend reunions after 25 or 50 years, the so-called round numbers, but especially as it gets later in life.

“I frankly think there shouldn’t be reunions until, say, the 40th,” said Ms. Bluestein, who graduated from high school in 1969 in York, Pa., has a doctorate in education and now lives in Albuquerque.

High school, she said, is a troubling time for many, in its whole or in part, and it may take awhile to realize that life after high school is not predicated on the things that matter during those years.

“We are all going through a lot of changes — physically, hormonally and psychologically. We are trying to have autonomy, but our needs for that are rarely met,” she said of the high school years. “But some time afterwards you know you wouldn’t walk behind someone you work with and make fun of him or criticize the shape of friends’ bodies in front of them. When you are finally over all that, then it’s time to attend a reunion.”

Bob Marshall, a former Time Inc. lawyer, was chairman of the 1964 reunion at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.. It was a full-weekend affair attended by 103 of the 240 in the graduating class that included George W. Bush.

President Bush was not there, but at his father’s 90th birthday party in Kennebunkport, Me., instead. Nonetheless, the turnout was striking, Mr. Marshall said.

He attributed the attendance in part to the fact that the school was an all-male boarding school at the time. Unlike those who go to a day school and live at home, he said, he and his friends had closer bonds for having been with each other 24 hours a day.

“But the main thing I heard was that this would maybe be the last one someone would come to and the last chance to see those people who created the memories,” said Mr. Marshall. “People aren’t, say, going to come to a 55th and then stop. You have to be realistic. Your lives change now, and you’re not as likely to come from California or Canada for something like this.”

No one in the Cherry Hill class was as famous as Mr. Bush, but the classmates reveled in the notable alums they had. On the “In Memory” board with 54 other deceased classmates was Andrea Dworkin, the feminist known for her writings against pornography. And Mr. DeAngelis did get to play one season, 1970-71, with the Nets when that team was in the American Basketball Association.

“We had a lot of people who have had good lives. It was the baby boom and our parents mostly came out of the city to Cherry Hill to give us the best of things,” Ms. Smith-Lombardi said. “Fifty years later, it looks like that worked.”

Facebook, email and other forms of social media have enhanced the urge to come to a 50th reunion, said Ms. Bluestein.

“I have realized that a lot of the people I have reconnected with through Facebook are interesting people,” said Ms. Bluestein, who is president of the education consulting firm Instructional Support Services Inc. “I think that in the last few years, that has happened to a lot of people, and it enhances the idea of coming to a 50th” — to see your almost-new friends, or at least the ones you have reconnected with that way.

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A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: A 50th High School Reunion, and a Generation to Follow. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Your Money |NYT Now

Barred From Facebook, and Wondering Why

SEPT. 19, 2014

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“It was a Kafkaesque thing,” said Michael Letwin, of Brooklyn, after he discovered his Facebook account had been disabled.

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By ALINA TUGEND

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MICHAEL LETWIN, a lawyer living in Brooklyn, went to sign into his Facebook account, as he does almost daily, and received a surprising — and unpleasant — message.

“Your account has been disabled,” it said. “If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our F.A.Q. page.” Mr. Letwin, who besides his personal page also helps administer a Facebook page for the group Jews for Palestinian Right of Return, clicked onto the F.A.Q. page and found a reference to Facebook’s community standards, none of which he felt he violated, along with the option to appeal.

He did. And then he waited. And waited.

Mr. Letwin’s situation is not unusual, or new. The question of what role social media companies should play — a hands-off observer that steps in only in extreme circumstances, or a curator that decides what goes up and what comes down — has long been debated.

Recently, Twitter refused to allow posts with links to videos of the beheading of the American journalist James Foley. Facebook is involved in a battle with drag queens whose accounts were disabled because they used their stage names in their profiles. Using anything but your real name is a violation of the company’s rules. The furor led this week to a meeting with Facebook representatives and a news conference called by a San Francisco supervisor.

“We don’t realize how ingrained Facebook is in our everyday lives,” a drag queen named Heklina told KNTV in San Jose, Calif. “I was shut out of Facebook for 24 hours and felt like I had a limb chopped off.”

But few users, until they are faced with a similar situation, are aware of how little control they actually have over something they view as their own — their pages, their posts, their photos.

“When Facebook makes a termination decision, it’s potentially life-altering for some people,” said Eric Goldman, a professor of law at Santa Clara University in California and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute there. “They’re cut off to access to their communities” and possibly to their clients.

That is not to say that Professor Goldman thinks social media platforms should be completely unregulated. And, he said, Facebook and other social media companies largely do a good job of monitoring so many users and posts.

His and others’ main criticism focuses on transparency.

“The average person’s soapbox is now digital, and we’re now in a world where the large social media companies have a governmentlike ability to set social norms,” said Lee Rowland, a staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s a massive power and it comes with a responsibility.”

These questions arise with all social media, but the relationship users have with Facebook is particularly passionate, Professor Goldman said. Even as some say its impact is waning, it still provides 1.3 billion people — compared, say, to Twitter’s 271 million active monthly users — with access to news about their friends and to community groups.

“Our goal has always been to strike an appropriate balance between the interests of people who want to express themselves and the interests of others who may not want to see certain kinds of content,” Monika Bickert, head of Facebook’s global policy management, wrote in an email.

Social media companies have every legal right to take down content or kick someone off, said Danielle Citron, a professor of law at the University of Maryland School of Law.

Facebook, like other social media companies, has a list of standards that users agree to abide by when they set up their accounts, even if they never read the standards.

Among other things, they prohibit posting of hate speech (which means individuals or groups cannot attack others based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition), encouragements of self-harm, graphic content or threats of violence. And the user’s real name must be used.

Anyone can easily file a report against a user. And Facebook has hundreds of people working globally, around the clock and in 30 languages, reading and responding to reports of violations.

Obviously, many of these categories are open to interpretation. Breast-feeding, for example, is something Facebook has grappled with in the past — essentially, how much of the breast can you show before it becomes graphic?

If Facebook decides to remove content, it sends a warning to the user about the action. People can also be locked out temporarily for a few days or a week. Grounds for immediately disabling an account include using a fake name or promoting child exploitation.

But Heather Dorsey, who lives in Milwaukee, had not done any of those things when she found herself barred from logging onto Facebook three years ago.

“My profile didn’t break any rules. I hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary prior to getting temporarily kicked off,” she wrote in an email. “It was frustrating not knowing how long it was going to take to get the issue resolved, as I do use Facebook to stay connected, particularly with friends and relatives who live out of town. I am a freelance writer and social media consultant, so it was also an issue for my work.”

She tried to call, but ended up in an endless circle of recordings. She found an email address for advertisers and contacted it, asking what she had done wrong. And as suddenly as she was taken off, she was allowed back on.

In 2012, the website Gawker published a far more detailed list of Facebook’s Abuse Standards Violations used by the company’s regulators. Facebook refused to confirm that the list was valid.

While the community standards are global, the company does obey a country’s laws.

For example, visually or verbally insulting Turkey’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, is illegal in Turkey. If Facebook is notified of such a post, it limits the visibility of that post in Turkey. The same with Holocaust denial in countries where that is against the law.

Facebook would not release the number of reports it receives nor how much content it takes down. But it does not take more than a quick search on the Internet to see that many users are confounded when they try to log in and find they cannot.

That includes the American Civil Liberties Union. The organization last year posted a photo of a bare-chested bronze female statue in an article on its Facebook page about controversial public art in Kansas.

Facebook took the post down, telling the organization that it had violated Facebook’s community standards. It then blocked the A.C.L.U. from posting for 24 hours, contending it had posted again, which it had not.

Once the A.C.L.U. contacted Facebook’s public policy manager, apologies were given and the post was allowed back up. But as Ms. Rowland said, “Our ultimate success is cold comfort for anyone who has a harder time getting their emails returned than does the A.C.L.U.”

Professor Citron, author of “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace,” said of Facebook, “I think it’s a positive thing that they’re allowed to set community norms.” The problem is a lack of “technological due process,” she said.

Ms. Bickert of Facebook acknowledged that “one area where we’re focusing is improving the information we share with people about our community standards and when we take action on reported content.”

For Mr. Letwin, that can’t come soon enough. A month after his account was disabled, he received an email apologizing, saying it had all been a mistake on Facebook’s part.

A Facebook spokesman said a report was filed against Mr. Letwin for using a fake name, which he had not done, and a reviewer looking at his account then mistakenly thought it violated Facebook’s standards regarding promotion of violence and terrorism. But the process took far longer than it should have, he acknowledged, saying that typically, an appeal should be responded to within a few days.

“It was a Kafkaesque thing,” Mr. Letwin said. “You don’t know if you did too many posts, too many likes. The rules are constantly changing.”

Email: shortcuts@nytimes.com

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A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: Barred From Facebook, and Wondering Why. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Business Day

Exxon Halts Oil Drilling in Waters of Russia

By CLIFFORD KRAUSSSEPT. 19, 2014

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Exxon Mobil announced on Friday that it was winding down its $700 million exploration in Russia’s Kara Sea, the first major sign that Western sanctions are biting into the company’s ambitious plans to explore for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean.

The drilling suspension came a few days after the latest round of sanctions by Washington and the European Union that ordered companies to cut off help to Russian oil exploration in the Arctic, as well as in deep water and shale fields, all of which require advanced technology. The escalating sanctions are intended to punish Moscow for its involvement in the turmoil embroiling Ukraine.

The drilling suspension will not immediately affect oil production for Exxon Mobil or its Russian partner, Rosneft, since the project is aimed at exploring for the presence of oil in the Arctic field and deciding if future production will be economically feasible. But the drilling suspension, should it be lasting, would potentially hurt Russian production in the next decade.

The Treasury Department put a deadline of next Friday for companies like Exxon Mobil to “wind down applicable transactions” with five big Russian energy companies: Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Lukoil, Surgutneftegas and Rosneft. An Exxon Mobil spokesman, Richard Keil, said the company had asked the Treasury Department to give it some time to safely remove equipment from the drill site and wind down operations. The department, he said, gave its approval.

“The license recognizes the need to protect the safety of the individuals involved in these operations as well as the risk to the environment,” Mr. Keil said. “All activities related to the winding down will proceed as safely and expeditiously as possible.”

Rosneft declined to comment. But officials involved in the exploration said drilling operations would have had to be suspended in a few weeks anyway as the Arctic freezes up and winter weather impedes safe operations.

Exxon currently has small oil production operations in Russia. Its primary business is a partnership on Sakhalin Island with Rosneft, Sodeco of Japan and O.N.G.C. of India, and that operation should continue unimpeded by the sanctions. Exxon’s portion of production there is a mere 50,000 barrels a day, a small fraction of its 2.1 million barrels the company produces worldwide.

But the American company has ambitious goals in Russia, particularly in the Arctic, where it hopes to produce meaningful amounts of oil and gas by 2025. Exxon had moved a rig there this summer, and the exploratory drilling efforts had just gotten underway.

The Eurasia Group, the New York-based political risk consultancy, recently issued a report predicting that the sanctions would force foreign oil and oil service companies “to scale back operations and reassess their commitments to the Russian market” and that “Russian companies increasingly will have to turn to domestic and Asian sources of financing and alternative technologies to keep up production.”

China, South Korea and Singapore have modern oil industries with various capabilities for drilling in shale and offshore, much of it gained from working with Western companies. Some of their companies will probably work with Russia. But energy experts say they do not have the full range of capabilities to replace companies like Exxon when it comes to the most challenging oil and gas fields.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Exxon Halts Oil Drilling in Waters of Russia. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Alibaba’s Shares Close Up 38% on First Day of Trading

By William Alden

September 19, 2014 6:32 amSeptember 19, 2014 6:32 am

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The Alibaba Group, the e-commerce giant, closed the day at $93.89 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, up 38 percent from its initial public offering price in a strong trading debut. The stock began the day at $92.70 a share.

Alibaba has captured the attention of American investors, politicians and consumers to an extent that is unusual for a company that does much of its business in China.

Apart from making its insiders rich and providing fees to Wall Street, the initial public offering reflects the rise of China’s consumer class. Investors see it as perhaps the best chance yet to buy into the country’s growth.

DealBook followed Alibaba’s market debut:

4:25 P.M. Calculating Yahoo’s Value

Alibaba’s stock debut has breathed new life into one of the stock market’s favorite parlor games.

Yahoo owns a large stake in Alibaba, which has led to a debate over what Yahoo will be worth once it sells its Alibaba holding. The exercise can be cruel to Yahoo. Using Alibaba’s Friday stock price, Yahoo’s remaining stake in the company has a stock market value today of about $38 billion.

Some people subtract that sum from Yahoo’s market capitalization of $41 billion and then assert that the remaining $3 billion is the value that investors are effectively ascribing to Yahoo’s core operations. Though Yahoo has problems, that $3 billion appears too low. It would only value the company at around 2.4 times the $1.23 billion of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, that analysts expect Yahoo to make this year.

So what explains the odd result? Perhaps the market believes Yahoo will liquidate its Alibaba stake for less than its current value on the stock market. Under this exercise, the less the stake is ultimately worth to Yahoo, the more Yahoo’s core operations are worth.

One way that Yahoo gets less from the stake is if it has to pay substantial amounts of taxes as it sells its holdings. If Yahoo gets hit by a tax rate of, say, 25 percent on the holding, it would net Yahoo $28 billion, not $38 billion.

Subtracting $28 billion from Yahoo’s $41 billion stock market value, in theory, implies that its core operations are worth roughly $13 billion. That is about 10.5 times the forecast for Yahoo’s 2014 Ebitda. In some ways, that multiple looks pricey; it’s nearly double that of AOL. On the other hand, it is below Google’s 15.5 times multiple.

As you can see, this is no more than a parlor game.

— Peter Eavis

4:10 P.M. Unofficial Closing Price: $93.89

Alibaba has closed the trading day at $93.89 a share, a 38 percent increase over the I.P.O. price. Anyone who bought shares at the start of trading this morning, however, would end up with a gain of just over 1 percent.

At the close, Alibaba has a market capitalization of $231 billion.

The stock experienced heavy volume during the day, with more than 270 million shares changing hands.

The Jack Ma Way

By DAVID BARBOZA

Alibaba, started by Jack Ma in 1999, is about to sell shares in the United States that could value the company at about $160 billion.

— William Alden

3:48 P.M. Another Asian Magnate’s Wealth Rises Handsomely

Even as all eyes were on Jack Ma, another Asian magnate also roamed the stock exchange floor on Friday.

That would be Masayoshi Son, the chief executive of the Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank. His company is the largest shareholder in Alibaba, with a 32.4 percent stake.

Mr. Son, a director of Alibaba, is a close ally and friend of Mr. Ma’s. He told Bloomberg TV that he was in New York for Alibaba’s debut because it was a “historic moment.” SoftBank held onto all of its shares in the I.P.O.

But Alibaba’s public listing signaled a more profound shift in the relationship between the two men. While Mr. Son has traditionally been among the most visible power players from Asia, Mr. Ma is now stepping out onto a global stage.

Mr. Son, who is now estimated by Bloomberg to be the richest man in Japan, recently experienced a public disappointment when Sprint, which SoftBank controls, failed to carry out a merger with T-Mobile US.

Mr. Ma’s star, meanwhile, is on the rise, reflecting also the emergence of China as an economic power.

— William Alden

1:27 P.M. Why Yahoo’s Stock Is Falling

Even as the value of its Alibaba stake rose, investors punished Yahoo as the day wore on.

Yahoo, which became a big investor in Alibaba in 2005, raised about $8.3 billion in cash (before taxes) by selling 121.7 million shares via Alibaba’s I.P.O. last night. It still owns a 16.3 percent stake, worth $37.2 billion at the start of trading this morning.

That’s a huge number, particularly when compared with Yahoo’s market capitalization, which stood at about $42 billion at Thursday’s close.

But Yahoo’s stock was down about 4 percent by the early afternoon to just above $40 a share, pushing the market capitalization to about $40.2 billion. Trading volume in the stock was more than six times higher than the three-month average.

One clue to the investor reaction might lie in Yahoo’s trading activity in the months before the I.P.O. Investors had treated Yahoo as a way to bet on the still-private Alibaba. Now, that dynamic has changed.

“You no longer need to own Yahoo as a proxy for Alibaba. You no longer need to tangle up your fortunes with that management team and the core business,” said Colin W. Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial who covers Yahoo.

Yahoo has said it plans to return at least half of the cash it raised from the I.P.O. to shareholders. But its plans for its remaining stake in Alibaba are less certain.

“Who knows when that gets sold,” Mr. Gillis said, “or what price it gets sold at?”

After Huge Alibaba Payday, a Test for Yahoo Executives

By VINDU GOEL

Marissa Mayer, chief of Yahoo, will have to prove to Wall Street that she has a plan to save the company after it sells its stake in Alibaba.

— William Alden

1:21 P.M. Facebook Is Valued More by One Measure

Alibaba’s soaring debut on the stock market has given the company an overall value of about $223 billion. As others have pointed out, that value exceeds even Facebook’s market capitalization of $200 billion.

But from another perspective, Facebook is far ahead. The social network company’s market value is 83 times larger than its earnings for the 12 months through the end of June.

For Alibaba, that multiple is 45 times, roughly half that of Facebook. Because the two companies have similar growth prospects and profit margins, they should in theory trade at similar multiples. The fact that Alibaba has a lower valuation suggests that investors have reservations about the Chinese company that they don’t have about Facebook. Investors may want to see a longer track record of earnings growth before awarding Alibaba a higher multiple. A “China discount” may also be to blame.

It’s already harder for investors to understand foreign businesses. But such concerns may be compounded for Chinese companies. Accounting scandals have hit Chinese firms, and their auditors typically aren’t inspected by the American auditor regulator. Chinese firms also have unusual corporate structures that prevent foreign investors from taking a proper ownership stake in the companies.

Then again, investors can talk themselves into buying any stock if they think it is going to keep going up. And Friday’s rise may be all the convincing they need.

— Peter Eavis

1:04 P.M. Midday Retreat

Shares of Alibaba jumped in early trading and were soon testing $100.

The stock price has now come down a bit, trading closer to $90 a share after more than an hour following its debut. That still represents a first-day pop of some 33 percent from its initial public offering price of $68. Trading is heavy, with more than 165 million shares changing hands.

— Jeffrey Cane

12:50 P.M. Yahoo Executives Take Part in the Raucousness

Alibaba’s huge initial public offering generated a lot of money for the few investors who sold shares, but none made more on an absolute basis than Yahoo, which reaped about $8.3 billion.

So naturally, executives from the American Internet company were on hand to take part in the pricing celebration that engulfed the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. Standing inside Barclays’ post on the floor — specifically Post Eight, continuing Alibaba’s fascination with lucky numbers — were Ken Goldman, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, and Jacqueline Reses, the company’s chief deal maker and a director on Alibaba’s board.

As the discussions in the booth swelled closer to the pricing, Mr. Goldman and Ms. Reses joked with officials from the Big Board and top bankers from Alibaba’s six lead underwriters. Among those in the booth cracking wise were James B. Lee Jr., vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase, and Daniel Dees, a co-head of technology, media and telecommunications investment banking at Goldman Sachs.

— Michael J. de la Merced

12:19 P.M. Alibaba Worth More Than Facebook

Alibaba started trading with a market capitalization of about $228.5 billion, making it more valuable than Facebook and Amazon but not nearly as large as Google. Here are the market caps of some other tech giants, as of around noon on Friday:

LinkedIn: $25.6 billion

Twitter: $30.8 billion

eBay: $65.5 billion

Amazon: $151.7 billion

Facebook: $200 billion

Google: $400.3 billion

— William Alden

12:00 P.M. Getting Out of Alibaba’s Way

Photo

Jack Ma, Alibaba’s co-founder, celebrated the ringing of the bell from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

Who wants to compete with Alibaba? Almost no one, judging by the market for initial public offerings.

Alibaba’s I.P.O. was so enormous, the attention it commanded in recent weeks so overwhelming, that the rest of the market essentially ground to a halt ahead of the Chinese company’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

‘It’s a bad idea to go public on the same day as Alibaba,” said Matt Kennedy, an analyst with Renaissance Capital, which tracks I.P.O.s.

In the previous week, just four other companies priced their public offerings, all of them small health care companies. Meanwhile, more than dozen companies are expected to go public next week, once Alibaba is out of the way.

“Some companies have avoided going public this week because of all the hoopla with Alibaba,” said Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida.

Citizens Financial originally hoped to list this week, but delayed to make room for Alibaba. The bank now plans to raise as much as $3.5 billion next week.

Wayfair, a Boston-based technology company, had also considered this week for its stock market debut, but pushed the timing back so as not to be overshadowed by Alibaba.

As Alibaba’s chief executive, Jack Ma, led his company’s roadshow over the last week, other company chieftains wisely chose not to compete for the focus of institutional investors.

“Alibaba is naturally getting all the attention,” Mr. Kennedy said. “People are excited about the deal and spending all their time getting information about it.”

As for the few biotechnology companies that did price this past week, those shares are typically bought not by portfolio managers at big institutional investors, but by managers of smaller funds. “They wouldn’t be on the same radar,” said Mr. Kennedy. “It’s a different investor.”

Besides not wanting to compete with Alibaba for attention, other companies on the cusp of going public didn’t want to compete for institutional investors’ dollars. In advance of Alibaba’s listing, some portfolio mangers have had to sell out of other tech companies to make room for Alibaba in their funds.

Indeed, the $21.8 billion raised by Alibaba was equal to all the I.P.O.s in the first six months of this year, according to Mr. Ritter. For smaller technology companies looking to go public this month, that means there might be little appetite from investors who have just gorged on Alibaba shares.

Nonetheless, the market for new public offerings is as strong as it has been since the dot-com boom. There have been 195 I.P.O.s this year, up 34 percent from last year, according to Renaissance Capital. And after a slow summer for new listings that followed a roaring start to the year, executives at the major exchanges are anticipating a busy end of the year.

The New York Stock Exchange is expected to list Citizens, Medley Management and Vantage Energy next week. Nasdaq, which missed out on the Alibaba I.P.O., plans to list as least 10 new companies over the next two weeks, including Civitas Therapeutics, Revo Biologics and Vitae Pharmaceuticals.

“We’re going to end the year on an incredibly strong note,” said Nelson Griggs, head of new listings at Nasdaq. “The pipeline is exceptionally strong.”

— David Gelles

11:56 A.M. The Start of Trading

Alibaba has started trading at $92.70 a share around 11:53 a.m., nearly two and a half hours after the market opened.

The opening price is a 36 percent jump above the initial public offering price, reflecting investors’ hunger for the shares. The company starts trading with a market valuation of $228.5 billion.

— William Alden

11:10 A.M. Stewart: The Numbers Behind Alibaba’s Story

Alibaba has a compelling story to tell investors, but the underlying numbers may give some investors pause, James B. Stewart writes in the Common Sense column in The New York Times.

For example, at $68 a share, Alibaba’s price-to-earnings ratio is just over 40. EBay, a roughly comparable company, has had an average P/E ratio a little over 26, Mr. Stewart writes:

Thinking Twice on Alibaba

By JAMES B. STEWART

What excites investors in Alibaba isn’t just its size, but its prospects of getting bigger. But is it reasonable to assume its dominance will persist?

11:04 A.M. SoftBank Chief’s Outlook

In an interview with CNBC, Masayoshi Son, the chief of SoftBank and a director of Alibaba, shared his optimism for the Internet giant, as well as Japan and China’s economy:

10:37 A.M. Jack Ma on Spending His Billions and Forrest Gump

Mr. Ma spoke with CNBC immediately following the ringing of the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. He described how he plans to spend his own personal wealth.

… compared the infrastructure of commerce in the U.S. verses in China …

… and said that his hero is Forrest Gump.

10:25 A.M. In China, Alibaba’s New Campus Sets Up for a Big Party

Photo

A re-creation of the facade of the New York Stock Exchange outside of Alibaba's campus in Hangzhou, China.

Over the course of its 15-year history, Alibaba has struggled to separate itself from a reputation for selling fake products online.

On Friday, the day of its listing, it finally has a fake that will inspire pride: A recreation of the facade of the New York Stock Exchange.

The structure, which has been put up in the main courtyard of the company’s new campus in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, will serve as the center of festivities Friday evening local time, when the company lists in New York.

Though China’s state-run companies are usually quite conservative, the mostly private technology sector is anything but, and over the years Alibaba and its co-founder, Jack Ma, have earned a reputation for throwing a good party.

Mr. Ma, who is known to croon karaoke ballads at the company’s festivals, was in New York with a group of executives and Chinese reporters for the listing. Still, the company’s employees, some of whom will soon be millionaires, will ring in the listing by watching a live feed from New York at the campus.

Despite that, two employees said that the mood on the campus was subdued, with many hard at work on Friday morning.

One employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company, said that employees at the campus were generally calm.

“It’s not too different from normal,” said the person, who has worked for seven years for Alibaba and is a senior information technology engineer.

“It’s not as important as the outside world has made it, and we are super busy, like always,” he said, adding that light rain in Hangzhou was dampening the mood as well.

Another employee in the company’s branding department, Zhao Xiuzhi, said the mood was generally happy, but not overly ecstatic.

“Today we feel quite happy,” she said. “Everyone is wearing the same T-shirt, which gives a feeling of having accomplished something together.” She added: “Plus, tomorrow’s a Saturday, so I feel relaxed.”

Photos of the white T-shirts the employees received spread widely on social media in China. “One must have dreams” was printed on the front, and “What if they come true?” was on the back.

Ms. Zhao said she felt tranquil about the money she would earn and also said she was too busy to think too much about the celebrations that night. “But I do feel lucky, since it is the first time I have a chance to witness one company’s I.P.O. event.”

In Hong Kong, senior bankers were taking on jobs usually left to junior employees to get in on the action of what was seen as a historic occasion, according to one banker working on the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“All bankers working on this I.P.O. have been demoted a few rungs,” the banker said. “You got managing directors doing associate and analyst-level work. It’s like the deal has some sort of mystical power over everyone and all are just acolytes at the altar of Jack Ma and Alibaba.”

— Paul Mozur and Shanshan Wang

10:15 A.M. Caution on Alibaba’s Future

Alibaba is projected by many on Wall Street to perform well on its first day. But anyone thinking of buying into the stock should be mindful of the considerable long-term risks. DealBook’s Peter Eavis explored some of the issues. Among them:

* Alibaba’s corporate structure is highly opaque. The entity going public, the Alibaba Group, is not based in the United States but in the Cayman Islands. Investors buying into Alibaba will not get a true ownership stake in Alibaba’s operating businesses; instead, the Alibaba Group merely has contractual rights to profits from the businesses.

* Alibaba’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCooper’s affiliate in Hong Kong, is not subject to inspections by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which regulates audit firms.

* Alibaba went on a buying spree in the second quarter, spending a total of $1.85 billion, more than the $1.64 billion in cash flows from the company’s operations. Some of the deals raised eyebrows. And after buying a movie production company, Alibaba said that it might have found accounting irregularities at the firm, suggesting it did not adequately vet the deal.

* Although the company is dominant today, its future is not certain. Unlike Amazon, Alibaba does not consume lots of cash holding inventory, and it has not used up cash to build a fully fledged distribution network. Rivals like JD.com are building their own networks. If Alibaba were to follow suit, it would be a punitively expensive undertaking.

Rush to Invest in Alibaba, but Concerns Linger About Company’s Future

By PETER EAVIS

Once the so-called smart money piles into a stock, it’s usually time to start asking dumb questions. And with Alibaba, there are many.

— William Alden

9:46 A.M. Employees and Executives at N.Y.S.E.

A huge crowd of Alibaba employees and partners were in a cordoned-off area just under the balcony where eight Alibaba customers were to ring the bell. Among the crowd was Jack Ma, the Internet titan’s executive chairman, and Joseph Tsai, the executive vice chairman, both tieless and looking relaxed.

Many of the employees wore white T-shirts with a blue “Tao doll,” the mascot of Alibaba’s Taobao market, over collared shirts. Selfies and snapshots were taken repeatedly, with the company’s general counsel, Timothy Steinert, featured in a few. Michael Yao, the company’s head of corporate finance, enthusiastically whipped out his smartphone and snapped some photos.

The pen grew so crowded that minders repeatedly sought to thin the crowd, but to little avail. At one point, the crowd was urged to squeeze in “like in a subway train.”

— Michael J. de la Merced

9:42 A.M. Jack Ma on the Floor, Not at the Bell

Jack Ma was the New York Stock Exchange at the market open. But he didn’t ring the opening bell.

Eight customers of Alibaba rang the bell on the company’s behalf. Alibaba says this shows its “customers first” ethos. It also reflects the importance of the number 8.

The customers include an American farmer, a Chinese delivery courier, an Olympic gold medalist and a customer service representative for Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace.

— William Alden

9:28 A.M. Alibaba’s Lucky Numbers

There are plenty of important numbers to keep in mind when analyzing Alibaba. But a few stand out: 6, 9 and especially 8.

Consider how many 8’s appear in the stock offering. The roadshow for the I.P.O. kicked off the week of Sept. 8. The deal priced on Sept. 18. The price was set at $68 a share.

If you dig into Alibaba’s prospectus, there are more 8’s, 9’s and 6’s. The company had 18 founders. Its holding company was established on June 28, 1999 (6/28/99). A credit facility it obtained last year was worth $8 billion.

The pattern is no coincidence. The number 8 is considered lucky in Chinese culture. The word for eight in Mandarin, “ba,” rhymes with the word for prosper, “fa.” (The Beijing Olympics — in 2008 — began at 8 p.m. on the eighth day of August, the eighth month of the year.)

Alibaba just so happens to contain two “eights” in its name.

Reports this summer said Alibaba was considering scheduling its trading debut for Aug. 8, or 8/8, a date the company saw as auspicious.

But a debut in September, the ninth month, is also significant. The number 9 is considered desirable because it sounds the same as the word for long lasting, “jiu.”

The number 6 is popular as well. It can signify longevity or joy, depending on the dialect.

A string of these numbers is even better. Consider, then, the market value Alibaba achieved last night: $168 billion.

— William Alden

9:16 A.M. The Whale of the I.P.O. Market

The trading debut of Alibaba Group comes at a time when the market for initial public offerings has been robust.

At $21.8 billion, Alibaba’s offering is the largest in the United States, topping the I.P.O.s of Visa, Facebook and General Motors. But to really get a sense to how enormous Alibaba is, consider that the market value of the Chinese e-commerce company is nearly as big as the market value of the entire American I.P.O. market so far this year.

With its shares priced at $68 each, Alibaba has a market value of about $168 billion. The combined market value of the 154 companies based in the United States that have already gone public this year is $180.5 billion, says Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ, a research firm.

Fully diluted, Alibaba’s market value is $176 billion at $68 a share, says Renaissance Capital, an I.P.O research firm. That would make Alibaba among the top 25 most valuable companies listed in the United States, it says.

— Jeffrey Cane

9:06 A.M. Who Got In at the Debut Price?

Word is already emerging on who managed to snag shares in Alibaba’s I.P.O., and unsurprisingly, the biggest of the big investors prevailed.

The company and its underwriters allocated the vast majority of shares from the offering to “strategic partners” like mutual funds, according to people briefed on the matter. More than 50 percent of the stock went to the biggest accounts, one of these people said.

Behind the allocation, these people said, was a desire to create a solid base of investors willing to stick with the company for the long term.

Doug Kass at Seabreeze Partners says the demand was high for shares:

TD AMERITRADE SAYS CUSTOMER ORDERS FOR ALIBABA EXCEED CUSTOMER ORDERS FOR TWITTER’S IPO BY 2.5 TIMES $BABA

— Douglas Kass (@DougKass) 19 Sep 14

— Michael J. de la Merced

9:00 A.M. How Alibaba Is Set Up

What exactly will shareholders be buying? Steven Davidoff Solomon, noted in a Deal Professor column that investors in the offering won’t have title to most of Alibaba’s Chinese assets because of Chinese prohibitions on foreign ownership.

Alibaba Investors Will Buy a Risky Corporate Structure

By STEVEN M. DAVIDOFF

When investors buy shares in an American offering of Alibaba, what exactly will they be buying? asks Steven M. Davidoff in the Deal Professor column.

Instead, the company is using a so-called variable interest entity structure. It works for Jack Ma, Alibaba’s co-founder and executive chairman, but whether it works for investors remains to be seen, he writes. He also takes a look in this video:

8:44 A.M. Don’t Look for Alibaba’s Price Right at 9:30 A.M.

Alibaba shares aren’t expected to start trading for several hours, but the floor of the New York Stock Exchange is already bustling, and brimming with orange from the company’s logo. Within the Big Board, screens at various posts — especially at Barclays, the designated market maker — are displaying the bright orange Alibaba logo prominently. The logos of other Chinese companies, like Autohome and Leju.com, dot the screens of other market makers.

I get the sense some company is going public today. #alibaba $baba http://t.co/DX1OEHzLhX

— Michael de la Merced (@m_delamerced) 19 Sep 14

And the chatter around the floor has a distinctly more Chinese flavor. An estimated 140 media teams from the China region have gathered at the Big Board to cover Alibaba’s market debut.

The N.Y.S.E. is also going to great lengths to make sure there are no glitches, so the stock won’t be trading right at the opening bell:

— Michael J. de la Merced

7:39 A.M. The Scene on Wall Street

Photo

Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba, arriving at the New York Stock Exchange.

Jack Ma arriving at the New York Stock Exchange. Dozens of onlookers had gathered early Friday in anticipation of Alibaba’s first day of trading.

Photo

The scene outside the N.Y.S.E.

DealBook’s Michael J. de la Merced is at the exchange to follow the debut:

More than a few Chinese visitors stop to have their picture taken in front of the NYSE $baba @ New… http://t.co/0KMoosJZ5V

— Michael de la Merced (@m_delamerced) 19 Sep 14

7:23 AM How the Chinese Feel About Alibaba

With the Alibaba I.P.O. heavily oversubscribed, the world already knows how international and institutional investors feel about the offering. Less emphasis has been placed on what Chinese investors think.

A survey by the Chinese tech media site PingWest of more than 600 Chinese investors found that 59 percent would not invest in the company. Though 66.7 percent of those asked said that they were bullish on Alibaba’s long-term growth, 16.1 percent said the price was too high, while 8.6 percent chose the more personal reason: They didn’t like Jack Ma and Alibaba.

— Paul Mozur and Shanshan Wang

7:00 A.M. In Hong Kong, Wondering What Might Have Been

HONG KONG — The new Alibaba Group had originally sought to list in Hong Kong. But regulators refused to sign off on its partnership structure, which gives a committee of fewer than 30 of the company’s employees and associates majority control over board appointments.

Speaking to potential investors while on a marketing tour in Hong Kong on Monday, Jack Ma asked his audience to “think about us just like any other Internet company that happens to be in China.”

In Hong Kong, that’s not so easy to do.

— Neil Gough

6:42 A.M. Alibaba.com’s Previous I.P.O. Popped, and Fizzled

Photo

In 2007, Jack Ma, third from left, had taken Alibaba.com public.

HONG KONG — This isn’t Jack Ma’s first trip to the I.P.O. rodeo.

Demand was tremendous back in 2007 when Mr. Ma listed Alibaba.com, a website connecting Chinese exporters with overseas buyers, on the Hong Kong stock exchange. It raised $1.7 billion, a record for an initial public offering by an Internet company in Asia at the time.

Alibaba.com originally offered 129 million shares to individual retail investors and received orders for 33 billion shares. The opening-day pop in the stock was impressive: the shares rose 193 percent on their first day of trading, Nov. 6, 2007 — climbing from an offer price of 13.50 Hong Kong dollars apiece, or $1.74, to 39.50 dollars apiece.

But Alibaba.com came to market near the top of what proved to be a global rally in equities that would turn into a downward spiral a year later, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

From a peak of 38.92 dollars just three weeks after its I.P.O., Alibaba.com’s stock plunged and never quite recovered. It was languishing below 10 Hong Kong dollars a share in early 2012 when the parent company, the Alibaba Group, offered to take it private at 13.50 dollars a share — which just so happened to be the I.P.O. price.

— Neil Gough

A version of this article appears in print on 09/20/2014, on page B7 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Yahoo Falls As Alibaba Climbs Up.

I.P.O./Offerings, Technology, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Initial Public Offerings, Search Engines, Stocks and Bonds

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NYT NOW

Alibaba, With Its I.P.O., Mints Millionaires and Risk-Takers

By Andrew Jacobs and Neil Gough

September 18, 2014 9:39 pmSeptember 18, 2014 9:39 pm

Photo

Traditionally dependent on manufacturing, Hangzhou, a city of six million people in China, has been embracing the high-tech sector.

HANGZHOU, China —  This leafy manufacturing hub two hours southwest of Shanghai is best known for its scenic lake, Buddhist pagodas and tangy fish-head soup.

With the Chinese e-commerce giant the Alibaba Group poised to start trading on Friday, Hangzhou will earn another accolade: the city that minted thousands of Internet millionaires.

Started here in 1999, Alibaba has followed the model of Microsoft, Google and other American technology companies, generously handing out stock to all levels of workers, from senior executives to receptionists. It has created a wealth diaspora rarely seen in China, where the economy is still dominated by state-owned enterprises, and private companies generally reserve riches for executives at the upper echelons.

The initial public offering on Thursday, which valued Alibaba at $168 billion, will provide Silicon Valley-style payouts. At Alibaba and its affiliates, around 6,000 current and former employees owned stock worth nearly $8 billion before the I.P.O. And that sum represents only a piece of the shares doled out over the years to employees, some of whom cashed out earlier at lower, albeit still lucrative, prices.

“Can you imagine the sort of wealth that’s being generated through this?” said Sanjay Varma, a former Alibaba vice president who still owns shares in the company. “It’s incredible.”

The rise of Alibaba and its founder, Jack Ma, has proved instructive for a generation of young Chinese — not just as a road map to riches, but as a lesson in entrepreneurial individualism. Today, thousands of young people across China are creating start-ups of their own, driven by visions of what they might do if they, too, strike it big.

The Alibaba money has helped spur a constellation of Internet companies in China. Over the last decade, one-time Alibaba employees have helped start 130 Internet businesses, more than any other Chinese company, according to Itjuzi.com, a website that tracks investment in domestic technology companies. There’s Mushroom Street, a social shopping site that caters to young women; Didi Dache, a taxi-hailing app that has 100 million users in China; and Tongcheng, a travel website founded by a former Alibaba salesman that has more than 2,000 employees.

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Lai Jie, a former Alibaba employee who started a wireless Internet service in public spaces like airports, currently has 80 employees.

Three years ago, Lai Jie, a former Alibaba product manager, sold a big chunk of his shares and started WiTown with three co-workers. Today, the venture, which runs wireless Internet service in public spaces like airports, has nearly 80 employees, most in Hangzhou.

“The city is chock-full of talent,” said Mr. Lai, 33.

Alibaba has been educating employees about the hidden risks of sudden wealth. In an email in July, Mr. Ma wrote about the looming I.P.O. and warned that Alibaba’s fast growth could push up prices in its hometown, likening the effect to Microsoft on Seattle or Facebook on Silicon Valley. “All our hard work hasn’t been just so we could turn into a bunch of tuhao,” he wrote, using a slang reference to China’s swarms of uncouth newly rich.

From the early days, top executives like Joseph Tsai, the current vice chairman, would hold companywide sessions about the basics of spending and saving, as well as stock options. “We talked about freedom of choice in 2002 and 2003,” said Savio Kwan, Alibaba’s chief operating officer at the time, who still owns shares. “People said, ‘What is that?’ I said, ‘It’s when you become rich and you don’t need to work for a living anymore. You can choose to still come to work at Alibaba or choose to retire or to do something else.’ “

“It was hard to explain the concept to people who were earning only a couple thousand renminbi a month,” he added, referring to an amount that was roughly $250 at the time. “But the company was growing like crazy.”

The mind-set, in part, requires a cultural shift among a work force that has, even by Chinese standards, gotten by on modest salaries.

Like a number of employees awash in stock options, Su Jie, 33, left the company in recent weeks. He wants to set up a product management consultancy, partly funded by his Alibaba stock.

But he said the decision to depart from what many Chinese consider a prized, stable job was not easy, especially in the face of pressure from his parents, who would have preferred he join the “iron rice bowl” security of China’s civil service. “One thing you can say about Alibaba is that the company gives its workers a sense of purpose and a belief that anything is possible,” said Mr. Su, who joined the company eight years ago right out of college.

Traditionally dependent on manufacturing, Hangzhou, a city of six million people, has been embracing the high-tech sector. Local Communist Party officials have been aggressively promoting the city as a magnet for start-ups through special economic zones, high-tech incubator centers and low-cost capital to young entrepreneurs. Mr. Lai, the former Alibaba product manager, pulled together $81,000 for his company, supplementing his own funds with money from an angel investor and a no-interest loan from the local government.

“People here really value bold thinking and risk-taking, and the government is also pretty good, which is a rarity in China,” said Mr. Lai. In recent years, Hangzhou’s department of science and technology has distributed $130 million to 152 start-ups, according to its website.

The combination — Alibaba’s success and the government’s support — has helped turn Hangzhou into an entrepreneurial hub. Last year, the e-commerce industry contributed 39 billion renminbi ($6.3 billion) to the local economy, a 56 percent increase over 2012, according to government figures. In the city’s technology-heavy central business district, e-commerce was responsible for 25 percent of all economic activity last year, up from 7 percent in 2011, according to the Hangzhou Daily newspaper.

Zhejiang University, one of the nation’s top-rated schools, has become something of a feeder farm for local high-tech firms that aggressively recruit graduating seniors. Incubators, which bring together a number of start-ups under the same roof, are also popping up around the city.

Started in 2012, the Fudi Startup Incubator Centers are the brainchild of Li Zhiguo, an early employee at Alibaba who went on to found Koubei.com, a business review site later sold to Alibaba. The newest Fudi center, which opened a few months ago, is a collection of brightly colored buildings that are home to dozens of start-ups, including a venture focused on Internet coupons, a dating app for college students and a wedding planning site for young couples.

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Zhang Jie and Fang Yi are angel investors and entrepreneurs in Hangzhou who oversee eight start-ups.

Among the biggest tenants are Zhang Jie and Fang Yi, angel investors and entrepreneurs who oversee eight start-ups. During a recent visit, the vibe was unmistakably Silicon Valley, as dozens of young programmers hunched over computers and others napped on an air mattress or inside a pup tent. A blowup kiddie pool and punching bag dominated the room, which was flecked with exhortations to “Hit the Ground Running” and “Find the Must-Win Battle.”

Photo

Fang Yi and his wife are prominent Hangzhou technology incubator mavens.

“The first year or two of a start-up is very challenging, so you have to keep an eye on these guys, otherwise it’s easy to go under,” said Ms. Zhang, 30, a fast-talking woman who is part den mother and part drill sergeant. “Also, you have to keep your employees happy because other companies will steal them.”

The couple, graduates of Zhejiang University who have started a number of Internet companies since 2005, has done well for themselves. In June, they became among the first residents in Hangzhou to own a Tesla.

Although luxury car dealers and property developers are hoping the Alibaba I.P.O. will prompt a spending bonanza, several employees with significant stock holdings said they would probably defer big purchases and instead use their money to finance start-ups. Mr. Su, the former Alibaba product manager, said he had no plans to trade his two-year-old Ford Mondeo for a more expensive car.

Travel is a different matter, he said. Like other Alibaba alumni, he said he had taken few vacations in the last eight years, in keeping with the company’s work-till-you-drop ethos. Several weeks ago, however, Mr. Su and several friends set off on a two-month trek across Tibet.

“Before this, the only time I took off from work was for my honeymoon,” he said shortly before leaving town. “For a lot of Alibaba employees, we are finally getting a chance to enjoy life.”

Related Coverage:

Tops in E-Commerce, Alibaba Is Now Taking On China’s Banks

By NEIL GOUGH

The e-commerce company is going head-to-head with banking competitors that are by and large owned by the Chinese government.

Alibaba Raises $21.8 Billion in Initial Public Offering

By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED

The Chinese Internet juggernaut priced its shares at $68 each, which will help make the initial stock sale one of the biggest on record.

A version of this article appears in print on 09/19/2014, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Chinese Internet Giant Mints Millionaires and Risk-Takers.

I.P.O./Offerings, Technology, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Initial Public Offerings, Ma, Jack

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Investment Banking | I.P.O./Offerings

Tops in E-Commerce, Alibaba Is Now Taking On China’s Banks

By Neil Gough

September 18, 2014 8:20 pmSeptember 18, 2014 8:20 pm

When Jack Ma started a new retail site to rival eBay’s dominance in China, he called it “a fight between an ant and an elephant.” Mr. Ma, the chairman of the Alibaba Group, even briefly considered making the site’s mascot the ant.

He soon prevailed, with eBay eventually closing its Chinese operations. Years later, Alibaba’s online retail venture, Taobao, is China’s largest shopping site — a position that helped Mr. Ma pull off a record-setting initial public offering on Thursday.

Now, Mr. Ma is going up against another giant by shaking up China’s state-dominated finance industry.

His business, the newly named Zhejiang Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group, processes payments, sells insurance and runs one of the world’s largest money market funds. In doing so, the company is going head-to-head with some of the world’s most profitable banks, operating in highly regulated markets and standing against competitors largely owned by the Chinese government.

It is a precarious position. Although Beijing has pledged more financial liberalization, Mr. Ma risks government displeasure if his company moves in ways that run counter to powerful state firms or regulators.

“Jack Ma has clearly disrupted the banking sector in China, and if he didn’t have the right political clout to do that, he would have been crushed already,” said Paul Gillis, a professor at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University. “How far he can go with it” remains to be seen, Mr. Gillis added.

The payoff could be huge. Zhejiang Ant, a stand-alone company that is controlled by Mr. Ma and shares profits with Alibaba, could be worth an estimated $25 billion.

It is also making significant inroads. Through Alipay in China, the company already processes nearly four times the amount of payments that eBay’s PayPal unit does globally. It is also winning deposits away from state banks by paying higher interest rates on investments in Yu’e Bao, a money market fund that has grown to be one of the world’s largest in just over a year. It is branching into online transfers, making loans to small businesses, developing other investment products and laying plans to open one of China’s first private banks.

“Alipay has become the default payment platform for the majority of users for nearly every online or mobile e-commerce transaction, and an increasing number of offline transactions as well — I even use Alipay to pay my rent and utilities,” said Zennon Kapron, the managing director of Kapronasia, a financial industry consulting firm based in Shanghai. “Banks are already facing challenges in maintaining profitability and credit quality, and they definitely recognize Alipay and Yu’e Bao as a threat.”

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At the core of this budding financial services empire is Alipay. In the 12 months that ended in June, the business processed $778 billion worth of payments in China, only 30 percent of that related to Alibaba’s online shopping websites. By comparison, eBay’s PayPal unit — which does not have a license in China but handles transactions in more than 100 currencies across 203 markets globally — processed $203 billion in payments during the same period.

Ashley Wang, a 22-year-old television editor in Beijing, started using Alipay six years ago to shop on Taobao, the Alibaba site where independent vendors sell goods like clothing, household items and consumer electronics. Today, Ms. Wang uses Alipay for much more: paying her electricity, water and gas bills, buying airplane and train tickets and transferring funds quickly to and from the bank accounts of her friends or relatives or their Alipay accounts.

Because she travels a lot and doesn’t always carry her laptop, she often uses Alipay Wallet, a popular mobile payment app. The wallet app sends frequent updates to Ms. Wang’s smartphone, as well as monthly summaries of her spending through Alipay.

“This is very annoying,” Ms. Wang said. “Because you go back and you realize how much money you’ve spent on unnecessary purchases, on things you don’t need.”

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Ashley Wang, a 22-year-old television editor, started using Alipay six years ago to shop on Taobao. She now uses it for much more.

Ms. Wang said the money in her Alipay account was automatically transferred to Yu’e Bao, which translates as “leftover treasure,” where it earns interest at a rate of just over 4 percent annually until she’s ready to spend it. That compares with the 3.3 percent rate — capped by the government — that traditional banks can pay on a one-year fixed deposit and 0.35 percent for demand deposits, which can be withdrawn anytime.

“I don’t mind letting the money stay there, although rates are decreasing,” Ms. Wang said, referring to the returns on her Yu’e Bao account. “That’s good enough for me. I haven’t done any other investment at traditional banks.”

While successful, the money market fund has also proven controversial. Critics have referred to online products like Yu’e Bao as “vampires sucking blood out of banks.”

Some of the country’s biggest banks are fighting back, moving to place limits on how much their customers can transfer into third-party online payment accounts. Mr. Ma responded with a sharply worded post on Alibaba’s social messaging service, Laiwang, calling out the banks by name and accusing them of failing to keep pace with China’s market-oriented financial liberalization.

“The market doesn’t believe in crying and isn’t scared of competition, it’s afraid of unfairness,” he wrote in a post on his personal account that was later deleted but continues to circulate online. “The decision of who wins and who loses in the market shouldn’t be up to monopoly and authority, but up to customers.”

The banks have cause for concern. After rising each year since records began in 2007, low-interest household demand deposits in China’s banking system have declined slightly in recent months.

As with Alibaba in the past, Zhejiang Ant’s strategy appears to be one of winning customers first and worrying about increasing profit later. Alibaba’s filings do not list its share of earnings from the financial unit. But its investments are starting to show signs of paying off.

Photo

In May, Zhejiang Ant bought control of Tian Hong Asset Management, the company that manages the Yu’e Bao money market fund. By the end of June, Tian Hong’s assets under management had grown to 574 billion renminbi ($93 billion). Tian Hong charges fees of less than 1 percent on the assets that it manages, and those fees amounted to 1.5 billion renminbi ($243.8 million) in the first six months of this year.

The company’s portfolio is diverse. Zhejiang Ant is selling insurance products online, as well as making small loans to the businesses that set up virtual storefronts on Alibaba’s retail websites. The company is also waiting to receive approval for one of China’s first private banking licenses, part of a pilot program announced this year. It is even experimenting in online crowdfunding for film production.

But competition is growing. In addition to the risks of resistance from state companies or regulators, Zhejiang Ant’s toughest challenges could come from rival Chinese Internet behemoths like Tencent Holdings or Baidu.

Tencent, a giant in the online game and social messaging world in China, has introduced fast-growing financial offerings to compete directly against both Alipay and Yu’e Bao. While Alibaba can market financial offerings to users of its retail websites, Tencent can leverage its ownership of Weixin, also known as WeChat, a wildly popular social messaging app.

Indeed, Tencent “has been enormously successful in creating cross-product sales opportunities” with Weixin, said Mr. Kapron, the financial consultant.

He added that Zhejiang Ant’s lack of a formal banking license could also limit its future expansion, and the variety of products and services it is allowed to offer, “especially if the regulators start to become more active in regulating this space.”

A version of this article appears in print on 09/19/2014, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Tops in E-Commerce, Now Taking On China’s Banks.

Financial Services, I.P.O./Offerings, Investment Banking, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Alipay, Banking and Financial Institutions, E-Commerce, Yu’e Bao

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Rush to Invest in Alibaba, but Concerns Linger About Company’s Future

By Peter Eavis

September 18, 2014 8:43 pmSeptember 18, 2014 8:43 pm

Photo

Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba. Mutual funds, hedge funds and pensions are rushing to back the company.

When the Alibaba Group starts trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, many people may be asking, “Ali who?”

Professional investors, of course, already know that Alibaba is a fast-growing, hugely profitable Chinese company that is a combination of eBay and Amazon, with a little bit of Google thrown in. They like it so much that they have stampeded to Alibaba’s initial public offering, making it the largest ever on the United States stock market. The deal raised $21.8 billion for Alibaba and gives it an overall market value of $168 billion, two and a half times the size of eBay.

Still, once the so-called smart money piles into a stock, it’s usually time to start asking dumb questions. And with Alibaba, there are many.

Can the company, which today dominates Chinese e-commerce, fend off competition forever? What about its odd corporate structure? Who, exactly, is checking the company’s books? And why did Alibaba recently spend more than a quarter’s worth of cash flow on what seemed like a grab bag of investments?

In many fundamental ways, investing in Alibaba is nothing like owning a slice of a typical American corporation. It requires far more trust. But as the rush into Alibaba’s public offering shows, mutual funds, hedge funds and pensions are falling over themselves to back the company. In a time of economic malaise, when few big companies are growing strongly, a business like Alibaba stands out brightly.

“You’ve got a world that is starved for growth, and this segment of the Chinese capital markets offers a high degree of growth,” said Brendan Ahern of KraneShares, a mutual fund firm that invests in Chinese companies.

For many, the allure of Alibaba is in its headline numbers.

Alibaba makes most of its revenue from fees and commissions that it receives from the two large Internet marketplaces that it operates in China. Taobao is a frenetic and eclectic online bazaar that offers a huge range of goods. Tmall, by contrast, is a more refined platform that established brands use to sell their goods. Together, Alibaba’s marketplaces sold $296 billion worth of goods in the 12 months through the end of June, which is estimated to be more than Amazon and eBay combined.

Facebook’s public offering faltered in 2012 when it became clear that the company did not yet have a strong footing in mobile devices. But Alibaba appears to be handling the retailing transition to mobile devices. In the second quarter of this year, mobile accounted for a third of the value of goods sold on Alibaba’s Chinese marketplaces, up from 12 percent in the same period a year earlier.

Alibaba is also reaping enormous profits from the torrent of commerce that takes place on its websites. In the second quarter, it made 43 cents of operating profits for every dollar of revenue, a staggering margin for a large, fast-growing company. Sometimes, outsize margins can be an indicator that a firm is somehow managing to overcharge — an advantage that might lessen as competition increases. But investors assert that the fees and commissions that Alibaba charges its sellers seem to be in line with those of its rivals.

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Alibaba makes most of its revenue from fees and commissions that it receives from the two large Internet marketplaces that it operates in China: Taobao and Tmall.

“There is no evidence that it is gouging its customers, despite its dominance,” said Alistair Way, a fund manager at Standard Life Investments.

And even though consumers’ habits can change quickly, especially on the Internet, Alibaba’s fans expect it to remain dominant. Their argument: Alibaba’s marketplaces get so much traffic that sellers simply have to use them to reach consumers.

This sort of optimism has persuaded some analysts that Alibaba’s shares could trade well above its $68 offering price. James Cordwell of Atlantic Equities, for instance, says that Alibaba is worth about $100 a share, or 30 times the $3.35 a share that he estimates the company will make in profits in 2016. Alibaba, he contends, deserves a multiple of 30 times because that is in line with other Chinese Internet companies — and because he expects Alibaba’s earnings to grow at about 30 percent a year.

“Alibaba is highly profitable,” he said. “It is easier to value than Facebook and Twitter at their I.P.O.s.”

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Taobao, an eclectic online bazaar that offers a huge range of goods, is one of Alibaba’s two main businesses.

But even bullish analysts like Mr. Cordwell have their concerns.

A big one is whether Alibaba will eventually end up spending a lot of money to stockpile goods and distribute them, potentially depleting future profitability. Right now, a main attraction of Alibaba is that it does not consume large amounts of cash holding inventory, as is the custom for most retailers, including Amazon. Like eBay, Alibaba merely matches buyers and sellers. Nor has Alibaba used up cash building its own fully fledged distribution network. Given the size of the company’s business, such a network would most likely be punitively expensive. Alibaba has, however, invested in a joint venture with delivery companies to establish a logistics network.

But rivals that are building their own networks may do better in crucial parts of the market. JD.com, a Chinese online retailer that focuses on electronics, has its own logistics network — and analysts say that it appears to be notching up better electronics sales than Alibaba in China’s largest cities.

“It suggests that its fulfillment capacity is giving it a competitive edge in these cities,” Mr. Cordwell said.

Beyond its financial performance, Alibaba presents investors with other potential headaches. Its offering effectively asks investors to give up some basic rights and protections.

As is the case with any public company, outside investors have no real way of testing the accuracy of the Alibaba’s financial filings. Investors usually expect outside auditors to assess a company’s books. And American investors might take some comfort in the fact that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board regulates audit firms, to help ensure they are doing their job. But the Chinese government does not allow the board to inspect Chinese audit firms. And the regulator has not inspected Alibaba’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCooper’s affiliate in Hong Kong.

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Sellers from AliExpress, an English-language version of Taobao, watching a CNN interview with Jack Ma, Alibaba’s co-founder.

Alibaba’s corporate structure is another reason to pause.

The actual entity that is going public, the Alibaba Group, is not based in the United States, but in the Cayman Islands. This entity also does not give investors a true ownership stake in Alibaba’s operating businesses. Instead, the Alibaba Group merely has contractual rights to profits from the businesses, an arrangement that allows foreign investors to effectively find a way around Chinese law that would otherwise ban such investment. Adding to concerns over control, Jack Ma, Alibaba’s executive chairman, has majority stakes in the company’s underlying Chinese entities.

Shareholders might find it hard to rein in Mr. Ma and his associates if they make decisions that outside shareholders disagree with. This fear arose a few years ago when Mr. Ma unexpectedly spun out Alipay, the company’s payments business, causing a rift with Yahoo, which has a big stake in Alibaba.

Alibaba’s Shareholders

Current price

Pct. Change

Major Shareholders

Share value

Jack Ma

Co-founder and chairman

Joseph Tsai

Co-founder and vice chairman

Yahoo

Search and tech. company

SoftBank

Japanese telecomm.

Updated

The questions about Mr. Ma’s latitude reasserted themselves after Alibaba made a string of deals that recently raised eyebrows. In April, the company lent $1 billion to Simon Xie, one of its founders, to finance an investment. Alibaba also took a stake in a Chinese soccer team this year. And after buying a movie production company, Alibaba said that it might have unearthed accounting irregularities at the firm, suggesting it did not do good due diligence.

The acquisition numbers are not insignificant: The $1.85 billion that Alibaba spent on acquisitions in the second quarter exceeded the $1.64 billion in cash flows from the company’s operations.

Still, for now, the issues of control and oversight may not be enough to derail Alibaba’s strong financial performance.

“If you are looking for growth, this company is offering that,” Mr. Ahern, the mutual fund manager, said.

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International Business |NYT Now

The Jack Ma Way

At Alibaba, the Founder Is Squarely in Charge

By DAVID BARBOZASEPT. 6, 2014

Inside

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At the resplendent China World Hotel in Beijing, scores of cameras snapped as colorful confetti floated down from the ceiling. It was Aug. 11, 2005, and this was the global coming-out party for Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce upstart. After months of frantic negotiations, the American Internet giant Yahoo had agreed to invest $1 billion in cash and create deeper business ties, in exchange for a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.

Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, thin, energetic and standing just over five feet tall, was beaming. He gushed that it was China’s Valentine’s Day and this was a beautiful match: “You’d be foolish if you said no.” It was his coming-out party too; the partnership would pave the way for Alibaba to become an international juggernaut.

For days, Mr. Ma was almost giddy about a deal that provided his company with a huge infusion of money and unfettered access to Yahoo’s search technology. He was particularly effusive that eBay and Meg Whitman, who was then its chief executive, had enticed Yahoo to make a competing offer by bidding so aggressively for Alibaba. “Thank you, Meg Whitman,” Mr. Ma joked at the time. “Thank you for making all of this possible.”

But Mr. Ma soon started having second thoughts about the partnership. He worried that he had sold the stake too cheaply and given up too much control.

Trying to buy back most, if not all, of Alibaba’s shares, Mr. Ma started talks that dragged on for several years. With the relationship souring, Mr. Ma transferred ownership of Alibaba’s fast-growing online payment service, Alipay, to an entity that he controlled. He didn’t get the permission of Alibaba’s board. He just went ahead and did it.

While Yahoo complained, Mr. Ma seemed to get everything he wanted, eventually. In 2011, he negotiated an agreement giving him and a handful of key lieutenants a majority stake in Alipay, one of the company’s crown jewels. A year later, Mr. Ma secured a plan for Yahoo to reduce its stake in Alibaba.

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What Is Alibaba?

What Is Alibaba? The e-commerce company has seized investor and public interest to an extent that is unusual for a company that does much of its business in China. Video Credit By Reem Makhoul and Sofia Perpetua on Publish Date May 6, 2014. Image CreditLiangzhen/Chinatopix, via Associated Press

When the Alibaba Group goes public later this month in an offering that could value the company at about $160 billion, investors will have little doubt about who is in control of the company. Mr. Ma, 49, is the public face. He is the chief negotiator. He is the top strategist. He is the biggest individual investor, with a 9 percent stake.

Alibaba, a company started out of Mr. Ma’s apartment in 1999, is now a technology colossus worth more than American stalwarts like eBay and Hewlett-Packard. Under his leadership, Alibaba has become not just the dominant force in China’s e-commerce but also a symbol of the country’s breathtaking economic rise. The company has 250 million active buyers in China, and its orders account for more than 60 percent of all package deliveries in China.

That success has helped make Jack Ma a kind of celebrity C.E.O., an executive comfortable hobnobbing with business moguls in Davos, leading tours of his company for China’s political elite and promoting the “Wisdom of Jack Ma” in books and on DVDs. The initial public offering could make Mr. Ma, already one of China’s richest men, worth more than $15 billion. He has already pledged to give away much of that wealth, which would instantly make him one of the world’s major philanthropists. (Mr. Ma and Alibaba declined to comment for this article, citing regulatory restrictions on public statements ahead of an I.P.O.)

Mr. Ma has grown accustomed to doing things his way. He regularly strikes deals with close friends and buys companies in seemingly unrelated industries. At times, it is hard to determine whether an investment is personal or professional, because the boundaries between Mr. Ma’s portfolio and Alibaba’s holdings can blur.

Such activities are not always transparent, a potential red flag for new shareholders in a public company. Like many Chinese companies, Alibaba also operates behind a cloak of complicated ownership structures, which may limit dissenting shareholders’ objections.

Rebellious and Precocious

Mr. Ma grew up in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, the middle of three children born to a pair of performers of pingtan, a traditional musical storytelling technique. Neighbors called him a troublesome and often rebellious young boy, but he may have just been precocious.

Photo

A young Jack Ma, left, with his older brother and younger sister by West Lake in Hangzhou, China.

At 10, Ma Yun, as he is known in Chinese, took a liking to English and would ride his bicycle to the Hangzhou Hotel to practice with foreign tourists, an experience he said opened his mind to the outside world.

His poor math skills almost prevented him from attending college. But after passing the national college entrance exam on the third try, Mr. Ma gained admission to a local teachers’ college, where he excelled and was elected president of the student union. When he graduated in 1988, he took a $14-a-month job teaching English at the Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Engineering and quickly became one of its most popular instructors.

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Mr. Ma as a boy in Hangzhou.

With China’s economy beginning to take flight, Mr. Ma saw opportunity in entrepreneurship. In his spare time, friends say, he co-founded a translation agency, sold medicine and dabbled in stocks. “If I’m not a millionaire by the time I’m 35,” he joked with his friend Qi Xiaoning, “please kill me!”

He visited the United States for the first time in 1995. Mr. Ma had befriended Bill Aho, an American who taught English in Hangzhou, and stayed with Mr. Aho’s relatives in Seattle. There, he was introduced to the World Wide Web by Mr. Aho’s son-in-law, Stuart Trusty, who ran one of America’s first Internet service providers, VBN.

“At that time, I had an office in the U.S. Bank tower, and Jack came and I showed him what the Internet was,” Mr. Trusty says. “Back then, the Internet was largely a directory for governments and businesses, but he seemed excited.”

Photo

Mr. Ma stayed with Dave and Dolores Selig, relatives of Mr. Aho, during his first visit to Seattle.

Mr. Ma returned home and set up one of the country’s first web companies, China Pages, an online directory for domestic businesses looking for customers overseas. Former colleagues say Mr. Ma worked tirelessly, knocking on doors, taking photos, collecting information and translating it into English. When done, he mailed the listings to VBN in Seattle to post on the web.

“At that time, the concept of the Internet was foreign to the Chinese people — people had no idea and no reaction when we introduced them to the idea,” said Yu Xiaohong, one of Mr. Ma’s partners at China Pages.

China Pages struggled at first, but Mr. Ma was optimistic. During a 1996 trip to Seattle to meet his partners at VBN, he seemed confident he would strike it rich, says Mr. Aho, who traveled with him.

“I remember him looking at the expensive houses in the Queen Anne Hill area,” Mr. Aho recalls. “He’d point at houses and say, ‘When I get rich, I’m going to buy that house there, and that house. ...’ And at that time, he didn’t have a nickel.”

Then Mr. Ma lost control of his company. In 1996, China Pages was pressured into forming a joint venture with Hangzhou Telecom. The deal put the government firmly in charge.

Photo

Jack and his wife, Cathy Ma, at China Pages in 1996.

Discouraged, Mr. Ma went to Beijing to work at Infoshare, an Internet advertising agency set up under China’s Ministry of Commerce. Mr. Ma lasted just 14 months at Infoshare. Itching to run his own company, he returned to Hangzhou. “At that time, I felt it was too tiring doing e-commerce in the government,” Mr. Ma said in a 2005 interview. “E-commerce should start with private enterprises.”

‘With or Without You’

When Mr. Ma started Alibaba on Feb. 21, 1999, he asked 17 friends to gather in his second-floor apartment at the Lakeside Gardens in Hangzhou. In the makeshift headquarters, he gave a long talk about his ambitions and how much China needed a great start-up. He picked the name, he later explained, because “everyone knows the story of Alibaba. He’s a young man who is willing to help others.”

Photo

Jack Ma at an Alibaba meeting.

The company was built on a similar premise: to help businesses find overseas customers. If an American retailer was looking for a supplier of cotton slippers in China, it might turn to Alibaba.com. If a Chinese producer of buttons wanted to export to South Korea, it could advertise on the site. Alibaba, as he saw it, would be a virtual meeting room for small and medium-size businesses engaged in global trade.

Early on, Shirley Lin, a Goldman Sachs banker, visited Mr. Ma’s apartment. She had heard about the company from a friend, Joseph Tsai, a Yale-educated former lawyer who had recently joined Alibaba.

“I went up to the apartment, where they were all working 24/7,” says Ms. Lin, who now teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “The whole place stank — all those instant noodles. Jack’s ideas were not entirely original — they had been tried in other countries. But he was completely dedicated to making them work in China. I was moved by what I saw.”

A month later, Goldman led a $5 million investment in the company. Soon after, Masayoshi Son, the chairman of Japan’s SoftBank and one of the world’s richest men, agreed to lead a second round of financing worth $20 million. Along with foreign investors, Mr. Ma shared a large chunk of the company with his 17 co-founders; most were friends and former students, and also among them was his wife, Cathy.

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Graphic

Jack & Comapny

Alibaba’s Jack Ma, along with a group of top Chinese entrepreneurs, are part of complicated web of deals and ventures, made for both personal benefit and corporate gain.

OPEN Graphic

“This was really unusual, his willingness to share,” says Chauncey Shey, who works for SoftBank and helped make the initial investment. “Most founders aren’t willing to do that, and so that gave us more confidence in him.”

But power was still largely concentrated in Mr. Ma’s hands. He and his top deputy, Mr. Tsai, held two of the company’s four board seats. Mr. Ma also controlled the underlying companies that Alibaba used to operate in China.

China restricts foreign investment in industries considered sensitive, like the Internet. To avoid running into a problem, Mr. Ma set up an offshore holding company in the Cayman Islands. Foreign investors buy shares in the offshore entity and are contractually entitled to the profit. But most of Alibaba’s assets are actually owned by Mr. Ma and another co-founder, Simon Xie.

The ownership structure — known as the variable interest entity — is common among Chinese Internet companies. But it holds risks for shareholders, because it may leave them without the usual protections. (In June a United States government commission warned Americans about investing in Chinese companies using the complex V.I.E. structure, saying in a report to Congress that “a major risk is that the Chinese shareholder of the V.I.E. will steal the entity, ignoring the legal arrangements on which the system is based.”)

Mr. Ma often had the final say in strategy. Just as Alibaba was beginning to earn money in 2002, Mr. Ma proposed setting up a consumer-oriented site to compete with eBay. Most of his top executives opposed the idea, since eBay was a formidable company and its Chinese partner already had a huge share of the China market.

“Most managers were against it,” says John Wu, who was then the chief technology officer at Alibaba. “I said: ‘We’re barely breaking even. And besides, every business school textbook says focus on what you do best. How can we create a second site?' ”

Savio Kwan, who was then Alibaba’s president, remembers a fierce debate one evening at a restaurant in Hangzhou. After Mr. Ma prevailed, he telephoned Mr. Son of SoftBank.

“He said: “Masa, we’re thinking of doing this. We’re going to let you know, but we’re going to do it with or without you,' ” Mr. Kwan recalls. “Masa called back in five minutes and said, ‘I want in.’ ”

With financing from SoftBank, Alibaba set up a secret task force to develop the consumer site, which they called Taobao, Chinese for “searching for treasure.” When it was introduced in July 2003, Alibaba used it to wage guerrilla warfare on eBay and its Chinese partner, EachNet. EachNet was more of an auction site and took a commission. Taobao allowed more direct selling and was initially free.

When Mr. Ma vowed that it would remain free for years, eBay shot back in a release, “Free is not a business model.” (Taobao now makes money through fees.)

Mr. Ma predicted that eBay’s China operation would soon collapse because of pressure to deliver quick profit. He was right.

In China, “eBay really underestimated Jack’s tenacity and Alibaba’s ability to follow through on a strategy,” says Duncan Clark, founder of BDA China, a Beijing-based consulting firm.

With Taobao growing quickly, eBay moved to make a deal, according to people involved in the discussions. In mid-2005, Ms. Whitman held secret talks with Mr. Ma in China to discuss cooperating with Alibaba, or buying Taobao outright. Mr. Ma was invited to eBay’s campus in San Jose, Calif.

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Mr. Ma at the Alibaba global coming-out party in August 2005, with a photograph in the background of Jerry Yang, left, of Yahoo and Mr. Ma.

But Mr. Ma wanted to maintain control and opened talks with Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo, who was searching for new opportunities in China, according to people involved in the negotiations. The deal was a good fit. Mr. Ma received a $1 billion cash infusion to buy out some shareholders and invest. He also had a collection of sites like Yahoo China that he thought would transform Alibaba into a powerhouse.

At the 2005 news conference in the China World Hotel, Yahoo’s chief operating officer, Daniel Rosensweig, leaned over and whispered in Mr. Ma’s ear. “Jerry Yang had warned me that whatever you do, don’t let Jack Ma say he acquired Yahoo,” recalled Mr. Rosensweig. Mr. Ma leaned back and laughed heartily.

Photo

Mr. Ma with Yahoo’s chief operating officer, Daniel Rosensweig, right.

Consolidating Power

The honeymoon didn’t last long.

After Mr. Yang resigned as chief executive in January 2009, Yahoo’s new management team clashed with Alibaba’s top executives. Yahoo made an Internet search and advertising deal with Microsoft later that year, and stopped providing the technical support to Alibaba that was required under its partnership agreement. It also began competing with Alibaba for advertising in China.

More important, Yahoo rebuffed Alibaba’s request to buy back shares.

“After Jerry Yang left, everything changed,” said David Wei, who until 2011 was one of Alibaba’s top executives. “We had become their most valuable asset and there was no communication.”

The simmering resentments boiled over. Between mid-2009 and early 2011, Mr. Ma transferred ownership of his company’s online payment service, Alipay, to a private company he controlled, effectively removing it from the Alibaba Group.

The unilateral move angered Yahoo, which said it was done without board approval. Yahoo also said it had only been informed of the transfer in March 2011, when its accountant had received a letter from Alibaba simply saying the payment service had been “deconsolidated.”

Mr. Ma later said that he had informed the board. But when the directors had failed to decide, Mr. Ma said he was forced to transfer ownership of the company to comply with new regulations on online payment services.

“If Alipay were illegal and didn’t get a license, Taobao would have been paralyzed,” Mr. Ma told the media in 2011.

After intense negotiations, Yahoo, SoftBank and Alibaba hashed out an agreement, one that seemed to favor Mr. Ma. Yahoo and SoftBank — which between them owned 70 percent of the Alibaba Group — would receive 49 percent of the profit from Alipay. Mr. Ma and a group of unnamed employees would get the rest.

As part of the deal, Mr. Ma also won control over a holding company for the financial services affiliates, including Alipay, the main payment processor for Alibaba’s various sites. The holding company, now known as the Zhejiang Small and Micro Financial Services Company, has expanded to include wealth management products, small-business lending and China’s biggest money market fund. With its ability to profit from Alibaba’s customers, the group is worth an estimated $25 billion, according to analysts.

“He’s essentially formed a huge company within the company that’s tied into absolutely everything that Alibaba does,” says Fredrik Oqvist, an independent financial analyst in Beijing.

Around the same time, Mr. Ma started aggressively making deals with a small circle of businessmen with whom he socialized. The group includes some of China’s most successful entrepreneurs, like Guo Guangchang of the Fosun Group, a Shanghai-based conglomerate; Shen Guojun of China Yintai Holdings, a retail property developer; and Shi Yuzhu, chairman of the online gaming company Giant Interactive.

Together, they have worked on a web of interconnected deals, both for personal benefit and for corporate profit.

The business group, known as the Zhejiang Gang because many of the members grew up in Zhejiang Province, helped Mr. Ma set up his private equity firm, Yunfeng Capital, in 2010. That private equity firm has since been a conduit for other Alibaba-related deals. For example, Giant Interactive, run by Mr. Shi, bought $50 million worth of Alibaba stock through Yunfeng Capital, according to public filings. Less than three years later, the shares were sold for $200 million.

The businessmen have also formed joint ventures together. Last year, Alibaba started a company called Cainiao with plans to spend $16 billion to build out China’s logistics network. Alibaba owns 48 percent. Fosun is an investor. Yintai too. And Mr. Shen of Yintai is Cainiao’s executive chairman.

Analysts and corporate ethics experts say there is nothing wrong with such activities. But they caution that regulators may look askance if interparty deals aren’t properly disclosed.

“Why do they allow Yunfeng to get in on it?” says Jeff Dorr, a Hong Kong-based analyst at J Capital Research, an investment advisory firm. “What value do they bring?”

Most members of the group declined to comment. In an interview, Mr. Shen defended such deals, explaining that Mr. Ma had formed a circle of trust, something common in Chinese business. Mr. Shen insisted that the group follows rules regarding conflicts of interest.

“Public companies have very strict supervision regulations that we have to comply with,” Mr. Shen says. “We just cooperate.”

The playbook, with its web of interrelated players and companies, extends more broadly to Alibaba’s aggressive deal-making. In the last year, Alibaba has made acquisitions valued at more than $6 billion, everything from navigation systems and online video sites to a professional soccer team.

The deal structures can be complex. For example, Alibaba said in April that it agreed to lend about $1 billion to Mr. Xie, one of Alibaba’s co-founders and a top executive, to acquire 20 percent of Wasu Media, an Internet TV company. Mr. Ma and Mr. Shi of Giant Interactive were partners in the deal. The same day Alibaba announced it planned to cooperate with Wasu.

The fast pace of deal-making also makes it more difficult to assess a company properly. This year, Alibaba acquired ChinaVision, a film producer that has since changed its name to Alibaba Pictures. Just weeks ago, Alibaba said it had discovered suspicious accounting at the company.

Nurturing Ties

Photo

Mr. Ma at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Nov. 6, 2007.

As Alibaba grows, the company is not shaking up just bricks-and-mortar retailers, but also venturing into state-dominated industries like media, finance and telecommunications. To help quell any government opposition, friends say Mr. Ma has increasingly cultivated ties to Beijing.

Alibaba, for example, was one of the main sponsors of the Youth Business Council, a state-backed charity set up by Gu Liping, the wife of Ling Jihua, at the time an aide to the country’s president who was considered one of China’s most powerful officials. Mr. Ma also serves as vice president of the China Cultural Industry Association, a nonprofit that operates under the Ministry of Culture.

Alibaba has also developed relationships with politically connected investors. When the company paid $7.6 billion to buy back a large number of its shares from Yahoo in May 2012, a big portion was resold to the country’s sovereign wealth fund and two private equity firms. One of those firms was Boyu Capital, which was co-founded by Alvin Jiang, the grandson of former president Jiang Zemin. Not long after, New Horizon Capital, a private equity firm co-founded by the son of Wen Jiabao, then prime minister, also bought a large block of Alibaba shares, according to corporate records.

Alibaba has also done multiple deals with the Citic Group, one of the country’s biggest state-owned conglomerates. Earlier this year, Alibaba and Mr. Ma’s private equity firm, Yunfeng Capital, bought a controlling stake in a Citic-backed software and logistics provider, Citic 21cn, for $171 million. After the Alibaba deal was announced, shares of the company rose by as much as 500 percent.

Analysts say that forging alliances with the government is a vital part of doing business in China. Companies see it as a way to improve their chances of securing approvals and licenses. In a sense, it is insurance against overly aggressive government intervention.

Mr. Ma’s decision to list shares overseas in the United States was also about maintaining its position.

Alibaba considered listing its shares in Hong Kong. The company asked the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to allow a listing despite rules that permit only one shareholder vote per share; Alibaba has an unusual partnership structure that gives more sway to top executives, including Mr. Ma. After Hong Kong regulators refused to make an exception, Alibaba pursued a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, which allows more diverse ownership structures.

When Alibaba goes public later this month, investors can decide whether Mr. Ma’s tight grip is a selling point or a stumbling block. Yahoo and SoftBank have made their peace, if for no other reason than profit.

Quarter after quarter, year after year, Alibaba has delivered blockbuster growth. And the company, which in 2004 had revenue of about $50 million, may have revenue this year of close to $10 billion.

Said Mr. Rosensweig, the former Yahoo executive who was one of the chief negotiators in the 2005 deal: “The story of Alibaba turned out to be a great one.”

Correction: September 14, 2014

A picture caption last Sunday with an article about Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, misidentified two people standing with him during a visit to Seattle in the 1990s. They are Dave and Dolores Selig, not Bill and Merrilie Aho.

Stephanie Yifan Yang contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on September 7, 2014, on page BU1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Jack Ma Way. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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International Business |NYT Now

The Jack Ma Way

At Alibaba, the Founder Is Squarely in Charge

By DAVID BARBOZASEPT. 6, 2014

Inside

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At the resplendent China World Hotel in Beijing, scores of cameras snapped as colorful confetti floated down from the ceiling. It was Aug. 11, 2005, and this was the global coming-out party for Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce upstart. After months of frantic negotiations, the American Internet giant Yahoo had agreed to invest $1 billion in cash and create deeper business ties, in exchange for a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.

Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, thin, energetic and standing just over five feet tall, was beaming. He gushed that it was China’s Valentine’s Day and this was a beautiful match: “You’d be foolish if you said no.” It was his coming-out party too; the partnership would pave the way for Alibaba to become an international juggernaut.

For days, Mr. Ma was almost giddy about a deal that provided his company with a huge infusion of money and unfettered access to Yahoo’s search technology. He was particularly effusive that eBay and Meg Whitman, who was then its chief executive, had enticed Yahoo to make a competing offer by bidding so aggressively for Alibaba. “Thank you, Meg Whitman,” Mr. Ma joked at the time. “Thank you for making all of this possible.”

But Mr. Ma soon started having second thoughts about the partnership. He worried that he had sold the stake too cheaply and given up too much control.

Trying to buy back most, if not all, of Alibaba’s shares, Mr. Ma started talks that dragged on for several years. With the relationship souring, Mr. Ma transferred ownership of Alibaba’s fast-growing online payment service, Alipay, to an entity that he controlled. He didn’t get the permission of Alibaba’s board. He just went ahead and did it.

While Yahoo complained, Mr. Ma seemed to get everything he wanted, eventually. In 2011, he negotiated an agreement giving him and a handful of key lieutenants a majority stake in Alipay, one of the company’s crown jewels. A year later, Mr. Ma secured a plan for Yahoo to reduce its stake in Alibaba.

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What Is Alibaba?

What Is Alibaba? The e-commerce company has seized investor and public interest to an extent that is unusual for a company that does much of its business in China. Video Credit By Reem Makhoul and Sofia Perpetua on Publish Date May 6, 2014. Image CreditLiangzhen/Chinatopix, via Associated Press

When the Alibaba Group goes public later this month in an offering that could value the company at about $160 billion, investors will have little doubt about who is in control of the company. Mr. Ma, 49, is the public face. He is the chief negotiator. He is the top strategist. He is the biggest individual investor, with a 9 percent stake.

Alibaba, a company started out of Mr. Ma’s apartment in 1999, is now a technology colossus worth more than American stalwarts like eBay and Hewlett-Packard. Under his leadership, Alibaba has become not just the dominant force in China’s e-commerce but also a symbol of the country’s breathtaking economic rise. The company has 250 million active buyers in China, and its orders account for more than 60 percent of all package deliveries in China.

That success has helped make Jack Ma a kind of celebrity C.E.O., an executive comfortable hobnobbing with business moguls in Davos, leading tours of his company for China’s political elite and promoting the “Wisdom of Jack Ma” in books and on DVDs. The initial public offering could make Mr. Ma, already one of China’s richest men, worth more than $15 billion. He has already pledged to give away much of that wealth, which would instantly make him one of the world’s major philanthropists. (Mr. Ma and Alibaba declined to comment for this article, citing regulatory restrictions on public statements ahead of an I.P.O.)

Mr. Ma has grown accustomed to doing things his way. He regularly strikes deals with close friends and buys companies in seemingly unrelated industries. At times, it is hard to determine whether an investment is personal or professional, because the boundaries between Mr. Ma’s portfolio and Alibaba’s holdings can blur.

Such activities are not always transparent, a potential red flag for new shareholders in a public company. Like many Chinese companies, Alibaba also operates behind a cloak of complicated ownership structures, which may limit dissenting shareholders’ objections.

Rebellious and Precocious

Mr. Ma grew up in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, the middle of three children born to a pair of performers of pingtan, a traditional musical storytelling technique. Neighbors called him a troublesome and often rebellious young boy, but he may have just been precocious.

Photo

A young Jack Ma, left, with his older brother and younger sister by West Lake in Hangzhou, China.

At 10, Ma Yun, as he is known in Chinese, took a liking to English and would ride his bicycle to the Hangzhou Hotel to practice with foreign tourists, an experience he said opened his mind to the outside world.

His poor math skills almost prevented him from attending college. But after passing the national college entrance exam on the third try, Mr. Ma gained admission to a local teachers’ college, where he excelled and was elected president of the student union. When he graduated in 1988, he took a $14-a-month job teaching English at the Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Engineering and quickly became one of its most popular instructors.

Photo

Mr. Ma as a boy in Hangzhou.

With China’s economy beginning to take flight, Mr. Ma saw opportunity in entrepreneurship. In his spare time, friends say, he co-founded a translation agency, sold medicine and dabbled in stocks. “If I’m not a millionaire by the time I’m 35,” he joked with his friend Qi Xiaoning, “please kill me!”

He visited the United States for the first time in 1995. Mr. Ma had befriended Bill Aho, an American who taught English in Hangzhou, and stayed with Mr. Aho’s relatives in Seattle. There, he was introduced to the World Wide Web by Mr. Aho’s son-in-law, Stuart Trusty, who ran one of America’s first Internet service providers, VBN.

“At that time, I had an office in the U.S. Bank tower, and Jack came and I showed him what the Internet was,” Mr. Trusty says. “Back then, the Internet was largely a directory for governments and businesses, but he seemed excited.”

Photo

Mr. Ma stayed with Dave and Dolores Selig, relatives of Mr. Aho, during his first visit to Seattle.

Mr. Ma returned home and set up one of the country’s first web companies, China Pages, an online directory for domestic businesses looking for customers overseas. Former colleagues say Mr. Ma worked tirelessly, knocking on doors, taking photos, collecting information and translating it into English. When done, he mailed the listings to VBN in Seattle to post on the web.

“At that time, the concept of the Internet was foreign to the Chinese people — people had no idea and no reaction when we introduced them to the idea,” said Yu Xiaohong, one of Mr. Ma’s partners at China Pages.

China Pages struggled at first, but Mr. Ma was optimistic. During a 1996 trip to Seattle to meet his partners at VBN, he seemed confident he would strike it rich, says Mr. Aho, who traveled with him.

“I remember him looking at the expensive houses in the Queen Anne Hill area,” Mr. Aho recalls. “He’d point at houses and say, ‘When I get rich, I’m going to buy that house there, and that house. ...’ And at that time, he didn’t have a nickel.”

Then Mr. Ma lost control of his company. In 1996, China Pages was pressured into forming a joint venture with Hangzhou Telecom. The deal put the government firmly in charge.

Photo

Jack and his wife, Cathy Ma, at China Pages in 1996.

Discouraged, Mr. Ma went to Beijing to work at Infoshare, an Internet advertising agency set up under China’s Ministry of Commerce. Mr. Ma lasted just 14 months at Infoshare. Itching to run his own company, he returned to Hangzhou. “At that time, I felt it was too tiring doing e-commerce in the government,” Mr. Ma said in a 2005 interview. “E-commerce should start with private enterprises.”

‘With or Without You’

When Mr. Ma started Alibaba on Feb. 21, 1999, he asked 17 friends to gather in his second-floor apartment at the Lakeside Gardens in Hangzhou. In the makeshift headquarters, he gave a long talk about his ambitions and how much China needed a great start-up. He picked the name, he later explained, because “everyone knows the story of Alibaba. He’s a young man who is willing to help others.”

Photo

Jack Ma at an Alibaba meeting.

The company was built on a similar premise: to help businesses find overseas customers. If an American retailer was looking for a supplier of cotton slippers in China, it might turn to Alibaba.com. If a Chinese producer of buttons wanted to export to South Korea, it could advertise on the site. Alibaba, as he saw it, would be a virtual meeting room for small and medium-size businesses engaged in global trade.

Early on, Shirley Lin, a Goldman Sachs banker, visited Mr. Ma’s apartment. She had heard about the company from a friend, Joseph Tsai, a Yale-educated former lawyer who had recently joined Alibaba.

“I went up to the apartment, where they were all working 24/7,” says Ms. Lin, who now teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “The whole place stank — all those instant noodles. Jack’s ideas were not entirely original — they had been tried in other countries. But he was completely dedicated to making them work in China. I was moved by what I saw.”

A month later, Goldman led a $5 million investment in the company. Soon after, Masayoshi Son, the chairman of Japan’s SoftBank and one of the world’s richest men, agreed to lead a second round of financing worth $20 million. Along with foreign investors, Mr. Ma shared a large chunk of the company with his 17 co-founders; most were friends and former students, and also among them was his wife, Cathy.

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Graphic

Jack & Comapny

Alibaba’s Jack Ma, along with a group of top Chinese entrepreneurs, are part of complicated web of deals and ventures, made for both personal benefit and corporate gain.

OPEN Graphic

“This was really unusual, his willingness to share,” says Chauncey Shey, who works for SoftBank and helped make the initial investment. “Most founders aren’t willing to do that, and so that gave us more confidence in him.”

But power was still largely concentrated in Mr. Ma’s hands. He and his top deputy, Mr. Tsai, held two of the company’s four board seats. Mr. Ma also controlled the underlying companies that Alibaba used to operate in China.

China restricts foreign investment in industries considered sensitive, like the Internet. To avoid running into a problem, Mr. Ma set up an offshore holding company in the Cayman Islands. Foreign investors buy shares in the offshore entity and are contractually entitled to the profit. But most of Alibaba’s assets are actually owned by Mr. Ma and another co-founder, Simon Xie.

The ownership structure — known as the variable interest entity — is common among Chinese Internet companies. But it holds risks for shareholders, because it may leave them without the usual protections. (In June a United States government commission warned Americans about investing in Chinese companies using the complex V.I.E. structure, saying in a report to Congress that “a major risk is that the Chinese shareholder of the V.I.E. will steal the entity, ignoring the legal arrangements on which the system is based.”)

Mr. Ma often had the final say in strategy. Just as Alibaba was beginning to earn money in 2002, Mr. Ma proposed setting up a consumer-oriented site to compete with eBay. Most of his top executives opposed the idea, since eBay was a formidable company and its Chinese partner already had a huge share of the China market.

“Most managers were against it,” says John Wu, who was then the chief technology officer at Alibaba. “I said: ‘We’re barely breaking even. And besides, every business school textbook says focus on what you do best. How can we create a second site?' ”

Savio Kwan, who was then Alibaba’s president, remembers a fierce debate one evening at a restaurant in Hangzhou. After Mr. Ma prevailed, he telephoned Mr. Son of SoftBank.

“He said: “Masa, we’re thinking of doing this. We’re going to let you know, but we’re going to do it with or without you,' ” Mr. Kwan recalls. “Masa called back in five minutes and said, ‘I want in.’ ”

With financing from SoftBank, Alibaba set up a secret task force to develop the consumer site, which they called Taobao, Chinese for “searching for treasure.” When it was introduced in July 2003, Alibaba used it to wage guerrilla warfare on eBay and its Chinese partner, EachNet. EachNet was more of an auction site and took a commission. Taobao allowed more direct selling and was initially free.

When Mr. Ma vowed that it would remain free for years, eBay shot back in a release, “Free is not a business model.” (Taobao now makes money through fees.)

Mr. Ma predicted that eBay’s China operation would soon collapse because of pressure to deliver quick profit. He was right.

In China, “eBay really underestimated Jack’s tenacity and Alibaba’s ability to follow through on a strategy,” says Duncan Clark, founder of BDA China, a Beijing-based consulting firm.

With Taobao growing quickly, eBay moved to make a deal, according to people involved in the discussions. In mid-2005, Ms. Whitman held secret talks with Mr. Ma in China to discuss cooperating with Alibaba, or buying Taobao outright. Mr. Ma was invited to eBay’s campus in San Jose, Calif.

Photo

Mr. Ma at the Alibaba global coming-out party in August 2005, with a photograph in the background of Jerry Yang, left, of Yahoo and Mr. Ma.

But Mr. Ma wanted to maintain control and opened talks with Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo, who was searching for new opportunities in China, according to people involved in the negotiations. The deal was a good fit. Mr. Ma received a $1 billion cash infusion to buy out some shareholders and invest. He also had a collection of sites like Yahoo China that he thought would transform Alibaba into a powerhouse.

At the 2005 news conference in the China World Hotel, Yahoo’s chief operating officer, Daniel Rosensweig, leaned over and whispered in Mr. Ma’s ear. “Jerry Yang had warned me that whatever you do, don’t let Jack Ma say he acquired Yahoo,” recalled Mr. Rosensweig. Mr. Ma leaned back and laughed heartily.

Photo

Mr. Ma with Yahoo’s chief operating officer, Daniel Rosensweig, right.

Consolidating Power

The honeymoon didn’t last long.

After Mr. Yang resigned as chief executive in January 2009, Yahoo’s new management team clashed with Alibaba’s top executives. Yahoo made an Internet search and advertising deal with Microsoft later that year, and stopped providing the technical support to Alibaba that was required under its partnership agreement. It also began competing with Alibaba for advertising in China.

More important, Yahoo rebuffed Alibaba’s request to buy back shares.

“After Jerry Yang left, everything changed,” said David Wei, who until 2011 was one of Alibaba’s top executives. “We had become their most valuable asset and there was no communication.”

The simmering resentments boiled over. Between mid-2009 and early 2011, Mr. Ma transferred ownership of his company’s online payment service, Alipay, to a private company he controlled, effectively removing it from the Alibaba Group.

The unilateral move angered Yahoo, which said it was done without board approval. Yahoo also said it had only been informed of the transfer in March 2011, when its accountant had received a letter from Alibaba simply saying the payment service had been “deconsolidated.”

Mr. Ma later said that he had informed the board. But when the directors had failed to decide, Mr. Ma said he was forced to transfer ownership of the company to comply with new regulations on online payment services.

“If Alipay were illegal and didn’t get a license, Taobao would have been paralyzed,” Mr. Ma told the media in 2011.

After intense negotiations, Yahoo, SoftBank and Alibaba hashed out an agreement, one that seemed to favor Mr. Ma. Yahoo and SoftBank — which between them owned 70 percent of the Alibaba Group — would receive 49 percent of the profit from Alipay. Mr. Ma and a group of unnamed employees would get the rest.

As part of the deal, Mr. Ma also won control over a holding company for the financial services affiliates, including Alipay, the main payment processor for Alibaba’s various sites. The holding company, now known as the Zhejiang Small and Micro Financial Services Company, has expanded to include wealth management products, small-business lending and China’s biggest money market fund. With its ability to profit from Alibaba’s customers, the group is worth an estimated $25 billion, according to analysts.

“He’s essentially formed a huge company within the company that’s tied into absolutely everything that Alibaba does,” says Fredrik Oqvist, an independent financial analyst in Beijing.

Around the same time, Mr. Ma started aggressively making deals with a small circle of businessmen with whom he socialized. The group includes some of China’s most successful entrepreneurs, like Guo Guangchang of the Fosun Group, a Shanghai-based conglomerate; Shen Guojun of China Yintai Holdings, a retail property developer; and Shi Yuzhu, chairman of the online gaming company Giant Interactive.

Together, they have worked on a web of interconnected deals, both for personal benefit and for corporate profit.

The business group, known as the Zhejiang Gang because many of the members grew up in Zhejiang Province, helped Mr. Ma set up his private equity firm, Yunfeng Capital, in 2010. That private equity firm has since been a conduit for other Alibaba-related deals. For example, Giant Interactive, run by Mr. Shi, bought $50 million worth of Alibaba stock through Yunfeng Capital, according to public filings. Less than three years later, the shares were sold for $200 million.

The businessmen have also formed joint ventures together. Last year, Alibaba started a company called Cainiao with plans to spend $16 billion to build out China’s logistics network. Alibaba owns 48 percent. Fosun is an investor. Yintai too. And Mr. Shen of Yintai is Cainiao’s executive chairman.

Analysts and corporate ethics experts say there is nothing wrong with such activities. But they caution that regulators may look askance if interparty deals aren’t properly disclosed.

“Why do they allow Yunfeng to get in on it?” says Jeff Dorr, a Hong Kong-based analyst at J Capital Research, an investment advisory firm. “What value do they bring?”

Most members of the group declined to comment. In an interview, Mr. Shen defended such deals, explaining that Mr. Ma had formed a circle of trust, something common in Chinese business. Mr. Shen insisted that the group follows rules regarding conflicts of interest.

“Public companies have very strict supervision regulations that we have to comply with,” Mr. Shen says. “We just cooperate.”

The playbook, with its web of interrelated players and companies, extends more broadly to Alibaba’s aggressive deal-making. In the last year, Alibaba has made acquisitions valued at more than $6 billion, everything from navigation systems and online video sites to a professional soccer team.

The deal structures can be complex. For example, Alibaba said in April that it agreed to lend about $1 billion to Mr. Xie, one of Alibaba’s co-founders and a top executive, to acquire 20 percent of Wasu Media, an Internet TV company. Mr. Ma and Mr. Shi of Giant Interactive were partners in the deal. The same day Alibaba announced it planned to cooperate with Wasu.

The fast pace of deal-making also makes it more difficult to assess a company properly. This year, Alibaba acquired ChinaVision, a film producer that has since changed its name to Alibaba Pictures. Just weeks ago, Alibaba said it had discovered suspicious accounting at the company.

Nurturing Ties

Photo

Mr. Ma at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Nov. 6, 2007.

As Alibaba grows, the company is not shaking up just bricks-and-mortar retailers, but also venturing into state-dominated industries like media, finance and telecommunications. To help quell any government opposition, friends say Mr. Ma has increasingly cultivated ties to Beijing.

Alibaba, for example, was one of the main sponsors of the Youth Business Council, a state-backed charity set up by Gu Liping, the wife of Ling Jihua, at the time an aide to the country’s president who was considered one of China’s most powerful officials. Mr. Ma also serves as vice president of the China Cultural Industry Association, a nonprofit that operates under the Ministry of Culture.

Alibaba has also developed relationships with politically connected investors. When the company paid $7.6 billion to buy back a large number of its shares from Yahoo in May 2012, a big portion was resold to the country’s sovereign wealth fund and two private equity firms. One of those firms was Boyu Capital, which was co-founded by Alvin Jiang, the grandson of former president Jiang Zemin. Not long after, New Horizon Capital, a private equity firm co-founded by the son of Wen Jiabao, then prime minister, also bought a large block of Alibaba shares, according to corporate records.

Alibaba has also done multiple deals with the Citic Group, one of the country’s biggest state-owned conglomerates. Earlier this year, Alibaba and Mr. Ma’s private equity firm, Yunfeng Capital, bought a controlling stake in a Citic-backed software and logistics provider, Citic 21cn, for $171 million. After the Alibaba deal was announced, shares of the company rose by as much as 500 percent.

Analysts say that forging alliances with the government is a vital part of doing business in China. Companies see it as a way to improve their chances of securing approvals and licenses. In a sense, it is insurance against overly aggressive government intervention.

Mr. Ma’s decision to list shares overseas in the United States was also about maintaining its position.

Alibaba considered listing its shares in Hong Kong. The company asked the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to allow a listing despite rules that permit only one shareholder vote per share; Alibaba has an unusual partnership structure that gives more sway to top executives, including Mr. Ma. After Hong Kong regulators refused to make an exception, Alibaba pursued a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, which allows more diverse ownership structures.

When Alibaba goes public later this month, investors can decide whether Mr. Ma’s tight grip is a selling point or a stumbling block. Yahoo and SoftBank have made their peace, if for no other reason than profit.

Quarter after quarter, year after year, Alibaba has delivered blockbuster growth. And the company, which in 2004 had revenue of about $50 million, may have revenue this year of close to $10 billion.

Said Mr. Rosensweig, the former Yahoo executive who was one of the chief negotiators in the 2005 deal: “The story of Alibaba turned out to be a great one.”

Correction: September 14, 2014

A picture caption last Sunday with an article about Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, misidentified two people standing with him during a visit to Seattle in the 1990s. They are Dave and Dolores Selig, not Bill and Merrilie Aho.

Stephanie Yifan Yang contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on September 7, 2014, on page BU1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Jack Ma Way. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Mergers & Acquisitions | DealBook Column

A Key Figure in the Future of Yahoo

By Andrew Ross Sorkin

December 13, 2010 8:16 pmDecember 13, 2010 8:16 pm

“I shouldn’t make a comment on that,” said Masayoshi Son, the usually voluble serial entrepreneur who is one of the richest men in Japan. “It’s too delicate a question. Too sensitive right now.”

We had been chatting for some time on the 26th floor of the headquarters of his company, Softbank, seated in a conference room that offered sweeping views of Tokyo Bay. What had caused Mr. Son to turn cagey all of a sudden?

I had mentioned Yahoo.

Masayoshi Son is president and chief executive of SoftBank, which owns big chunks of Yahoo’s most valuable investment stakes.

If there is one person who holds the key to the future of the American Internet also-ran, it may be Mr. Son, the 53-year-old billionaire founder of Softbank.

While Mr. Son is little known in the United States, Softbank owns big chunks of Yahoo’s most valuable investment stakes: Yahoo Japan and the Alibaba Group, one of China’s largest Internet companies. Combined, analysts estimate, those assets, along with Yahoo’s cash, represent more than half of Yahoo’s $22 billion value.

With all the speculation about Yahoo’s future — Will it be broken up? Will it be taken private? Will it merge with AOL? — virtually every situation contemplated begins and ends with Yahoo selling its Asian crown jewels. And that is where Mr. Son comes in, perhaps on either side of a deal. (By the way, the chance of AOL buying Yahoo is next to never.)

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Indeed, Mr. Son has held back-channel discussions with Yahoo, as its chief executive, Carol A. Bartz, plans the company’s future, people involved in the talks said. Mr. Son declined to comment, saying only, “She has to make a hard decision.”

No deal is imminent — and one may never come — but the betting line is that Ms. Bartz has no more than a year before she must shake up Yahoo or lose her job. A person close to the board said she had its full support through at least the end of her contract, which runs through 2012.

A Yahoo spokesman said, “Our Asian assets and our Asian relationships are very valuable to Yahoo.”

Still, Mr. Son, who most recently brought Apple’s iPhone to Japan, is clearly depressed about the state of the company. In 1996, he started Yahoo Japan as a joint venture with Yahoo; now he is its controlling shareholder.

In the last decade, Yahoo Japan held onto its dominant spot here while Yahoo languished virtually everywhere else. Just this month, in what may be the ultimate symbol of Yahoo’s fall, Mr. Son had Yahoo Japan begin using Google as its search engine on its home page.

“Yahoo was Jerry Yang’s baby. He did a great job creating the baby,” he said. “Unfortunately, some of the key executives after the foundation of the company couldn’t keep up with the technology innovation of the industry. They thought that Yahoo should become a media company.”

As he spoke, he got more and more agitated: “I said from the very beginning, ‘Yahoo should position itself as a technology innovation company, not as a media company.’ ”

Mr. Son is particularly frustrated with the way Yahoo approached international markets. While he persuaded Yahoo to allow him to create a stand-alone site in Japan, Yahoo chose to run its own operations in most other parts of the globe.

“You need a local hero,” he said, suggesting that Yahoo was too arrogant with its global approach, especially around media. He said its expansion strategy was the equivalent of saying, “You’re the only smart guy and those slaves in the poor counties are dumb guys.”

He added, “If they had listened to me and had equal partnerships in China, the U.K., Germany and Brazil, maybe Yahoo in those countries could have become positioned like Yahoo Japan.”

Of course, Mr. Son has had his own ups and downs. He started Softbank in 1981 as a publisher of software and media. By the late 1990s, Softbank, which was making itself into an Internet company, was worth as much as $180 billion. Today it is worth only $20 billion. Mr. Son is said to have lost nearly $70 billion personally.

But his stakes in Yahoo Japan and in Alibaba (he is also a board member) — along with the acquisition of Vodafone’s Japanese business in 2006 — have kept him as one of the most influential investors in Asia.

Over the last year, Alibaba has sought to buy back Yahoo’s stakes in the company, but to no avail. Yahoo owns 40 percent of Alibaba and 35 percent of Yahoo Japan.

Ms. Bartz has been holding off from trying to sell Yahoo’s investments in Asia — especially Alibaba — because, it is said, she and others on the board think there will be more value when some of Alibaba’s most profitable parts, Taobao and Alipay, go public.

“It would be difficult for Yahoo to get fair market value on these assets given the environment in which they would be divesting,” Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, wrote when speculation surfaced that Yahoo might seek a deal.

Still, if Yahoo were to sell those stakes, it would create a big cash pile, which the company could use to take itself private or make some significant acquisitions.

“With Yahoo Japan outsourcing search to Google, Yahoo has several assets that do not have a lot of synergies, and we think the sum of the parts is worth more than the whole,” Justin Post, an analyst with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote.

So what would Mr. Son do if he were running Yahoo?

“If I were Yahoo’s U.S. C.E.O., I would have my own view and own approach. But my approach is always riskier. I always take bold moves. So it can have great return but with great risk,” he said. “I would be more aggressive to acquire companies or start a new business.”

With a laugh, he added that shareholders of Softbank might have more tolerance for risk than Yahoo’s shareholders. Softbank’s shares, he said, “go sky-high and to hell all the time. Our shareholders in Japan are used to it.”

And then, having discussed more about Yahoo than he might have wanted to, he hinted ever so slightly that he expected a deal to be made eventually.

“Our interests and her interests do not necessarily contradict each other,” he said. “Sooner or later we will have a win-win situation.”

Mergers & Acquisitions, Technology, Alibaba Group, Masayoshi Son, Softbank, Yahoo, Yahoo Japan

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Sprint and SoftBank End Their Pursuit of a T-Mobile Merger

By Michael J. de la Merced

August 5, 2014 7:24 pmAugust 5, 2014 7:24 pm

Photo

Sprint conceded that its plan for a union with T-Mobile would not pass muster with U.S. regulators.

Sprint and its corporate parent, the Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank, have decided to drop their pursuit of T-Mobile US after conceding that antitrust regulators would block a deal in an industry that is dominated by just a few large players, a person briefed on the matter said on Tuesday.

The decision, made at a Sprint board meeting on Tuesday afternoon, is the second failed effort by large American wireless carriers to merge in three years. And it represents a serious blow by SoftBank to develop a big new challenger to the two giants of the American cellphone industry, Verizon and AT&T.

The end of the deal leaves open the question of what paths Sprint and T-Mobile will forge as smaller competitors to the enormous titans of their industry. Combined, the two control less than a third of the United States’ wireless market.

Shares in T-Mobile fell nearly 9 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday, while Sprint’s shares tumbled 15 percent after the markets had closed.

Photo

A sprint store in San Francisco. A deal to unite the No. 3 and No. 4 carriers in the United States had faced fierce questions.

In recent years, T-Mobile has shaken up the industry with an array of novel pricing plans, gaining admirers among both analysts and investors, but Sprint has lost customers for several quarters as it struggles to upgrade its network.

“They have a lot of wood to chop,” Craig Moffett, a research analyst at MoffettNathanson, said of Sprint. “They will have to spend a fortune to fix their network, and they will very likely have to cut prices to stay competitive at the same time.”

Sprint is planning at least one major change in the near term. On Wednesday morning, the company is expected to announce that it will replace its current chief executive, Daniel Hesse, with Marcelo Claure, the person briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Claure is the founder of Brightstar, a wireless services company that sold a majority stake in itself to SoftBank last year. He joined Sprint’s board in January.

The end of the talks also leaves open the question of what Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s majority owner, will do next. The German telecommunications company has signaled that it would like to eventually sell off its T-Mobile stake, and a deal with Sprint would have been the quickest path to that. Much of the telecom industry has barreled relentlessly toward consolidation, as companies have grasped for bigger scale. Already this year, both Comcast and AT&T have announced huge deals meant to bolster their reach.

But the existence of both transactions — Comcast’s $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable and AT&T’s $49 billion purchase of DirecTV — has made the Obama administration wary of concentrating too much power in the hands of too few companies.

And a proposed combination of Sprint and T-Mobile, uniting the third- and fourth-biggest carriers in the United States, had been fiercely questioned by officials at both the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department. In 2011, AT&T’s attempts to buy T-Mobile for $39 billion failed after the Obama administration sued to block the deal.

As recently as last month, T-Mobile and Sprint were speaking on friendly terms. The two sides had discussed a potential deal worth about $32 billion, people said at the time.

Ever since SoftBank bought a majority stake in Sprint, a deal that closed last summer, the company had its eye on bigger ambitions. The Japanese company’s voluble founder, Masayoshi Son, had frequently and publicly derided the state of the American wireless industry as antiquated, falling far behind other nations.

His model was what SoftBank had done in its home market, Japan, where he had taken Vodafone’s tiny wireless operation and, through a combination of deal-making, marketing and intelligent pricing, broke into the top ranks of wireless companies.

Not known for backing down in the face of long odds — he once threatened to set himself on fire in a dispute with Japanese regulators — Mr. Son boasted that he could succeed similarly in the United States, despite facing bigger and more entrenched rivals.

Still, SoftBank was forced to concede that such a union would have little chance of clearing either government regulator, this person said. One of the latest reminders that a merger would meet serious opposition came last week, when the F.C.C. signaled that it would prevent the two companies from making a joint bid in an upcoming government auction of wireless spectrum.

“The deal never had a chance in Washington,” Mr. Moffett said. “Sprint seems finally to have accepted the inevitable.”

Instead, Sprint will pursue its own turnaround plan, built in large part on updating its network and offering new pricing plans for consumers.

The company also plans to name a new chief executive on Wednesday, replacing its current head, Daniel Hesse, the person briefed on the matter said.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile may have to contend with another takeover bid. A French mobile upstart, Iliad, disclosed last week that it had bid $15 billion for a 56.6 percent stake in T-Mobile US.

But Deutsche Telekom spurned the offer. Iliad now is reportedly seeking additional partners to shore up a revised bid, according to press reports. Still, analysts have questioned whether a merger with T-Mobile would make sense — and whether Iliad could afford a takeover.

It is unclear whether others, such as Dish Network, will re-emerge as potential suitors for T-Mobile.

News of Sprint and SoftBank’s plan was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal online.

A version of this article appears in print on 08/06/2014, on page B2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Sprint and SoftBank End Their Pursuit of a T-Mobile Merger.

Mergers & Acquisitions, Telecommunications, Cellular Telephones, Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures, SOFTBANK Corporation, Son, Masayoshi, Sprint Nextel Corporation, T-Mobile US Inc, Wireless Communications

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Technology |NYT Now

After Huge Alibaba Payday, a Test for Yahoo Executives

By VINDU GOELMAY 6, 2014

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What Is Alibaba?

What Is Alibaba? The e-commerce company has seized investor and public interest to an extent that is unusual for a company that does much of its business in China. Video Credit By Reem Makhoul and Sofia Perpetua on Publish Date May 6, 2014. Image CreditLiangzhen/Chinatopix, via Associated Press

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

SAN FRANCISCO — For Yahoo, the initial public offering of stock in the Alibaba Group will unlock the door to a giant trove of cash. Depending on the price of the deal, Yahoo most likely will receive $10 billion to $15 billion for the 9 percent stake in the Chinese e-commerce company that it is required to sell in the offering.

The I.P.O. will also bring an end to the long honeymoon of Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer. Since she was hired in the summer of 2012, investors have paid little attention to her efforts to revive the fading Internet company and instead focused on what would happen with Yahoo’s longstanding investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan.

At Yahoo’s current stock price of $36.49, some analysts say, investors are basically buying those foreign investments and getting Yahoo’s core operations free.

When Alibaba begins trading as a public company, however, that crutch will disappear. Ms. Mayer will then have to prove to Wall Street that she has a viable plan to save Yahoo and will use the Alibaba windfall wisely.

Photo

Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, will soon have to prove to Wall Street that she has a viable plan to save Yahoo and will use the Alibaba windfall wisely.

“What do you do with that money?” asked Robert S. Peck, an analyst with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, who estimates that Yahoo will end up with about $8 billion after taxes.

Yahoo was required to sell half its stake under an agreement it reached with Alibaba in 2012. The agreement was amended last year to require Yahoo to sell less than half its stake — or 9 percent of Alibaba.

Yahoo executives aren’t saying much about what they will do with the proceeds, citing a regulatory quiet period surrounding the I.P.O. But they dropped a few hints during an April conference call to discuss the company’s first-quarter financial results.“We intend to be good stewards of our capital and we have been to date,” Ms. Mayer said in the call, in response to a question about what she might do with a sudden influx of cash.

“When we look at the investments we need to make in the business, you’ll see the same type of mix we’ve been making to date. Some strategic acquisitions, some tuck-in acquisitions, and we really need to see what opportunities arise in terms of the ways we could deploy the cash at that time.”

Analysts predict that Yahoo will spend a large portion of the proceeds from the Alibaba stock sale to buy back shares of Yahoo. A buyback would in theory make the company’s shares more valuable because each remaining share would have a slightly bigger claim on Yahoo’s business.

Ms. Mayer could also throw a few coins directly to shareholders in the form of a dividend, which would be taxable to the recipients but give them a very tangible piece of the cash hoard. Yahoo pays no dividend now.

Yahoo is likely to keep the rest of the money for acquisitions, adding to the $2.9 billion in cash and short-term liquid investments it already has. (The company says it also has $1.6 billion in liquid long-term investments.)

Under Ms. Mayer, Yahoo has made dozens of tiny acquisitions, and one large one — the $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr, a blogging platform, last May.

In recent months, rumors have swirled that Yahoo was sniffing at larger prey, like the instant-messaging service Snapchat or an online video service.

Yahoo Japan, a joint venture between Yahoo and SoftBank, a Japanese technology company, holds riches too. It operates independently from Yahoo, which owns about 35 percent of the company and records a proportional share of its revenue and profits. Yahoo Japan’s stock is traded in Tokyo; Yahoo’s stake is worth about $9.2 billion.

During the April call, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, Kenneth A. Goldman, suggested the company would look more closely at international acquisitions to bolster the company’s foreign presence.

Photo

Jack Ma, standing, at a news conference in 2005 to announce that Yahoo had bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.

Whatever Yahoo does, shareholders want some assurance that it fits a broader strategy, Mr. Peck said. They don’t want Yahoo to spend a lot of money on a big acquisition that generates no revenue, he said, as Facebook did when it agreed to buy the messaging service WhatsApp for as much as $19 billion earlier this year.

When Alibaba begins trading as an independent stock, many investors who bought Yahoo as a proxy for the fast-growing Chinese company will simply buy Alibaba directly.

Those who continue to buy Yahoo, analysts say, will expect Ms. Mayer and her top executives to show better results.

Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said he could not discuss Alibaba because his firm hoped to play a role in the I.P.O.

But he pointed out that Yahoo’s advertising business trails competitors like Google, Facebook and Twitter and is especially weak in the fastest-growing areas of digital advertising. “The fact that mobile, social and video are still immaterial to Yahoo’s revenue paints a very sharp picture of how much catch-up work Yahoo still has to do,” he said.

Even after the I.P.O., Alibaba will retain some ties to Yahoo.

Yahoo will continue to own about 13.6 percent of Alibaba, giving it a share in future profits of the company. Although the two companies have no joint business ventures, Jacqueline D. Reses, Yahoo’s chief development officer, sits on Alibaba’s board, giving her a prime view into the Chinese Internet market.

A successful I.P.O. will be vindication for Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s co-founder and former chief executive. Mr. Yang struck up a friendship long ago with Alibaba’s co-founder, Jack Ma, and had the foresight to buy about 40 percent in 2005.

Investors later savaged Mr. Yang for rejecting Microsoft’s 2008 offer to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion. But Yahoo ended up being worth more than that, mostly because of the Alibaba investment. Yahoo sold about half its original stake back to Alibaba in early 2012 for about $7.1 billion.

With Alibaba soon to play a much smaller role in Yahoo’s finances, Ms. Mayer will get an unvarnished look at how investors view their leadership.

“Right now, it’s hard for them to tell what the market really thinks,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group. “They can have a messy quarter, they can have a great quarter; it’s unlikely to make any difference.”

Once Alibaba stock begins trading, Mr. Wieser predicted, “the management team has a couple more quarters.”

But if they don’t show substantial progress on a turnaround by then, investors could decide to put their money elsewhere.

A version of this article appears in print on May 7, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: After Huge Payday, a Test for Yahoo Executive. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Technology |NYT Now

After Huge Alibaba Payday, a Test for Yahoo Executives

By VINDU GOELMAY 6, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|2:39

What Is Alibaba?

What Is Alibaba? The e-commerce company has seized investor and public interest to an extent that is unusual for a company that does much of its business in China. Video Credit By Reem Makhoul and Sofia Perpetua on Publish Date May 6, 2014. Image CreditLiangzhen/Chinatopix, via Associated Press

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

SAN FRANCISCO — For Yahoo, the initial public offering of stock in the Alibaba Group will unlock the door to a giant trove of cash. Depending on the price of the deal, Yahoo most likely will receive $10 billion to $15 billion for the 9 percent stake in the Chinese e-commerce company that it is required to sell in the offering.

The I.P.O. will also bring an end to the long honeymoon of Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer. Since she was hired in the summer of 2012, investors have paid little attention to her efforts to revive the fading Internet company and instead focused on what would happen with Yahoo’s longstanding investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan.

At Yahoo’s current stock price of $36.49, some analysts say, investors are basically buying those foreign investments and getting Yahoo’s core operations free.

When Alibaba begins trading as a public company, however, that crutch will disappear. Ms. Mayer will then have to prove to Wall Street that she has a viable plan to save Yahoo and will use the Alibaba windfall wisely.

Photo

Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, will soon have to prove to Wall Street that she has a viable plan to save Yahoo and will use the Alibaba windfall wisely.

“What do you do with that money?” asked Robert S. Peck, an analyst with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, who estimates that Yahoo will end up with about $8 billion after taxes.

Yahoo was required to sell half its stake under an agreement it reached with Alibaba in 2012. The agreement was amended last year to require Yahoo to sell less than half its stake — or 9 percent of Alibaba.

Yahoo executives aren’t saying much about what they will do with the proceeds, citing a regulatory quiet period surrounding the I.P.O. But they dropped a few hints during an April conference call to discuss the company’s first-quarter financial results.“We intend to be good stewards of our capital and we have been to date,” Ms. Mayer said in the call, in response to a question about what she might do with a sudden influx of cash.

“When we look at the investments we need to make in the business, you’ll see the same type of mix we’ve been making to date. Some strategic acquisitions, some tuck-in acquisitions, and we really need to see what opportunities arise in terms of the ways we could deploy the cash at that time.”

Analysts predict that Yahoo will spend a large portion of the proceeds from the Alibaba stock sale to buy back shares of Yahoo. A buyback would in theory make the company’s shares more valuable because each remaining share would have a slightly bigger claim on Yahoo’s business.

Ms. Mayer could also throw a few coins directly to shareholders in the form of a dividend, which would be taxable to the recipients but give them a very tangible piece of the cash hoard. Yahoo pays no dividend now.

Yahoo is likely to keep the rest of the money for acquisitions, adding to the $2.9 billion in cash and short-term liquid investments it already has. (The company says it also has $1.6 billion in liquid long-term investments.)

Under Ms. Mayer, Yahoo has made dozens of tiny acquisitions, and one large one — the $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr, a blogging platform, last May.

In recent months, rumors have swirled that Yahoo was sniffing at larger prey, like the instant-messaging service Snapchat or an online video service.

Yahoo Japan, a joint venture between Yahoo and SoftBank, a Japanese technology company, holds riches too. It operates independently from Yahoo, which owns about 35 percent of the company and records a proportional share of its revenue and profits. Yahoo Japan’s stock is traded in Tokyo; Yahoo’s stake is worth about $9.2 billion.

During the April call, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, Kenneth A. Goldman, suggested the company would look more closely at international acquisitions to bolster the company’s foreign presence.

Photo

Jack Ma, standing, at a news conference in 2005 to announce that Yahoo had bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.

Whatever Yahoo does, shareholders want some assurance that it fits a broader strategy, Mr. Peck said. They don’t want Yahoo to spend a lot of money on a big acquisition that generates no revenue, he said, as Facebook did when it agreed to buy the messaging service WhatsApp for as much as $19 billion earlier this year.

When Alibaba begins trading as an independent stock, many investors who bought Yahoo as a proxy for the fast-growing Chinese company will simply buy Alibaba directly.

Those who continue to buy Yahoo, analysts say, will expect Ms. Mayer and her top executives to show better results.

Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said he could not discuss Alibaba because his firm hoped to play a role in the I.P.O.

But he pointed out that Yahoo’s advertising business trails competitors like Google, Facebook and Twitter and is especially weak in the fastest-growing areas of digital advertising. “The fact that mobile, social and video are still immaterial to Yahoo’s revenue paints a very sharp picture of how much catch-up work Yahoo still has to do,” he said.

Even after the I.P.O., Alibaba will retain some ties to Yahoo.

Yahoo will continue to own about 13.6 percent of Alibaba, giving it a share in future profits of the company. Although the two companies have no joint business ventures, Jacqueline D. Reses, Yahoo’s chief development officer, sits on Alibaba’s board, giving her a prime view into the Chinese Internet market.

A successful I.P.O. will be vindication for Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s co-founder and former chief executive. Mr. Yang struck up a friendship long ago with Alibaba’s co-founder, Jack Ma, and had the foresight to buy about 40 percent in 2005.

Investors later savaged Mr. Yang for rejecting Microsoft’s 2008 offer to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion. But Yahoo ended up being worth more than that, mostly because of the Alibaba investment. Yahoo sold about half its original stake back to Alibaba in early 2012 for about $7.1 billion.

With Alibaba soon to play a much smaller role in Yahoo’s finances, Ms. Mayer will get an unvarnished look at how investors view their leadership.

“Right now, it’s hard for them to tell what the market really thinks,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group. “They can have a messy quarter, they can have a great quarter; it’s unlikely to make any difference.”

Once Alibaba stock begins trading, Mr. Wieser predicted, “the management team has a couple more quarters.”

But if they don’t show substantial progress on a turnaround by then, investors could decide to put their money elsewhere.

A version of this article appears in print on May 7, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: After Huge Payday, a Test for Yahoo Executive. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Business Day |NYT Now

Thinking Twice on Alibaba

SEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Common Sense

By JAMES B. STEWART

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Investors love a good story.

They lined up hundreds deep at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York earlier this month to hear Alibaba’s executive chairman, Jack Ma, promote the Chinese Internet retailer’s initial public offering.

“It was a zoo,” said Vincent Rivers, senior portfolio manager for the London-based investment firm J. O. Hambro Capital Management. “There must have been 400 people waiting in line. Everybody was there. It was like a social event.”

The shy, somewhat awkward Mr. Ma opened by saying that he’d first come to the United States 15 years ago looking for about $2 million in capital. “Now,” he said, "I’m asking for slightly more.”

The line drew a knowing laugh from the crowd — Alibaba was asking for nearly $22 billion, the biggest I.P.O. ever in the United States — but Mr. Ma should probably keep his day job. What the crowd really wanted to hear about was Alibaba’s growth, and Mr. Ma didn’t disappoint them.

A few vivid charts and statistics told the story. Alibaba is already the world’s largest Internet commerce company, with 231 million active buyers using its site, 11.3 billion annual orders and $296 billion in annual merchandise sales, a measure Alibaba uses instead of revenue.

Photo

Investors and Alibaba employees arrive at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Monday for a presentation by Jack Ma.

To put this in perspective, Amazon has less than $82 billion in revenue. EBay has just over $17 billion.

But what excites Alibaba’s potential investors isn’t only its size, but its prospects for getting bigger. China currently has 302 million Internet shoppers. That’s less than half the country’s 618 million Internet users. And Internet penetration in China is less than half the country’s population of about 1.35 billion. Competition from brick-and-mortar retailers in China is far less than in the United States, which should also drive increases in Internet shopping.

“The potential is absolutely massive,” Mr. Rivers said. “The real question isn’t whether they’ll have more users. It’s how much will they spend.” Chinese Internet shoppers spend far less per person than in the United States. “If you look long term and they can close that gap, you can get to some huge numbers,” he said.

Alibaba also has enviably high profit margins of more than 40 percent, which even by Internet standards, let alone retail, is extraordinary. Amazon has struggled for decades to eke out a slender profit. EBay has an operating margin of 20 percent and Google 23 percent.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|1:43

Behind the Appeal of Alibaba

Behind the Appeal of Alibaba James B. Stewart discusses on CBNC the reasons for investor interest in Alibaba, as well as the reasons for concern. Publish Date September 19, 2014.

Alibaba is the dominant e-commerce company in China by far, which, along with the high margins, suggests that it’s the kind of natural monopoly beloved by investors. Alibaba itself attributes this to the so-called network effect. “The interactions between buyers and sellers create network effects in that more merchants attract more consumers, and more consumers attract more merchants,” the company asserts in its prospectus.

And Alibaba keeps profits large by dispensing with the high-cost, low-margin businesses that have dogged Internet retailers in the United States. Alibaba is simply a platform for connecting buyers and sellers. “We do not engage in direct sales, compete with our merchants or hold inventory,” the prospectus notes.

I was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday morning, where the excitement of newly minted billions was palpable. The Alibaba trading station occupied the center of the floor, where it was surrounded by a throng of “V.I.P. guests” squeezed behind velvet ropes. The street outside was packed, the balconies were crowded with onlookers and cheers went up every time the indicated opening price was adjusted upward. Mr. Ma rang the opening bell and dropped in on the on-floor set of CNBC.

Alibaba was priced on Thursday night at $68 a share. And on Friday, pent-up demand drove the opening price to $92.70. The stock immediately rose from there and ended the day at $93.89.

Photo

Jack Ma, the chief executive of Alibaba, outside the New York Stock Exchange Friday morning.

Perhaps some stocks should reflect what I’ll call an “excitement premium,” which in Alibaba’s case is surely significant. That’s fine until the excitement wears off. For a more sobering view, I turned to Bruce Greenwald, co-author of “Competition Demystified” and “Value Investing,” and a finance professor at Columbia Business School. Value investors like Professor Greenwald, by nature, tend to be skeptical of stories, especially when those stories are as rosy as Alibaba’s. Still, Professor Greenwald said he agreed with much of the Alibaba thesis. “There’s no doubt they benefit from a network effect and they have growth potential,” he said.

But value investors tend to prefer numbers to words, and Alibaba’s numbers, impressive as they are, may give some investors pause.

At $68 a share, Alibaba’s market capitalization is about $168 billion. It’s hard to find a United States company that’s directly comparable, but Professor Greenwald said eBay comes the closest. Like Alibaba, it has an auction site that benefits from a powerful network effect, it offers a vast e-commerce site and it has a pay system, PayPal. (While Alibaba spun off its payment system, Alipay, Alibaba will get a share of the proceeds from any sale or public offering of Alipay.) EBay’s market capitalization is about $65 billion.

Of course, eBay doesn’t dominate e-commerce in the United States to the degree that Alibaba does in China. But is it reasonable to assume such dominance will persist as the Chinese market matures? No one company dominates e-commerce in the United States or in Europe, and none are as large as old-economy Walmart. China may now be underserved by national brick-and-mortar chains, but that could change. Professor Greenwald said he believed that Alibaba deserved a premium to eBay — perhaps twice eBay’s market capitalization. “But three times? That’s really pushing it,” he said.

Continue reading the main story

Alibaba’s Shareholders

Closing price

Change From I.P.O. Price

Major Shareholders

Share value

Jack Ma

Co-founder and chairman

Joseph Tsai

Co-founder and vice chairman

Yahoo

Search and tech. company

SoftBank

Japanese telecomm.

Updated

Then, there‘s the most common valuation metric, the price-to-earnings ratio. At $68 a share, Alibaba’s is just over 40. EBay had a loss in its most recent quarter, so it has no P/E ratio. But over eBay’s life as a publicly traded company, its P/E ratio has averaged a little over 26.

No Chinese Internet company is quite like Alibaba, so comparisons with Chinese stocks are difficult. But Baidu, China’s version of Google, which also benefits from network effects and the growth in Chinese Internet use, has a market capitalization of about $80 billion, and a P/E ratio of 45. Tencent Holdings, which is classified as social media rather than e-commerce, although it has elements of both, is even further afield. Its market capitalization of $147 billion is also smaller than Alibaba’s, although its P/E ratio is a steep 51.

Alibaba’s valuation may not be outrageous, but to Professor Greenwald, these comparisons are “pretty scary.” He added, “There’s a lot of hype in Alibaba, and that’s what you’re seeing in the price.”

That doesn’t change the Alibaba story, and sometimes a story is enough. Amazon is the leading example, a company that barely earns a profit and drives value investors crazy. Its market capitalization is $150 billion, nearly as big as Alibaba’s, and its P/E ratio is over 500. Investors buy the Amazon story, which is that Internet commerce dominance is just over the horizon, along with huge profits.

After Alibaba’s presentation in New York, “I’d say the mood was excitement,” Mr. Rivers said. “There really wasn’t much new, but there was significant buzz that this is a great growth opportunity."

Investors, Mr. Rivers added, "want to be able to say they’d been there.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: After the Party, Some Sober Reflections. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Business Day |NYT Now

Thinking Twice on Alibaba

SEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Common Sense

By JAMES B. STEWART

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Investors love a good story.

They lined up hundreds deep at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York earlier this month to hear Alibaba’s executive chairman, Jack Ma, promote the Chinese Internet retailer’s initial public offering.

“It was a zoo,” said Vincent Rivers, senior portfolio manager for the London-based investment firm J. O. Hambro Capital Management. “There must have been 400 people waiting in line. Everybody was there. It was like a social event.”

The shy, somewhat awkward Mr. Ma opened by saying that he’d first come to the United States 15 years ago looking for about $2 million in capital. “Now,” he said, "I’m asking for slightly more.”

The line drew a knowing laugh from the crowd — Alibaba was asking for nearly $22 billion, the biggest I.P.O. ever in the United States — but Mr. Ma should probably keep his day job. What the crowd really wanted to hear about was Alibaba’s growth, and Mr. Ma didn’t disappoint them.

A few vivid charts and statistics told the story. Alibaba is already the world’s largest Internet commerce company, with 231 million active buyers using its site, 11.3 billion annual orders and $296 billion in annual merchandise sales, a measure Alibaba uses instead of revenue.

Photo

Investors and Alibaba employees arrive at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Monday for a presentation by Jack Ma.

To put this in perspective, Amazon has less than $82 billion in revenue. EBay has just over $17 billion.

But what excites Alibaba’s potential investors isn’t only its size, but its prospects for getting bigger. China currently has 302 million Internet shoppers. That’s less than half the country’s 618 million Internet users. And Internet penetration in China is less than half the country’s population of about 1.35 billion. Competition from brick-and-mortar retailers in China is far less than in the United States, which should also drive increases in Internet shopping.

“The potential is absolutely massive,” Mr. Rivers said. “The real question isn’t whether they’ll have more users. It’s how much will they spend.” Chinese Internet shoppers spend far less per person than in the United States. “If you look long term and they can close that gap, you can get to some huge numbers,” he said.

Alibaba also has enviably high profit margins of more than 40 percent, which even by Internet standards, let alone retail, is extraordinary. Amazon has struggled for decades to eke out a slender profit. EBay has an operating margin of 20 percent and Google 23 percent.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|1:43

Behind the Appeal of Alibaba

Behind the Appeal of Alibaba James B. Stewart discusses on CBNC the reasons for investor interest in Alibaba, as well as the reasons for concern. Publish Date September 19, 2014.

Alibaba is the dominant e-commerce company in China by far, which, along with the high margins, suggests that it’s the kind of natural monopoly beloved by investors. Alibaba itself attributes this to the so-called network effect. “The interactions between buyers and sellers create network effects in that more merchants attract more consumers, and more consumers attract more merchants,” the company asserts in its prospectus.

And Alibaba keeps profits large by dispensing with the high-cost, low-margin businesses that have dogged Internet retailers in the United States. Alibaba is simply a platform for connecting buyers and sellers. “We do not engage in direct sales, compete with our merchants or hold inventory,” the prospectus notes.

I was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday morning, where the excitement of newly minted billions was palpable. The Alibaba trading station occupied the center of the floor, where it was surrounded by a throng of “V.I.P. guests” squeezed behind velvet ropes. The street outside was packed, the balconies were crowded with onlookers and cheers went up every time the indicated opening price was adjusted upward. Mr. Ma rang the opening bell and dropped in on the on-floor set of CNBC.

Alibaba was priced on Thursday night at $68 a share. And on Friday, pent-up demand drove the opening price to $92.70. The stock immediately rose from there and ended the day at $93.89.

Photo

Jack Ma, the chief executive of Alibaba, outside the New York Stock Exchange Friday morning.

Perhaps some stocks should reflect what I’ll call an “excitement premium,” which in Alibaba’s case is surely significant. That’s fine until the excitement wears off. For a more sobering view, I turned to Bruce Greenwald, co-author of “Competition Demystified” and “Value Investing,” and a finance professor at Columbia Business School. Value investors like Professor Greenwald, by nature, tend to be skeptical of stories, especially when those stories are as rosy as Alibaba’s. Still, Professor Greenwald said he agreed with much of the Alibaba thesis. “There’s no doubt they benefit from a network effect and they have growth potential,” he said.

But value investors tend to prefer numbers to words, and Alibaba’s numbers, impressive as they are, may give some investors pause.

At $68 a share, Alibaba’s market capitalization is about $168 billion. It’s hard to find a United States company that’s directly comparable, but Professor Greenwald said eBay comes the closest. Like Alibaba, it has an auction site that benefits from a powerful network effect, it offers a vast e-commerce site and it has a pay system, PayPal. (While Alibaba spun off its payment system, Alipay, Alibaba will get a share of the proceeds from any sale or public offering of Alipay.) EBay’s market capitalization is about $65 billion.

Of course, eBay doesn’t dominate e-commerce in the United States to the degree that Alibaba does in China. But is it reasonable to assume such dominance will persist as the Chinese market matures? No one company dominates e-commerce in the United States or in Europe, and none are as large as old-economy Walmart. China may now be underserved by national brick-and-mortar chains, but that could change. Professor Greenwald said he believed that Alibaba deserved a premium to eBay — perhaps twice eBay’s market capitalization. “But three times? That’s really pushing it,” he said.

Continue reading the main story

Alibaba’s Shareholders

Closing price

Change From I.P.O. Price

Major Shareholders

Share value

Jack Ma

Co-founder and chairman

Joseph Tsai

Co-founder and vice chairman

Yahoo

Search and tech. company

SoftBank

Japanese telecomm.

Updated

Then, there‘s the most common valuation metric, the price-to-earnings ratio. At $68 a share, Alibaba’s is just over 40. EBay had a loss in its most recent quarter, so it has no P/E ratio. But over eBay’s life as a publicly traded company, its P/E ratio has averaged a little over 26.

No Chinese Internet company is quite like Alibaba, so comparisons with Chinese stocks are difficult. But Baidu, China’s version of Google, which also benefits from network effects and the growth in Chinese Internet use, has a market capitalization of about $80 billion, and a P/E ratio of 45. Tencent Holdings, which is classified as social media rather than e-commerce, although it has elements of both, is even further afield. Its market capitalization of $147 billion is also smaller than Alibaba’s, although its P/E ratio is a steep 51.

Alibaba’s valuation may not be outrageous, but to Professor Greenwald, these comparisons are “pretty scary.” He added, “There’s a lot of hype in Alibaba, and that’s what you’re seeing in the price.”

That doesn’t change the Alibaba story, and sometimes a story is enough. Amazon is the leading example, a company that barely earns a profit and drives value investors crazy. Its market capitalization is $150 billion, nearly as big as Alibaba’s, and its P/E ratio is over 500. Investors buy the Amazon story, which is that Internet commerce dominance is just over the horizon, along with huge profits.

After Alibaba’s presentation in New York, “I’d say the mood was excitement,” Mr. Rivers said. “There really wasn’t much new, but there was significant buzz that this is a great growth opportunity."

Investors, Mr. Rivers added, "want to be able to say they’d been there.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: After the Party, Some Sober Reflections. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Technology |NYT Now

The Unlikely Ascent of Jack Ma, Alibaba’s Founder

By NEIL GOUGH and ALEXANDRA STEVENSONMAY 7, 2014

Inside

Photo

Jack Ma has long served as a flamboyant motivator to his Alibaba staff and a relentless opponent to those who have competed against him.

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HONG KONG — The first time Jack Ma used the Internet, in 1995, he searched for “beer” and “China” but found no results. Intrigued, he created a basic web page for a Chinese translation service with a friend. Within hours, he received a handful of emails from around the world requesting information.

It was an introduction to the power of the web that would drive Mr. Ma to create the Alibaba Group four years later.

Today, Alibaba is China’s largest online retailer, with merchandise volumes that lag only Walmart, worldwide. The e-commerce giant is also moving forward with plans for a stock sale that is expected to rival Facebook’s $16 billion offering two years ago. If successful, the deal would help vault Alibaba and Mr. Ma, who owns 8.9 percent of the company, to the highest ranks of technology industry titans.

Mr. Ma’s ascent to dot-com billionaire is remarkable for not following the traditional script. Unlike Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Steven P. Jobs or Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Mr. Ma, 49, has no background in computing and professes not to understand technology. Raised during China’s Cultural Revolution, Mr. Ma began his career as an English teacher.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|2:39

What Is Alibaba?

What Is Alibaba? The e-commerce company has seized investor and public interest to an extent that is unusual for a company that does much of its business in China. Video Credit By Reem Makhoul and Sofia Perpetua on Publish Date May 6, 2014. Image CreditLiangzhen/Chinatopix, via Associated Press

Instead, his role at Alibaba has always been as the company’s main strategist, a flamboyant motivator in chief to his staff and a relentless opponent to those who have competed against him. Alibaba’s two main websites, Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com, now account for 60 percent of the packages shipped through the Chinese postal system.

“He effectively represents millions of people who now depend on Alibaba for their livelihood,” said Duncan Clark, who has known Mr. Ma since the late 1990s and is the chairman of BDA China, a consulting firm in Beijing that focuses on the digital and consumer sectors. “That’s a constituency. He’s a politician with a small ‘p.'  ”

He has also proved to be a serial disrupter — an outsider with a knack for creating new markets by reimagining old industries like retailing or finance. Alibaba and Mr. Ma are shaking up some of China’s most staid, state-dominated industries, starting ventures in banking and finance and mobile phone communications. He is even moving into the department store business and film production.

“Innovation in many industries has been triggered by outsiders,” Mr. Ma wrote last June in an opinion article in The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party — an unusual move for a private sector entrepreneur.

He was putting the country’s state banks on notice. Publication of the article coincided with the start of Yu’e Bao, a high-interest money market product that Alibaba initiated to attract investment from its customers’ online payment accounts. As of February, 81 million people had signed up for the product, which had $40 billion in assets under management.

Photo

At a 2009 stadium rally to celebrate the anniversary of Alibaba, Jack Ma ripped into a stilted rendition of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?,” eliciting cheers from the crowd of 16,000 employees.

“The finance industry needs a disrupter, it needs an outsider to come in and carry out a transformation,” Mr. Ma wrote in the article.

He brings his own flair to the role.

At a 2009 stadium rally to celebrate the anniversary of Alibaba, he emerged on stage wearing a waist-length blond wig, a black leather jacket with red flame and metal stud accents, sunglasses and lipstick. Raising a microphone, he ripped into a stilted rendition of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?,” eliciting cheers from the crowd of 16,000 employees.

Since the beginning, Mr. Ma has shown a knack for thinking differently.

At a time when few Chinese households had their own computers, Mr. Ma in 1995 made the decision to leave teaching to set up an online business. In his hometown, Hangzhou, an eastern city about 100 miles from Shanghai, Mr. Ma established one of the country’s first officially registered Internet companies, a business index site called China Pages. Cui Luhai, who was then running a computer animation business, met with Mr. Ma at the China Pages office to learn more about his plans for the website.

Photo

Mr. Ma dressed as a pop star.

“I can still remember the first scene I saw when I walked into his office,” said Mr. Cui, today a lecturer in new media at the China Academy of Art. “It was a pretty empty space with only one desk set up in the middle of the room. There was only one very old PC desktop surrounded by a lot of people,” he said. Mr. Ma, it turned out, had spent much of his money on registering the business and appeared to have little money left for hardware.

Mr. Ma struggled in his early efforts to get government support for his new venture.

In a memoir-style documentary about Alibaba and Mr. Ma called “Crocodile in the Yangtze,” Porter Erisman, a Mandarin-speaking American who worked at Alibaba from 2000 to 2008, presents footage of one of many visits Mr. Ma paid to officials in Beijing in the mid-1990s. Mr. Ma appears in a button-down blue denim shirt, sitting over a boxy old laptop computer in a smoky government office and explaining his business to a bespectacled official in jacket and tie.

“Nowadays, foreigners can use computers from any desktop to find products from around the world,” Mr. Ma explains to the official. “They can order directly from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, but they can’t order anything from China because right now there’s nothing from China on the Internet,” he says. “I hope the various departments will support us.”

But Mr. Ma’s pitches were rebuffed. He soon left China Pages in 1997 to work at a unit of China’s Commerce Ministry helping to create websites. In early 1999, he struck out on his own again, to start Alibaba.

Continue reading the main story

Graphic

From Netscape to Alibaba

A look back at the Internet revolution’s notable I.P.O.s, and how valuations have fared over the years.

OPEN Graphic

The company’s first site, Alibaba.com, was a business-to-business marketplace that connected Chinese exporters with overseas buyers. Unlike most Chinese websites of the day, it was not a clone of Western companies.

In 1999, the company lured Joseph C. Tsai, a Taiwan-born former lawyer who had been educated at Yale and was working in a private equity business in Hong Kong. Together, Mr. Ma and Mr. Tsai brought in Goldman Sachs and SoftBank as investors.

Early on, Mr. Ma honed his skills as a strategist. He began Taobao, the company’s consumer-to-consumer platform, in 2003, at a time when eBay’s Chinese unit dominated the business. Fighting for market share, Mr. Ma decided to keep Taobao free, although it was hemorrhaging money.

“With eBay, he liked looking foolish and stupid,” says Mr. Erisman, the filmmaker. “From a Wall Street investors’ perspective, he was willing to run Alibaba into the ground to defeat eBay — the only thing worse than a smart competitor is a crazy one who is willing to just spend all their money with no hope of making profit.”

It worked. At a news conference in October 2005, Mr. Ma told reporters that Taobao had gained nearly 70 percent of the market share for online shopping in China. “Pretty soon we’ll be the only one left. EBay’s days are numbered,” he said. In 2006, eBay announced it was effectively leaving the China market and folding its operations into an Internet company controlled by Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire.

Photo

Mr. Ma has said that he expects 30 percent of China’s retail sales to be done online in five years.

“I had always wished that I was born in a period of war. I could have been a general,” Mr. Ma once said of his youth. “I thought about what I could have achieved in war.”

Mr. Ma has had his share of boardroom battles. In 2011, an initial partnership with Yahoo formed in 2005 was briefly derailed. Mr. Ma transferred one of Alibaba’s most profitable businesses, the online payments unit Alipay, into a separate business under his control without formal approval from Alibaba’s board, where SoftBank and Yahoo had seats. When news of the transfer broke in May 2011, it brought an angry response from outside investors in Alibaba and Yahoo.

Mr. Ma argued that it was necessary to get a government license for Alipay, because Beijing did not want foreign investors controlling online payment businesses in China. “If Alipay were illegal or didn’t get the license, Taobao would be paralyzed,” Mr. Ma said at the time. “If Taobao were paralyzed, how could Alibaba reform and develop?”

Alibaba, Yahoo and SoftBank settled their differences over the issue, but not all shareholders were pleased. The hedge fund manager David Einhorn pulled his investment in Yahoo, saying the spat “wasn’t what we signed up for.”

Mr. Ma displays few regrets for his aggressive approach. In regard to the 2011 episode, he compared his decisions with those made by Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader during the government’s deadly crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters on June 4, 1989, which is widely referred to in China as the “6/4 incident.”

Photo

Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, China, hometown of its chairman.

“As a company C.E.O., no matter if it’s the Alibaba incident, no matter if it’s splitting off Alipay, at that point, it’s just like Deng Xiaoping during 6/4,” Mr. Ma was quoted as saying in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post in July. “As the country’s highest decision maker, he demanded stability. He needed to make this kind of cruel decision.”

As the company moves toward an initial public offering, Mr. Ma seems focused on his legacy.

He remains a hands-on executive chairman and oversees strategy at Alibaba, but in May 2013 he stepped down from his role as chief executive. The next day, he announced that he had been appointed the chairman of the Nature Conservancy’s board of directors for China. He has grown increasingly concerned over rampant pollution of the soil and water in China, something he has partly blamed for his father-in-law’s recent death from cancer.

In late April, Mr. Ma and Mr. Tsai, a co-founder, announced that they would donate shares representing 2 percent of Alibaba’s stock — a grant worth several billion dollars — to charitable trusts that would finance initiatives in the environment, medicine and education. Such a large donation is seldom seen in China, and the move was cheered by other prominent philanthropists, including Mr. Gates of Microsoft, Warren E. Buffett and Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York.

Mr. Ma “wasn’t the type of person who starts a business keeping 90 percent of the equity for himself and really hoarding all of the wealth and riches,” said one Western executive who has known him for over a decade, declining to be named because of his company’s policy against speaking publicly about business contacts.

“In the earliest days, when Alibaba.com was first forming, he was giving equity to all of the high school students who were working with him,” said the executive. “He was bringing everyone along.”

Shanshan Wang contributed research  from Beijing. Neil Gough reported from  Hong Kong, and Alexandra Stevenson  from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on May 8, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Rise of Alibaba, and a Tycoon. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Doubt Is Cast on Vetting of Deals by Alibaba

By Neil Gough

August 15, 2014 12:45 amAugust 15, 2014 12:45 am

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Jack Ma, executive chairman of the Alibaba Group, which has made a string of acquisitions.

The Alibaba Group, the Chinese e-commerce giant, has been on a buying spree since the start of last year, spending billions of dollars to acquire stakes in businesses like department stores and mapping services in China and an array of technology start-ups in the United States.

But has the company bitten off more than it can chew?

On Friday, the company announced that it had discovered suspicious accounting at one of its acquisitions — a Hong Kong film company that it bought control of for about $800 million just two months ago.

Among the main concerns is whether Alibaba fully vetted the acquisition. The issue could complicate Alibaba’s efforts to court investors for its anticipated initial public offering of stock, which could be the biggest in American history.

The film company, the Alibaba Pictures Group, formerly the ChinaVision Media Group, said on Friday that it had discovered “possible noncompliant accounting treatments” involving insufficient provision for impairments on assets, or write-downs, which were not identified. The company said that it would miss an Aug. 31 deadline to report its earnings for the first six months of the year and that its shares would be suspended from trading until its audit committee could complete a formal inquiry.

The accounting issues at Alibaba Pictures may raise concerns about whether Alibaba, which analysts say could raise as much as $20 billion in a New York initial stock offering as early as next month, has been conducting sufficient research on potential takeover targets.

A deal in June, for instance, to pay nearly $200 million for a 50 percent stake in the Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club, a Chinese soccer team, was wrapped up in a matter of days after Alibaba’s executive chairman, Jack Ma, agreed to the investment while having drinks with Evergrande’s owner, a billionaire real estate developer.

Alibaba agreed in March to buy a 60 percent stake in ChinaVision, which produces and distributes films and television programs in China, for 6.24 billion Hong Kong dollars, or $804 million at the time. The deal was completed in June.

Alibaba renamed the company Alibaba Pictures and installed its own slate of directors. Last month, Alibaba Pictures issued a profit warning, saying that because of a drop in revenue, it expected to book a substantial loss in the first six months of this year, compared with a profit of $18 million in the same period in 2013. The film unit also announced plans to work with the respected Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai on future productions.

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“The big question is whether Alibaba did proper accounting due diligence,” said Paul Gillis, a professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, who writes a blog about accounting issues in China. He pointed out that movie rights were the biggest asset on the balance sheet of most film companies, but the carrying value of these rights needs to be regularly adjusted based on the forecast cash flows from the films.

“It sounds like the company was not doing that correctly,” Professor Gillis said.

Alibaba issued a vote of confidence in its new film unit on Friday, describing it as the “flagship company” in its growing entertainment business.

Alibaba “fully supports the new management of Ali Pictures as they thoroughly review and rectify the possible financial noncompliance they have found with the former ChinaVision,” the e-commerce company said in an emailed statement. “The new management team has a firm commitment to transparency, good corporate governance and investor protection, and the actions they have taken are consistent with this commitment.”

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is the film unit’s longtime auditor. Goldman Sachs advised Alibaba on the acquisition, while Reorient, a Hong Kong brokerage firm, advised ChinaVision.

Alibaba Pictures said the potential accounting issues had been discovered by its new management as part of “an initial review of the company’s financial and business affairs.”

“The board’s audit committee has therefore begun a further inquiry into the matters concerned, in accordance with an action plan approved by the board to determine the cause, impact and extent of the relevant issues,” the film unit said. “It is currently uncertain how long the further inquiry will take.”

The broader issue highlighted by the accounting disclosure is the ability of Alibaba — and several of its peers that are also on acquisition binges — to successfully execute deals, from thoroughly scrutinizing targets to making them a financial and operational fit with the rest of the group after they are bought.

Mergers and acquisitions of technology companies have been soaring globally. In the first half of this year, they reached their highest level by deal value since 2000, according to Dealogic, a financial data company.

But in China, only in the last few years have companies reached the necessary size to make large deals possible. Alibaba’s cash on hand doubled over the last two years, to $7 billion as of March 31, and the company has been aggressively putting that to work. Dealogic’s data show that the company has spent $6.6 billion on 30 acquisitions it has announced since the start of 2013.

Here are some of Alibaba’s recent acquisitions in China:

■ A 60 percent stake in ChinaVision, for $804 million.

■ The 82 percent of the Chinese mapping service AutoNavi that it did not own, for $1.1 billion.

■ A 16.5 percent stake of Youku Tudou, an Internet video company, for $1.1 billion.

■ A 26 percent stake in Intime Retail, a Chinese department store, for about $692 million.

■ A 30 percent stake in the Sina Corporation‘s Weibo microblogging service — now publicly traded — for $586 million.

■ The roughly one-third of UCWeb, a Chinese mobile web browser maker, that it didn’t own, for an undisclosed amount.

“Alibaba has little expertise in many of the new businesses, which means that it has to rely on incumbent managers in business decisions,” said Joseph Fan, a professor in the finance and accounting department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “I suspect Alibaba, like most Chinese companies, does not have the ability to manage the increasing number of unfamiliar yet decentralized divisions and people.”

A version of this article appears in print on 08/16/2014, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Doubt Cast on Vetting of Deals by Alibaba.

I.P.O./Offerings, Technology, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Alibaba Pictures Group Ltd, ChinaVision Media Group Ltd, E-Commerce, Initial Public Offerings, Ma, Jack, Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures

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Alibaba’s Shares Close Up 38% on First Day of Trading

By William Alden

September 19, 2014 6:32 amSeptember 19, 2014 6:32 am

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The Alibaba Group, the e-commerce giant, closed the day at $93.89 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, up 38 percent from its initial public offering price in a strong trading debut. The stock began the day at $92.70 a share.

Alibaba has captured the attention of American investors, politicians and consumers to an extent that is unusual for a company that does much of its business in China.

Apart from making its insiders rich and providing fees to Wall Street, the initial public offering reflects the rise of China’s consumer class. Investors see it as perhaps the best chance yet to buy into the country’s growth.

DealBook followed Alibaba’s market debut:

4:25 P.M. Calculating Yahoo’s Value

Alibaba’s stock debut has breathed new life into one of the stock market’s favorite parlor games.

Yahoo owns a large stake in Alibaba, which has led to a debate over what Yahoo will be worth once it sells its Alibaba holding. The exercise can be cruel to Yahoo. Using Alibaba’s Friday stock price, Yahoo’s remaining stake in the company has a stock market value today of about $38 billion.

Some people subtract that sum from Yahoo’s market capitalization of $41 billion and then assert that the remaining $3 billion is the value that investors are effectively ascribing to Yahoo’s core operations. Though Yahoo has problems, that $3 billion appears too low. It would only value the company at around 2.4 times the $1.23 billion of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, that analysts expect Yahoo to make this year.

So what explains the odd result? Perhaps the market believes Yahoo will liquidate its Alibaba stake for less than its current value on the stock market. Under this exercise, the less the stake is ultimately worth to Yahoo, the more Yahoo’s core operations are worth.

One way that Yahoo gets less from the stake is if it has to pay substantial amounts of taxes as it sells its holdings. If Yahoo gets hit by a tax rate of, say, 25 percent on the holding, it would net Yahoo $28 billion, not $38 billion.

Subtracting $28 billion from Yahoo’s $41 billion stock market value, in theory, implies that its core operations are worth roughly $13 billion. That is about 10.5 times the forecast for Yahoo’s 2014 Ebitda. In some ways, that multiple looks pricey; it’s nearly double that of AOL. On the other hand, it is below Google’s 15.5 times multiple.

As you can see, this is no more than a parlor game.

— Peter Eavis

4:10 P.M. Unofficial Closing Price: $93.89

Alibaba has closed the trading day at $93.89 a share, a 38 percent increase over the I.P.O. price. Anyone who bought shares at the start of trading this morning, however, would end up with a gain of just over 1 percent.

At the close, Alibaba has a market capitalization of $231 billion.

The stock experienced heavy volume during the day, with more than 270 million shares changing hands.

The Jack Ma Way

By DAVID BARBOZA

Alibaba, started by Jack Ma in 1999, is about to sell shares in the United States that could value the company at about $160 billion.

— William Alden

3:48 P.M. Another Asian Magnate’s Wealth Rises Handsomely

Even as all eyes were on Jack Ma, another Asian magnate also roamed the stock exchange floor on Friday.

That would be Masayoshi Son, the chief executive of the Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank. His company is the largest shareholder in Alibaba, with a 32.4 percent stake.

Mr. Son, a director of Alibaba, is a close ally and friend of Mr. Ma’s. He told Bloomberg TV that he was in New York for Alibaba’s debut because it was a “historic moment.” SoftBank held onto all of its shares in the I.P.O.

But Alibaba’s public listing signaled a more profound shift in the relationship between the two men. While Mr. Son has traditionally been among the most visible power players from Asia, Mr. Ma is now stepping out onto a global stage.

Mr. Son, who is now estimated by Bloomberg to be the richest man in Japan, recently experienced a public disappointment when Sprint, which SoftBank controls, failed to carry out a merger with T-Mobile US.

Mr. Ma’s star, meanwhile, is on the rise, reflecting also the emergence of China as an economic power.

— William Alden

1:27 P.M. Why Yahoo’s Stock Is Falling

Even as the value of its Alibaba stake rose, investors punished Yahoo as the day wore on.

Yahoo, which became a big investor in Alibaba in 2005, raised about $8.3 billion in cash (before taxes) by selling 121.7 million shares via Alibaba’s I.P.O. last night. It still owns a 16.3 percent stake, worth $37.2 billion at the start of trading this morning.

That’s a huge number, particularly when compared with Yahoo’s market capitalization, which stood at about $42 billion at Thursday’s close.

But Yahoo’s stock was down about 4 percent by the early afternoon to just above $40 a share, pushing the market capitalization to about $40.2 billion. Trading volume in the stock was more than six times higher than the three-month average.

One clue to the investor reaction might lie in Yahoo’s trading activity in the months before the I.P.O. Investors had treated Yahoo as a way to bet on the still-private Alibaba. Now, that dynamic has changed.

“You no longer need to own Yahoo as a proxy for Alibaba. You no longer need to tangle up your fortunes with that management team and the core business,” said Colin W. Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial who covers Yahoo.

Yahoo has said it plans to return at least half of the cash it raised from the I.P.O. to shareholders. But its plans for its remaining stake in Alibaba are less certain.

“Who knows when that gets sold,” Mr. Gillis said, “or what price it gets sold at?”

After Huge Alibaba Payday, a Test for Yahoo Executives

By VINDU GOEL

Marissa Mayer, chief of Yahoo, will have to prove to Wall Street that she has a plan to save the company after it sells its stake in Alibaba.

— William Alden

1:21 P.M. Facebook Is Valued More by One Measure

Alibaba’s soaring debut on the stock market has given the company an overall value of about $223 billion. As others have pointed out, that value exceeds even Facebook’s market capitalization of $200 billion.

But from another perspective, Facebook is far ahead. The social network company’s market value is 83 times larger than its earnings for the 12 months through the end of June.

For Alibaba, that multiple is 45 times, roughly half that of Facebook. Because the two companies have similar growth prospects and profit margins, they should in theory trade at similar multiples. The fact that Alibaba has a lower valuation suggests that investors have reservations about the Chinese company that they don’t have about Facebook. Investors may want to see a longer track record of earnings growth before awarding Alibaba a higher multiple. A “China discount” may also be to blame.

It’s already harder for investors to understand foreign businesses. But such concerns may be compounded for Chinese companies. Accounting scandals have hit Chinese firms, and their auditors typically aren’t inspected by the American auditor regulator. Chinese firms also have unusual corporate structures that prevent foreign investors from taking a proper ownership stake in the companies.

Then again, investors can talk themselves into buying any stock if they think it is going to keep going up. And Friday’s rise may be all the convincing they need.

— Peter Eavis

1:04 P.M. Midday Retreat

Shares of Alibaba jumped in early trading and were soon testing $100.

The stock price has now come down a bit, trading closer to $90 a share after more than an hour following its debut. That still represents a first-day pop of some 33 percent from its initial public offering price of $68. Trading is heavy, with more than 165 million shares changing hands.

— Jeffrey Cane

12:50 P.M. Yahoo Executives Take Part in the Raucousness

Alibaba’s huge initial public offering generated a lot of money for the few investors who sold shares, but none made more on an absolute basis than Yahoo, which reaped about $8.3 billion.

So naturally, executives from the American Internet company were on hand to take part in the pricing celebration that engulfed the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. Standing inside Barclays’ post on the floor — specifically Post Eight, continuing Alibaba’s fascination with lucky numbers — were Ken Goldman, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, and Jacqueline Reses, the company’s chief deal maker and a director on Alibaba’s board.

As the discussions in the booth swelled closer to the pricing, Mr. Goldman and Ms. Reses joked with officials from the Big Board and top bankers from Alibaba’s six lead underwriters. Among those in the booth cracking wise were James B. Lee Jr., vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase, and Daniel Dees, a co-head of technology, media and telecommunications investment banking at Goldman Sachs.

— Michael J. de la Merced

12:19 P.M. Alibaba Worth More Than Facebook

Alibaba started trading with a market capitalization of about $228.5 billion, making it more valuable than Facebook and Amazon but not nearly as large as Google. Here are the market caps of some other tech giants, as of around noon on Friday:

LinkedIn: $25.6 billion

Twitter: $30.8 billion

eBay: $65.5 billion

Amazon: $151.7 billion

Facebook: $200 billion

Google: $400.3 billion

— William Alden

12:00 P.M. Getting Out of Alibaba’s Way

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Jack Ma, Alibaba’s co-founder, celebrated the ringing of the bell from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

Who wants to compete with Alibaba? Almost no one, judging by the market for initial public offerings.

Alibaba’s I.P.O. was so enormous, the attention it commanded in recent weeks so overwhelming, that the rest of the market essentially ground to a halt ahead of the Chinese company’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

‘It’s a bad idea to go public on the same day as Alibaba,” said Matt Kennedy, an analyst with Renaissance Capital, which tracks I.P.O.s.

In the previous week, just four other companies priced their public offerings, all of them small health care companies. Meanwhile, more than dozen companies are expected to go public next week, once Alibaba is out of the way.

“Some companies have avoided going public this week because of all the hoopla with Alibaba,” said Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida.

Citizens Financial originally hoped to list this week, but delayed to make room for Alibaba. The bank now plans to raise as much as $3.5 billion next week.

Wayfair, a Boston-based technology company, had also considered this week for its stock market debut, but pushed the timing back so as not to be overshadowed by Alibaba.

As Alibaba’s chief executive, Jack Ma, led his company’s roadshow over the last week, other company chieftains wisely chose not to compete for the focus of institutional investors.

“Alibaba is naturally getting all the attention,” Mr. Kennedy said. “People are excited about the deal and spending all their time getting information about it.”

As for the few biotechnology companies that did price this past week, those shares are typically bought not by portfolio managers at big institutional investors, but by managers of smaller funds. “They wouldn’t be on the same radar,” said Mr. Kennedy. “It’s a different investor.”

Besides not wanting to compete with Alibaba for attention, other companies on the cusp of going public didn’t want to compete for institutional investors’ dollars. In advance of Alibaba’s listing, some portfolio mangers have had to sell out of other tech companies to make room for Alibaba in their funds.

Indeed, the $21.8 billion raised by Alibaba was equal to all the I.P.O.s in the first six months of this year, according to Mr. Ritter. For smaller technology companies looking to go public this month, that means there might be little appetite from investors who have just gorged on Alibaba shares.

Nonetheless, the market for new public offerings is as strong as it has been since the dot-com boom. There have been 195 I.P.O.s this year, up 34 percent from last year, according to Renaissance Capital. And after a slow summer for new listings that followed a roaring start to the year, executives at the major exchanges are anticipating a busy end of the year.

The New York Stock Exchange is expected to list Citizens, Medley Management and Vantage Energy next week. Nasdaq, which missed out on the Alibaba I.P.O., plans to list as least 10 new companies over the next two weeks, including Civitas Therapeutics, Revo Biologics and Vitae Pharmaceuticals.

“We’re going to end the year on an incredibly strong note,” said Nelson Griggs, head of new listings at Nasdaq. “The pipeline is exceptionally strong.”

— David Gelles

11:56 A.M. The Start of Trading

Alibaba has started trading at $92.70 a share around 11:53 a.m., nearly two and a half hours after the market opened.

The opening price is a 36 percent jump above the initial public offering price, reflecting investors’ hunger for the shares. The company starts trading with a market valuation of $228.5 billion.

— William Alden

11:10 A.M. Stewart: The Numbers Behind Alibaba’s Story

Alibaba has a compelling story to tell investors, but the underlying numbers may give some investors pause, James B. Stewart writes in the Common Sense column in The New York Times.

For example, at $68 a share, Alibaba’s price-to-earnings ratio is just over 40. EBay, a roughly comparable company, has had an average P/E ratio a little over 26, Mr. Stewart writes:

Thinking Twice on Alibaba

By JAMES B. STEWART

What excites investors in Alibaba isn’t just its size, but its prospects of getting bigger. But is it reasonable to assume its dominance will persist?

11:04 A.M. SoftBank Chief’s Outlook

In an interview with CNBC, Masayoshi Son, the chief of SoftBank and a director of Alibaba, shared his optimism for the Internet giant, as well as Japan and China’s economy:

10:37 A.M. Jack Ma on Spending His Billions and Forrest Gump

Mr. Ma spoke with CNBC immediately following the ringing of the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. He described how he plans to spend his own personal wealth.

… compared the infrastructure of commerce in the U.S. verses in China …

… and said that his hero is Forrest Gump.

10:25 A.M. In China, Alibaba’s New Campus Sets Up for a Big Party

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A re-creation of the facade of the New York Stock Exchange outside of Alibaba's campus in Hangzhou, China.

Over the course of its 15-year history, Alibaba has struggled to separate itself from a reputation for selling fake products online.

On Friday, the day of its listing, it finally has a fake that will inspire pride: A recreation of the facade of the New York Stock Exchange.

The structure, which has been put up in the main courtyard of the company’s new campus in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, will serve as the center of festivities Friday evening local time, when the company lists in New York.

Though China’s state-run companies are usually quite conservative, the mostly private technology sector is anything but, and over the years Alibaba and its co-founder, Jack Ma, have earned a reputation for throwing a good party.

Mr. Ma, who is known to croon karaoke ballads at the company’s festivals, was in New York with a group of executives and Chinese reporters for the listing. Still, the company’s employees, some of whom will soon be millionaires, will ring in the listing by watching a live feed from New York at the campus.

Despite that, two employees said that the mood on the campus was subdued, with many hard at work on Friday morning.

One employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company, said that employees at the campus were generally calm.

“It’s not too different from normal,” said the person, who has worked for seven years for Alibaba and is a senior information technology engineer.

“It’s not as important as the outside world has made it, and we are super busy, like always,” he said, adding that light rain in Hangzhou was dampening the mood as well.

Another employee in the company’s branding department, Zhao Xiuzhi, said the mood was generally happy, but not overly ecstatic.

“Today we feel quite happy,” she said. “Everyone is wearing the same T-shirt, which gives a feeling of having accomplished something together.” She added: “Plus, tomorrow’s a Saturday, so I feel relaxed.”

Photos of the white T-shirts the employees received spread widely on social media in China. “One must have dreams” was printed on the front, and “What if they come true?” was on the back.

Ms. Zhao said she felt tranquil about the money she would earn and also said she was too busy to think too much about the celebrations that night. “But I do feel lucky, since it is the first time I have a chance to witness one company’s I.P.O. event.”

In Hong Kong, senior bankers were taking on jobs usually left to junior employees to get in on the action of what was seen as a historic occasion, according to one banker working on the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“All bankers working on this I.P.O. have been demoted a few rungs,” the banker said. “You got managing directors doing associate and analyst-level work. It’s like the deal has some sort of mystical power over everyone and all are just acolytes at the altar of Jack Ma and Alibaba.”

— Paul Mozur and Shanshan Wang

10:15 A.M. Caution on Alibaba’s Future

Alibaba is projected by many on Wall Street to perform well on its first day. But anyone thinking of buying into the stock should be mindful of the considerable long-term risks. DealBook’s Peter Eavis explored some of the issues. Among them:

* Alibaba’s corporate structure is highly opaque. The entity going public, the Alibaba Group, is not based in the United States but in the Cayman Islands. Investors buying into Alibaba will not get a true ownership stake in Alibaba’s operating businesses; instead, the Alibaba Group merely has contractual rights to profits from the businesses.

* Alibaba’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCooper’s affiliate in Hong Kong, is not subject to inspections by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which regulates audit firms.

* Alibaba went on a buying spree in the second quarter, spending a total of $1.85 billion, more than the $1.64 billion in cash flows from the company’s operations. Some of the deals raised eyebrows. And after buying a movie production company, Alibaba said that it might have found accounting irregularities at the firm, suggesting it did not adequately vet the deal.

* Although the company is dominant today, its future is not certain. Unlike Amazon, Alibaba does not consume lots of cash holding inventory, and it has not used up cash to build a fully fledged distribution network. Rivals like JD.com are building their own networks. If Alibaba were to follow suit, it would be a punitively expensive undertaking.

Rush to Invest in Alibaba, but Concerns Linger About Company’s Future

By PETER EAVIS

Once the so-called smart money piles into a stock, it’s usually time to start asking dumb questions. And with Alibaba, there are many.

— William Alden

9:46 A.M. Employees and Executives at N.Y.S.E.

A huge crowd of Alibaba employees and partners were in a cordoned-off area just under the balcony where eight Alibaba customers were to ring the bell. Among the crowd was Jack Ma, the Internet titan’s executive chairman, and Joseph Tsai, the executive vice chairman, both tieless and looking relaxed.

Many of the employees wore white T-shirts with a blue “Tao doll,” the mascot of Alibaba’s Taobao market, over collared shirts. Selfies and snapshots were taken repeatedly, with the company’s general counsel, Timothy Steinert, featured in a few. Michael Yao, the company’s head of corporate finance, enthusiastically whipped out his smartphone and snapped some photos.

The pen grew so crowded that minders repeatedly sought to thin the crowd, but to little avail. At one point, the crowd was urged to squeeze in “like in a subway train.”

— Michael J. de la Merced

9:42 A.M. Jack Ma on the Floor, Not at the Bell

Jack Ma was the New York Stock Exchange at the market open. But he didn’t ring the opening bell.

Eight customers of Alibaba rang the bell on the company’s behalf. Alibaba says this shows its “customers first” ethos. It also reflects the importance of the number 8.

The customers include an American farmer, a Chinese delivery courier, an Olympic gold medalist and a customer service representative for Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace.

— William Alden

9:28 A.M. Alibaba’s Lucky Numbers

There are plenty of important numbers to keep in mind when analyzing Alibaba. But a few stand out: 6, 9 and especially 8.

Consider how many 8’s appear in the stock offering. The roadshow for the I.P.O. kicked off the week of Sept. 8. The deal priced on Sept. 18. The price was set at $68 a share.

If you dig into Alibaba’s prospectus, there are more 8’s, 9’s and 6’s. The company had 18 founders. Its holding company was established on June 28, 1999 (6/28/99). A credit facility it obtained last year was worth $8 billion.

The pattern is no coincidence. The number 8 is considered lucky in Chinese culture. The word for eight in Mandarin, “ba,” rhymes with the word for prosper, “fa.” (The Beijing Olympics — in 2008 — began at 8 p.m. on the eighth day of August, the eighth month of the year.)

Alibaba just so happens to contain two “eights” in its name.

Reports this summer said Alibaba was considering scheduling its trading debut for Aug. 8, or 8/8, a date the company saw as auspicious.

But a debut in September, the ninth month, is also significant. The number 9 is considered desirable because it sounds the same as the word for long lasting, “jiu.”

The number 6 is popular as well. It can signify longevity or joy, depending on the dialect.

A string of these numbers is even better. Consider, then, the market value Alibaba achieved last night: $168 billion.

— William Alden

9:16 A.M. The Whale of the I.P.O. Market

The trading debut of Alibaba Group comes at a time when the market for initial public offerings has been robust.

At $21.8 billion, Alibaba’s offering is the largest in the United States, topping the I.P.O.s of Visa, Facebook and General Motors. But to really get a sense to how enormous Alibaba is, consider that the market value of the Chinese e-commerce company is nearly as big as the market value of the entire American I.P.O. market so far this year.

With its shares priced at $68 each, Alibaba has a market value of about $168 billion. The combined market value of the 154 companies based in the United States that have already gone public this year is $180.5 billion, says Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ, a research firm.

Fully diluted, Alibaba’s market value is $176 billion at $68 a share, says Renaissance Capital, an I.P.O research firm. That would make Alibaba among the top 25 most valuable companies listed in the United States, it says.

— Jeffrey Cane

9:06 A.M. Who Got In at the Debut Price?

Word is already emerging on who managed to snag shares in Alibaba’s I.P.O., and unsurprisingly, the biggest of the big investors prevailed.

The company and its underwriters allocated the vast majority of shares from the offering to “strategic partners” like mutual funds, according to people briefed on the matter. More than 50 percent of the stock went to the biggest accounts, one of these people said.

Behind the allocation, these people said, was a desire to create a solid base of investors willing to stick with the company for the long term.

Doug Kass at Seabreeze Partners says the demand was high for shares:

TD AMERITRADE SAYS CUSTOMER ORDERS FOR ALIBABA EXCEED CUSTOMER ORDERS FOR TWITTER’S IPO BY 2.5 TIMES $BABA

— Douglas Kass (@DougKass) 19 Sep 14

— Michael J. de la Merced

9:00 A.M. How Alibaba Is Set Up

What exactly will shareholders be buying? Steven Davidoff Solomon, noted in a Deal Professor column that investors in the offering won’t have title to most of Alibaba’s Chinese assets because of Chinese prohibitions on foreign ownership.

Alibaba Investors Will Buy a Risky Corporate Structure

By STEVEN M. DAVIDOFF

When investors buy shares in an American offering of Alibaba, what exactly will they be buying? asks Steven M. Davidoff in the Deal Professor column.

Instead, the company is using a so-called variable interest entity structure. It works for Jack Ma, Alibaba’s co-founder and executive chairman, but whether it works for investors remains to be seen, he writes. He also takes a look in this video:

8:44 A.M. Don’t Look for Alibaba’s Price Right at 9:30 A.M.

Alibaba shares aren’t expected to start trading for several hours, but the floor of the New York Stock Exchange is already bustling, and brimming with orange from the company’s logo. Within the Big Board, screens at various posts — especially at Barclays, the designated market maker — are displaying the bright orange Alibaba logo prominently. The logos of other Chinese companies, like Autohome and Leju.com, dot the screens of other market makers.

I get the sense some company is going public today. #alibaba $baba http://t.co/DX1OEHzLhX

— Michael de la Merced (@m_delamerced) 19 Sep 14

And the chatter around the floor has a distinctly more Chinese flavor. An estimated 140 media teams from the China region have gathered at the Big Board to cover Alibaba’s market debut.

The N.Y.S.E. is also going to great lengths to make sure there are no glitches, so the stock won’t be trading right at the opening bell:

— Michael J. de la Merced

7:39 A.M. The Scene on Wall Street

Photo

Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba, arriving at the New York Stock Exchange.

Jack Ma arriving at the New York Stock Exchange. Dozens of onlookers had gathered early Friday in anticipation of Alibaba’s first day of trading.

Photo

The scene outside the N.Y.S.E.

DealBook’s Michael J. de la Merced is at the exchange to follow the debut:

More than a few Chinese visitors stop to have their picture taken in front of the NYSE $baba @ New… http://t.co/0KMoosJZ5V

— Michael de la Merced (@m_delamerced) 19 Sep 14

7:23 AM How the Chinese Feel About Alibaba

With the Alibaba I.P.O. heavily oversubscribed, the world already knows how international and institutional investors feel about the offering. Less emphasis has been placed on what Chinese investors think.

A survey by the Chinese tech media site PingWest of more than 600 Chinese investors found that 59 percent would not invest in the company. Though 66.7 percent of those asked said that they were bullish on Alibaba’s long-term growth, 16.1 percent said the price was too high, while 8.6 percent chose the more personal reason: They didn’t like Jack Ma and Alibaba.

— Paul Mozur and Shanshan Wang

7:00 A.M. In Hong Kong, Wondering What Might Have Been

HONG KONG — The new Alibaba Group had originally sought to list in Hong Kong. But regulators refused to sign off on its partnership structure, which gives a committee of fewer than 30 of the company’s employees and associates majority control over board appointments.

Speaking to potential investors while on a marketing tour in Hong Kong on Monday, Jack Ma asked his audience to “think about us just like any other Internet company that happens to be in China.”

In Hong Kong, that’s not so easy to do.

— Neil Gough

6:42 A.M. Alibaba.com’s Previous I.P.O. Popped, and Fizzled

Photo

In 2007, Jack Ma, third from left, had taken Alibaba.com public.

HONG KONG — This isn’t Jack Ma’s first trip to the I.P.O. rodeo.

Demand was tremendous back in 2007 when Mr. Ma listed Alibaba.com, a website connecting Chinese exporters with overseas buyers, on the Hong Kong stock exchange. It raised $1.7 billion, a record for an initial public offering by an Internet company in Asia at the time.

Alibaba.com originally offered 129 million shares to individual retail investors and received orders for 33 billion shares. The opening-day pop in the stock was impressive: the shares rose 193 percent on their first day of trading, Nov. 6, 2007 — climbing from an offer price of 13.50 Hong Kong dollars apiece, or $1.74, to 39.50 dollars apiece.

But Alibaba.com came to market near the top of what proved to be a global rally in equities that would turn into a downward spiral a year later, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

From a peak of 38.92 dollars just three weeks after its I.P.O., Alibaba.com’s stock plunged and never quite recovered. It was languishing below 10 Hong Kong dollars a share in early 2012 when the parent company, the Alibaba Group, offered to take it private at 13.50 dollars a share — which just so happened to be the I.P.O. price.

— Neil Gough

A version of this article appears in print on 09/20/2014, on page B7 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Yahoo Falls As Alibaba Climbs Up.

I.P.O./Offerings, Technology, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Initial Public Offerings, Search Engines, Stocks and Bonds

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Archives

China's Lucky Cell Numbers

By JENNIFER 8. LEE

Published: January 16, 2001

SHANGHAI — The vendors exhibit their wares proudly, separating them into a spectrum of premium, regular and discount. Signs highlighting the "specials of the day" entice shoppers looking for a cherished commodity in today's China: lucky cell-phone numbers.

For Chinese executives, homemakers and students, prestige with a mobile phone is less about Nokia, Ericsson or Motorola than about 6, 8 and 9. Across the country, stores have window displays with their best numbers. A 9 in the number might signal longevity, whereas 168 might bring "a road of prosperity."

Auspicious license plates, telephone numbers and contract prices have long been in the sights of the numerically conscious in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. But with 65 million users, China's exploding mobile-phone market has provided the latest numerological bonanza.

In large cities, auctions lure hundreds of buyers with special numbers set aside by mobile phone companies. One number fetched nearly $40,000 at a charity auction in August in Zhengzhou, Henan Province.

"The best are 8's," said Zhang Haosheng, a telephone number vendor in Shanghai. "Four or five 8's at the end is very prestigious; 6's and 9's are good too, but one 6 or 9 is nothing special. You need at least two in a row."

Certain sequences are highly sought because they sound like Chinese phrases in different dialects. In Mandarin, the popular sequence 518 can be interpreted as, "I want to prosper," and 168 sounds like, "A road of prosperity." In Cantonese, the sequence 289 sounds like, "Easy long-term prosperity."

In China, phone numbers are generally preassigned to cards purchased separately from the phones themselves. The cards, and therefore the number, can be transferred from one phone to another.

Most are bought wholesale from mobile phone companies and then sold by independent vendors for a base price of about $30. But it is not unusual for desirable numbers to double, triple or quadruple the price.

Some shoppers are simply looking for telephone numbers that are not an 11-digit jumble. But the most highly appraised numbers stem from Chinese numerology, a cultural relationship not unlike the West's partiality toward 7 and aversion to 13.

The number 8, pronounced "ba" in Mandarin, is considered desirable because it rhymes with the word for prosper, "fa." In Mandarin, the number 9 is pronounced identically to the word for long-lasting, "jiu." Thus Sept. 9, 1999, was a particularly popular day for Chinese weddings.

The number 6 is popular for a variety of reasons. Depending on the dialect, its interpretation ranges from "longevity" to "joy."

"It's a herd mentality," Mr. Zhang said. "Other people want 8's. So they want 8's, too."

Numbers full of those digits will often be priced in the thousands of dollars. In December, Li Songwei, 28, received a present from his father, a number ending in 8889988, purchased for $2,500 at a charity auction in Xiamen, the port city.

Since then, the number has given Mr. Li minor celebrity status. "The phone never stops ringing," said Mr. Li, a businessman. He has received offers to buy the number, invitations to join associations, overtures of friendship and requests for interviews.

The numbers set has its pariah, too. The number 4 is pronounced "si" in Mandarin, similar to the word for death.

"We lose money on the numbers ending in 4," Mr. Zhang said, nodding toward his list of discount numbers, all ending in 4. "I have to sell them below cost."

Those, he said, often go to families who are buying mobile phones for elderly members of the household. "They just want a phone to make sure Grandma doesn't get lost," he said.

Some sequences are to be avoided, as well. In Cantonese, 14 or 1414 is interpreted as "immediate death," and 53 or 5353 means "poor health."

Some argue that a number is just a number. Li Gang, a senior at Beijing University, recently turned down a number ending in 8 when the vendor wanted him to pay an extra $6 for it. "It's not worth it," said Mr. Li, who chose a number ending in 7.

But others say the prestige is in the perception. "Of course, it's worth it," said Zhou Liwei, a consultant in Beijing, who paid an extra $40 for a number that ended in 66. "A good number gives you a good feeling. That feeling is worth the extra money.

"Others will hear your number and know you are an accomplished person. If you are willing to invest extra money in your number, it shows you are already successful in your career."

Independent businessmen, especially young ones, form the bulk of those willing to pay the most for acclaimed numbers.

But even in China, the numerically superstitious clash daily with the numerically skeptical. A woman wandering by Mr. Zhang's booth scanned the list of available numbers, wrinkled her nose and walked away.

"I don't like 4's," she said, nodding toward the list of Mr. Zhang's available numbers, all with at least one 4. At the next counter, she settled on a number that ended in the relatively innocuous 92. The clerk crossed it off the list.

Mr. Zhang rolled his eyes. "I have 8's in my number and I haven't prospered," he said. "I have 4's and I haven't died."

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I.P.O./Offerings | Deal Professor

Alibaba Investors Will Buy a Risky Corporate Structure

By Steven Davidoff Solomon

May 6, 2014 7:46 pmMay 6, 2014 7:46 pm

Photo

Shareholders have been willing to take a lot of risk in their lust for Internet initial public offerings, but Alibaba’s I.P.O. may take that risk to a whole new level. The reason: Investors in the offering won’t have title to most of Alibaba’s Chinese assets because of Chinese prohibitions on foreign ownership.

What exactly will shareholders be buying, you may be asking. In Tuesday’s securities filing, Alibaba revealed the answer.

The Chinese e-commerce behemoth will wholly own its non-Chinese assets, which provide the bulk of its revenue, according to the filing. Alibaba will not own most of its Chinese assets, including Taobao Marketplace and Alibaba.com. So the companies that are the core of Alibaba’s Chinese operations — the main reason for the anticipated heated investor demand — will not even be owned by Alibaba.

Deal Professor

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Instead, the company is using a so-called variable interest entity structure. It works for Jack Ma, Alibaba’s co-founder and executive chairman, but whether it works for investors remains to be seen. The reason is that for Alibaba’s investors, a V.I.E. is chock-full of risk, which they may ignore as they salivate over potential Internet riches.

What is the V.I.E. structure, you may be asking.

The structure was created in 2000 to circumvent Chinese restrictions on investment in certain industries, like technology and communications. It is now the favorite way for companies to list in the United States. Renren and Baidu, for example, are variable interest entities.

Alibaba is using a straightforward V.I.E. structure for its Chinese assets. Investors in the United States offering will not be buying shares in Alibaba China. Instead, they will purchase shares in a Cayman Islands entity named Alibaba Group Holding Limited.

Most of Alibaba’s Chinese assets will be owned by Mr. Ma and another founder and member of management, Simon Xie. The Cayman Islands company has contractual rights to the profits of Alibaba China, but it has no economic interest.

If it all sounds too neat, there are two significant risks with the V.I.E. structure — risks that Alibaba has bluntly acknowledged.

The structure may be illegal under Chinese law since it conveniently circumvents those prohibitions on foreign investment.

There is precedent for such a finding.

In a letter to Baidu questioning the effectiveness of such a structure, the Securities and Exchange Commission noted that a ruling in late 2012 by the Supreme People’s Court of China invalidated a V.I.E. structure used by Minsheng Bank.

Baidu responded that Minsheng Bank was different and had not used a normal V.I.E. Specifically, that structure gave the true owners of Minsheng too much control over voting.

Even if Minsheng is different, it highlights that the V.I.E. structure is of uncertain legality in China.

At least one locality has declared the structure illegal, and in a 2011 decision, the Chinese merger control authority stopped Walmart from using a V.I.E. to acquire a controlling stake in Yihaodian, a leading online Chinese retail business.

More telling, the V.I.E. structure replaced another work-around joint-venture structure that was first used by China Unicom in 1994. But four years later, that structure was declared illegal by the Chinese government, which forced the company to unwind it. The same thing that happened to China Unicom could happen to Alibaba.

Alibaba has attempted to address this risk by getting a legal opinion that the V.I.E. structure is kosher. However, Alibaba, in its filing, also states that the law firm giving the opinion acknowledges that “there are substantial uncertainties regarding the interpretation and application of current and future PRC laws, rules and regulations.” Thus, even Alibaba’s legal opinion, designed to comfort shareholders, hedges its bets by saying it could be wrong. Some comfort.

Many argue that while there is risk, it would be too harmful to the Chinese economy if China were to declare the V.I.E. structure illegal. But beyond the risk of legality, such a structure means that if shareholders in the United States want to enforce their rights, they will have to do so based on contracts between a Cayman Islands entity and one based in mainland China.

And these contracts will have to be enforced through the Chinese legal system. Historically, it has been difficult or impossible for Americans to enforce contractual rights in China if they were not set there. This leaves shareholders at the mercy of whoever holds the assets of the Chinese company.

Previous problems with the V.I.E. structure illustrate this. A number of Chinese companies listed in the United States using the structure have lost control of their Chinese-based arms. In 2008, the Agria Corporation lost control of its Chinese subsidiary to a disgruntled executive. The company got back its assets only when the executive was paid additional compensation.

Because the Chinese assets are often held by the chief executive or founder, a dispute with that executive can be fatal for the company. In the case of the Chinese education company ChinaCast, insurgent American shareholders took over the board of the United States-listed company. But the shareholders were left with nothing when the old ChinaCast executives simply transferred the company’s assets to themselves.

If that were not enough, the issue has come up with Alibaba. In 2011, Yahoo and Alibaba got into a dispute when, without Yahoo’s permission, Mr. Ma transferred Alipay, Alibaba’s online payment subsidiary, to a company that he owned. The issue was resolved with Mr. Ma retaining ownership of Alipay and the company agreeing to make payments to Alibaba.

In other words, American investors will be at the mercy of Mr. Ma and Mr. Xie, the holders of the Chinese assets of Alibaba. Mr. Ma was adamant that Alibaba list with a structure that kept voting control with him, but he has gone to extremes. He is singular in retaining ownership of Alibaba’s assets with Mr. Xie.

The S.E.C. cannot ban offerings for being “too risky” or even for potentially being illegal. The only thing the regulator can do is require disclosure of the risks. It has done so here: Alibaba, in its prospectus, states that if the V.I.E. structure is ruled illegal, then Alibaba’s business may be significantly harmed and substantial fines might be imposed.

In addition, the Internet company acknowledges that the V.I.E. structure may “not be as effective in providing control … as direct ownership.” You need only ask ChinaCast’s shareholders what that can mean.

The New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq — wherever Alibaba will choose to list — can refuse to accept the Chinese company on the grounds that it is too risky, and the underwriters can also say no.

But they appear to be fine with this risk, preferring to collect their fees and perhaps leaving American shareholders holding the bag if things go wrong.

As investors contemplate putting billions into Alibaba, they may want to actually consider what that money is buying.

Steven Davidoff Solomon, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of “Gods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal and the Private Equity Implosion.” E-mail: dealprof@nytimes.com | Twitter: @StevenDavidoff

Deal Professor, I.P.O./Offerings, Technology, Alibaba.com, Alipay, Cayman Islands, China, Foreign Investments, Initial Public Offerings, Ma, Jack, New York Stock Exchange, Stocks and Bonds

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Alibaba Markets Its Shares in Hong Kong, a City That Turned Away the I.P.O.

By Neil Gough

September 15, 2014 7:52 amSeptember 15, 2014 7:52 am

HONG KONG — Alibaba’s executives put on the charm to woo investors in Hong Kong, the city where the e-commerce giant originally hoped to list, as part of the marketing roadshow for their company’s huge initial public offering in New York.

A year earlier, Alibaba had abandoned plans for a Hong Kong I.P.O. after local regulators declined to sign off on its voting structure, which allows Alibaba’s partner committee, a group of less than 30 members, to hold sway over board nominations, over and above their collective minority stake in the company.

But there was little sign of any lingering acrimony here on Monday, as Alibaba executives brought their pitch to local investors, some of whom displayed a keen interest in getting a piece of the deal, which could be the biggest I.P.O. on record.

With demand for shares strong, Alibaba and its bankers have said they intend to close their order books earlier than originally planned, and since last week they have been weighing an increase of the offer price, currently marketed at $60 to $66 per share.

At a share price of $70, for example, Alibaba’s I.P.O. would raise $22.4 billion, making it the biggest I.P.O. in history, surpassing the $22.1 billion raised by the Agricultural Bank of China in its 2010 listing on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges.

A spokeswoman for Alibaba declined to comment on Monday.

At a luncheon at a ballroom in Hong Kong’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, which occupies the top floors of the city’s tallest building and overlooks Victoria Harbor, Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, addressed a room packed with several hundred potential investors. As they dined, Mr. Ma told the audience to “think about us just like any other Internet company that happens to be in China,” according to one attendee who plans to buy shares in the I.P.O.

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Mr. Ma spoke of being careful not to set valuations too high or too low, the attendee said, declining to be identified because the session was not open to the public.

Mr. Ma talked about the earlier I.P.O. of Alibaba.com, the company’s business-to-business website, which listed in Hong Kong in 2007. He said some of his advisers encouraged him to price the I.P.O. much higher than he eventually did.

“I think they want to leave some on the table this time also,” the attendee said.

I.P.O./Offerings, Technology, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, E-Commerce, Initial Public Offerings, Ma, Jack

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Back in Public, Vowing to Do More

Roger Goodell Says N.F.L. Will Overhaul Personal Conduct Policy

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 19, 2014

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Commissioner Roger Goodell ended more than a week of silence on Friday when addressed the domestic abuse crisis engulfing the N.F.L.

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After more than a week out of view with a national debate raging over domestic violence and the future of the N.F.L., Commissioner Roger Goodell said Friday that he would form a committee to lay the groundwork for overhauling the league’s personal conduct policy.

In a hastily announced news conference in a Midtown ballroom teeming with television cameras, Goodell said the policy, which he has wielded ad hoc and by fiat, failed because it was opaque and inconsistently applied.

Goodell said he hoped to unveil a new personal conduct policy by the Super Bowl in February, and he said he would consult various experts on creating a transparent system to penalize players for their off-field behavior. He offered little in the way of specifics but said he was open to anything, including working with the N.F.L. Players Association and reviewing his role in determining violations.

“There will be changes to our personal conduct policy,” he said. “I know this will happen because we will make it happen.”

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|2:04

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L.

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L. N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for his role in poor decision-making surrounding domestic violence cases and promised a revamped personal conduct policy to address future cases. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

He added, “We will get our house in order first.”

Goodell, who at times Friday was both apologetic and defensive, has been at the center of a firestorm that ignited Sept. 8, when video footage was released showing Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancée in an elevator. The Ravens promptly released him, and Goodell suspended him indefinitely. But the video raised fresh questions about why Goodell initially suspended Rice in July for only two games.

The uproar escalated when the Minnesota Vikings deactivated, reactivated and again deactivated Adrian Peterson after he was accused of beating his 4-year-old son.

The Carolina Panthers took a similar step when they deactivated Greg Hardy, who has been convicted of assaulting and threatening his girlfriend but was not suspended by Goodell.

After the Rice video emerged, Goodell gave two brief interviews, then went out of view, even avoiding marquee games in Maryland and California, where the 49ers opened a new stadium. Goodell’s silence seemed to embolden critics who said he mishandled Rice’s case and did not understand the gravity of domestic violence and child abuse.

Arriving 17 minutes late to the podium, Goodell began by reiterating that his initial response to the Rice case was wrong. “I am not satisfied with the way we handled it,” he said. “I made a mistake. I am not satisfied with the process we went through. I am not satisfied with the conclusion.”

Despite a growing number of calls from women’s groups, advocates for victims of domestic violence and even former players, Goodell said that he had not considered resigning.

“I have not,” he said, adding later that the league’s owners supported him. “I am focused on doing my job, and doing it to the best of my abilities. I understand when people are critical of your performance, but we have a lot of work to do. That’s my focus.”

Hours after Goodell finished speaking, ESPN published a lengthy article citing multiple anonymous sources that said the Ravens had pushed for Rice to be treated leniently and that Goodell agreed to their request.

In a statement, the Ravens said, “The ESPN.com ‘Outside the Lines’ article contains numerous errors, inaccuracies, false assumptions and, perhaps, misunderstandings.” The team added it would fully address the article after returning from Cleveland, where it is set to face the Browns on Sunday.

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Goodell said he had not considered resigning despite calls for him to do so by women’s groups, advocates for victims of domestic violence and former players.

At the news conference, Goodell did not deviate from comments he made after the scandal broke nearly two weeks ago. Goodell repeated that he had not seen the video of Rice punching Janay Palmer, who is now Rice’s wife, and he was confident that no one at the N.F.L. had seen it either, despite news reports to the contrary. Goodell said he suspended Rice indefinitely last week because the video was “inconsistent” with what Rice had told him about the episode in a meeting before the original suspension.

Goodell did not answer a question by a reporter from TMZ, the website that first published the video, on why the N.F.L. could not get the video from the Atlantic City hotel and casino where the episode occurred. “We got it with one phone call,” the reporter said. “You have a whole legal department.”

Goodell deflected other questions about the ins and outs of his admitted fumbling of the Rice investigation and said more answers would be provided by Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director who was hired by the league to uncover what happened. The mushrooming crisis — the biggest of Goodell’s eight years as commissioner — took an even more bizarre turn when a man at the news conference who apparently is a regular on Howard Stern’s show was grabbed by a security officer as he approached the podium and was pulled into an exit to the side of the stage. While being hauled off, the man grabbed a large blue curtain behind the podium and screamed that he did not want to be taken into an elevator.

On Thursday night, Goodell sent a letter to teams announcing part of the league’s initiative was to begin supporting both the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and to mandate education and training for all players and staff on preventing abuse. The letter was the league’s follow-up to his recent promise to increase the league’s commitment to fight both domestic and sexual violence.

That has not alleviated the pressure on the league. Procter & Gamble joined the list of sponsors distancing themselves from the N.F.L., pulling its Crest toothpaste brand out of a campaign held in conjunction with the league’s breast cancer awareness month. It is a major blow to the league’s biggest effort on behalf of female fans, when players wear pink shoes, arm bands or other equipment during games in October.

“Crest believes Breast Cancer Awareness is a critically important program to support women and their health, and, as planned, is making a $100,000 donation to the American Cancer Society for breast cancer awareness and will participate in media and retailer activities to help drive attention to the cause,” the company said in a statement. “The brand has decided to cancel on-field activation with N.F.L. teams.”

This follows unusually critical public statements from sponsors, including Anheuser-Busch, McDonald’s and Visa, regarding the league’s handling of Rice’s suspension and the other cases.

Goodell said at the news conference that he did not believe the league was close to losing a sponsor.

The criticism grew while Goodell stayed silent, his letter to the teams Thursday being his first large-scale communication in nine days. In it, he promised the league would be committed to battling domestic and sexual violence on a large scale.

He said in the letter that calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline had increased 84 percent during the week of Sept. 8, the week the Rice video became public, but that the hotline did not have enough staff to answer all the calls. He said the league would provide financial support so the hotline could hire 25 more people. He also promised money and promotional support to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, including its Loveisrespect project, a text-messaging hotline for young adults dealing with dating abuse.

The league also said educational programs on preventing domestic abuse and sexual violence would begin within the next 30 days for all 32 teams. There are also plans for a public awareness campaign, although the recent spate of cases involving players seems to have accomplished that.

Lynn Zinser contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Resurfacing With Vow to Do More. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

In Domestic Violence Cases, N.F.L. Has a History of Lenience

By BILL PENNINGTON and STEVE EDERSEPT. 19, 2014

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On April 10, 2007, after more than 50 National Football League players had been arrested in the previous football season, Commissioner Roger Goodell was widely hailed for instituting a newly stringent personal conduct policy. Mr. Goodell threatened to banish players for off-the-field transgressions and installed himself as the judge and jury presiding over every case.

Mr. Goodell insisted that he would mete out discipline without waiting for the judicial system.

“It is my job — not law enforcement’s job — to protect the National Football League,” he said at the time.

But in his role as the N.F.L.’s hard-bitten sheriff, Mr. Goodell appears to have had a major blind spot: domestic violence cases. Players charged with domestic violence routinely received considerably lighter punishments than players accused of other offenses, like drug use or drunken driving. Often, they were not punished at all. On Friday, seven years after he implemented the personal conduct policy, Mr. Goodell acknowledged publicly that it had failed and would be overhauled.

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On Friday, seven years after he implemented the personal conduct policy, Roger Goodell acknowledged publicly that it had failed and would be overhauled.

“We should have had the personal conduct policy reviewed more frequently, to make the changes necessary to deal with the issues that have changed,” he said at a news conference in which he announced that outside experts would help the league devise a new system for handling domestic violence cases.

An examination of dozens of arrests of N.F.L. players since Mr. Goodell established his personal conduct policy in 2007 — and the fines and penalties doled out by the league — shows that suspensions of two to four games, and sometimes more, were far more likely for players arrested on drunken driving, marijuana possession or weapon charges. A vast majority of players charged with domestic violence crimes, if they were disciplined by the league at all, received one-game suspensions even after pleading guilty to lesser related charges or entering pretrial intervention programs.

The disparity in punishments within the league is illustrated in numerous cases. On Nov. 25, 2011, for example, Green Bay Packers linebacker Erik Walden was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his live-in girlfriend. The charge was reduced to disorderly conduct and then dismissed after Walden agreed to perform 50 hours of community service and receive counseling.

The N.F.L. suspended Walden for one game.

Less than two months earlier, the police seized two and a half pounds of marijuana sent to the home of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Jerome Simpson. The league suspended Simpson for three games.

“I don’t think the N.F.L. did anything more than give lip service to the notion that they were taking domestic abuse seriously,” said Ann DeLaney, an advocate for victims of domestic violence and the former executive director of the Julian Center in Indianapolis, a victim support group.

Referring to the Ray Rice case, Ms. DeLaney continued, “That’s what they did this time until it was caught on video.”

Mr. Rice, then a Baltimore Ravens running back, was suspended for only two games after being accused of assaulting his fiancée, Janay Palmer, in February; Ms. Palmer is now married to Mr. Rice. After a firestorm of criticism that the punishment was inadequate, Mr. Goodell increased the league’s minimum suspension for a first-time domestic violence offense to six games. After a video surfaced of Mr. Rice knocking out Ms. Palmer in a hotel elevator, Mr. Goodell suspended Mr. Rice indefinitely.

Some of the cases drew criticism at the time, but the recent high-profile episodes have led to a firestorm of protest from inside and outside football.

Tyrone Thomas, a Washington lawyer who advises on sports cases, said the N.F.L. had always had the power to take a tougher tack in instances in which there were accusations of domestic violence, but had chosen not to. Mr. Thomas said that the N.F.L. had treated domestic violence as a back-burner concern, and that punishing players caught doping or driving under the influence had been a higher priority.

“There certainly could have been a harsher interpretation of certain standards,” Mr. Thomas said.

In multiple cases since 2007, the N.F.L.’s response to domestic violence arrests appeared arbitrary.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|2:04

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L.

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L. N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for his role in poor decision-making surrounding domestic violence cases and promised a revamped personal conduct policy to address future cases. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

Within the first year of the personal conduct policy, the contrast in the handling of different cases was on display when three members of the Pittsburgh Steelers — running back Najeh Davenport, linebacker James Harrison and wide receiver Cedrick Wilson — were accused in domestic violence cases, according to news reports at the time.

Mr. Davenport, who was accused during the season, was never suspended and was acquitted after a trial that took place after the season. Mr. Harrison, a star and an important player during the Steelers’ run to the Super Bowl after the 2008 season, also was not suspended. But Mr. Wilson, a lesser-known player, was dropped from the team within hours of his arrest, and he never played in the N.F.L. again.

During the last seven years, when a domestic abuse arrest involved a player who was not a starter or a major contributor to the team, the player was sometimes released by his team. In those cases, the league would not have had to consider a suspension.

Mr. Harrison’s agent, William Parise, said the league had made the right call with Mr. Harrison. “There was never anything there,” Mr. Parise said. “He did not strike her or do anything like that. He didn’t press charges. She didn’t press charges. And the league dropped the whole thing.”

In one of the higher-profile cases, Brandon Marshall, a wide receiver with the Denver Broncos at the time, was initially suspended for three games over events that included his being arrested on charges of assaulting his girlfriend. But his suspension was later reduced to one game.

In 2010, Tony McDaniel, a defensive lineman for the Miami Dolphins, was suspended for one game for violating the league’s personal conduct policy after he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct after a domestic dispute with his live-in girlfriend, according to The Sun-Sentinel newspaper in South Florida. He was sentenced to probation and ordered to attend counseling.

In another case in 2008, Michael Boley, a linebacker with the Atlanta Falcons at the time, was suspended by the league for a game after he was charged with battery. His wife at the time had told the police that he “became physical with her.” The case did not go to trial.

His lawyer, Randall Kessler of Atlanta, said it was troubling that Mr. Boley had been punished by the N.F.L.

“I was not happy that he was suspended based on an allegation, but I’m glad it ended there,” Mr. Kessler said.

Later, the police investigated Mr. Boley on child abuse allegations, which were raised amid a child-custody dispute. The outcome of that investigation is unclear.

Besides the Rice case, the N.F.L. has also been harshly criticized for its handling of three other recent abuse cases — those of Adrian Peterson, a star running back for the Minnesota Vikings, who has been accused of injuring one of his children; Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy, who was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend; and San Francisco 49ers defensive end Ray McDonald, who was arrested last month on suspicion of domestic violence.

Mr. Peterson was kept of out one game and then reinstated before an outcry led to his being suspended indefinitely. Mr. Hardy played in one game, but is being kept out while still being paid. Mr. McDonald has continued to play for the team, which has said it is waiting for his case to be resolved judicially.

Nita Chaudhary, a founder of UltraViolet, a women’s rights advocacy group, remained critical of the N.F.L. on Friday despite Goodell’s pledge to revamp the league’s personal conduct policy and penalties.

“This press circus did nothing to change Goodell’s long history of inaction on and blatant mishandling of domestic violence in the N.F.L.,” Ms. Chaudhary said in a statement. “We call on all of the N.F.L.’s sponsors to take a stand against domestic violence by withdrawing their support for the N.F.L. until Goodell is out of office.”

Elisa Choi contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In N.F.L. Get-Tough Policy, Blind Spot for Abuse. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Governor and Sponsors Voice Concerns With N.F.L.

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 16, 2014

Inside

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The Vikings said Monday that they would reinstate Adrian Peterson for this week’s game against the Saints, but the team reversed that decision early Wednesday.

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The N.F.L., it seems, has been unable to keep up with the roiling storm over its handling of multiple domestic violence cases that have captured the nation’s attention and started to eclipse the action on the field.

On Tuesday, sponsors who pay hundreds of millions of dollars to have their names and products associated with the N.F.L. started to voice their anxiety with how the N.F.L. has handled the crisis, which has included a growing number of calls for Commissioner Roger Goodell to step down.

Anheuser-Busch, one of the league’s most prominent sponsors, said it was “disappointed and increasingly concerned by the recent incidents that have overshadowed this N.F.L. season.” Nike, which provides uniforms, jerseys and other gear to the N.F.L., has pulled Adrian Peterson jerseys from its stores in the Minneapolis area, though not online, The Associated Press reported.

Also in Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton became the latest politician to weigh in when he said that Peterson, the Vikings’ star running back, who faces child abuse charges in Texas, should be suspended by the team.

Photo

Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota called the Vikings’ reinstatement of Adrian Peterson an “embarrassment.”

The moves come on a day that Ray Rice, the former Baltimore Ravens running back who is at the center of the turmoil, appealed his open-ended suspension. Goodell, who had suspended Rice for two games, suspended him indefinitely after new footage was released Sept. 8 showing him knocking out his fiancée in a hotel elevator in February.

The N.F.L. Players Association said it filed the appeal to “protect the due process rights of all N.F.L. players.” The union said there was a “a lack of a fair and impartial process, including the role of the office of the commissioner of the N.F.L.” and asked that an independent arbitrator hear Rice’s case.

Goodell has tried to calm the furor. Last week, he appointed a former F.B.I. director to look into how the league had handled the Rice case, and on Monday, he appointed four women to help shape the league’s strengthened policies on domestic violence. On Tuesday, the league named Cynthia Hogan as the N.F.L.'s chief lobbyist in Washington. She has worked in the Obama administration and helped Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. shape the Violence Against Women Act when he was in the Senate.

Each announcement by the N.F.L., though, seems to be met with many others calling on the league to do more. Dayton, a Democrat who helped the Vikings receive public financing for their new stadium, emphasized that Peterson should be considered innocent until proven guilty. But in a statement, he said that Peterson “is a public figure; and his actions, as described, are a public embarrassment to the Vikings organization and the State of Minnesota. Therefore, I believe the team should suspend Mr. Peterson until the accusations of child abuse have been resolved by the criminal justice system.”

After benching Peterson for last Sunday’s game against New England, which won by 23 points, the Vikings said Monday that they would reinstate Peterson for their next game, on Sunday against the New Orleans Saints. The team reversed that decision early Wednesday, placing him on the exempt-commissioner’s permission list, which requires him to stay away from the team while he addresses the charges.

The Vikings’ difficulties come as teams across the league grapple with the N.F.L.'s inconsistent treatment of players accused of crimes, including domestic violence. The San Francisco 49ers have let Ray McDonald play after he was arrested in August on suspicion of domestic violence, and the Carolina Panthers let Greg Hardy, who was convicted of domestic violence charges but not suspended by the league, play in the season opener.

After the N.F.L.'s original two-game suspension of Rice prompted a backlash, Goodell apologized and strengthened the league’s penalties for players convicted in domestic violence cases. Members of Congress have called on Goodell to do more to address the issue. Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said hearings could be called on the matter.

Senator Cory A. Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, introduced a bill Tuesday that would disallow major professional sports leagues, most notably the N.F.L., from claiming status as tax-exempt nonprofits.

The larger headache for Goodell is keeping some of his biggest sponsors happy. National sponsors, including Verizon, have issued statements supporting Goodell and their commitment to the N.F.L. Anheuser-Busch, though, was the first major sponsor to express concern.

It said it was “not yet satisfied with the league’s handling of behaviors that so clearly go against our own company culture and moral code” and it said it had “shared our concerns and expectations with the league.”

There was no hint that Anheuser-Busch might walk away from the N.F.L. But it suggested that the company was trying to be sensitive to supporting a popular league and not appearing to support the behavior of some of its players. Ultimately, sponsors do not want to be singled out by protesters who view them as enablers of the player or league.

“They fear that whatever coalition comes together to protest the N.F.L. will target them as sponsors,” said Lesa Ukman, who publishes the IEG Sponsorship Report, a biweekly newsletter on sports, arts and entertainment marketing. “They will want people to understand they are not part of the problem.”

Thus far, the protests have taken many forms, including news releases, online campaigns and banners being flown over stadiums on game days. On Monday, a CoverGirl ad campaign designed to draw female football fans was defaced. Hackers blackened the eye of a woman in a “Get Your Game Face On” online campaign and added the words, “Boycott CoverGirl, Official Beauty Sponsor of the N.F.L.”

CoverGirl removed the photo and issued a statement that said it “believes domestic violence is completely unacceptable” and that it had “encouraged the N.F.L. to take swift action on their path forward to address the issue of domestic violence.”

In Minnesota, the Radisson hotel chain temporarily suspended its sponsorship of the Vikings. The Radisson name is emblazoned on the screens that serve as a backdrop for news conferences by team personnel. The company’s name was seen on television Monday when Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman spoke to reporters about the team’s decision to reinstate Peterson for its next game.

“Radisson takes this matter very seriously, particularly in light of our longstanding commitment to the protection of children,” the company said in a statement. “We are closely following the situation and, effective immediately, Radisson is suspending its limited sponsorship of the Minnesota Vikings while we evaluate the facts and circumstances.”

Peterson’s charity for children, the All Day Foundation, posted a message on its website that it was going offline to “protect our charity partners from the continued harassment they have received from the media.”

“The foundation will continue to support the causes that Adrian and his family care about and will consider how the current situation impacts the direction for Adrian’s philanthropy,” the statement said.

A version of this article appears in print on September 17, 2014, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Signs of Discontent. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

A Punch Is Seen, and a Player Is Out

Ray Rice Cut by Ravens and Suspended by N.F.L.

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 8, 2014

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Ray Rice at a news conference with his wife, Janay, on May 23. Rice was initially suspended for two games by the N.F.L. before the Ravens terminated his contract on Monday.

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The National Football League’s handling of a domestic violence case is under renewed scrutiny after a graphic video emerged Monday, leading to the termination of the Baltimore Ravens star running back Ray Rice’s contract and his suspension from the league.

The video shows Rice punching his fiancée, who is now his wife, in the face, leaving her motionless on the floor of a hotel elevator in Atlantic City in February. He then dragged her unconscious body from the elevator.

Rice was charged with felony assault in March, but his wife, Janay Palmer, declined to testify. The charges were dropped and court-supervised counseling was ordered. Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, disciplined Rice in July with a two-game suspension, a penalty that was widely criticized as too lenient.

Previously published video of the altercation was taken from a camera outside the elevator and showed only the moments after Rice hit Palmer. But the emergence of the new video, published by the website TMZ, raised questions about what the N.F.L. knew, and when. A league spokesman said “no one in our office has seen it until today,” but he did not respond to inquiries about whether any of the league’s investigators who do not work in the office had previously seen the video.

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Surveillance video obtained by TMZ (warning: graphic).

“What makes the N.F.L. look especially bad in this case is the sense that the only reason they suspended Ray Rice indefinitely was to save face, rather than to actually address or punish the problem at hand,” said S. Adam Brasel, a professor of marketing at Boston College. “Do people think the N.F.L. would have done the same if they got the footage internally rather than having the whole world see it on TMZ?”

The league enjoys unmatched popularity, with soaring TV ratings and billions of dollars in revenue. But it has been tarnished by several embarrassing issues in recent years, including homophobic and racist bullying.

Late last month, after an uproar over his handling of the Rice case, Goodell admitted that he had mishandled the case and announced new, tougher standards for players and league employees who are found to have committed domestic violence.

After saying for weeks that he had acted appropriately by suspending Rice for two games, Goodell said that in the future, any N.F.L. employee, including nonplayers, would be suspended for six games for a first offense of domestic violence and a minimum of a year for a second offense.

In a letter to team owners, he said he took responsibility “both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn’t get it right.”

He did not, however, revisit Rice’s suspension — until the video was posted Monday.

The Ravens had not previously disciplined Rice in any public way, and after the episode, the team said on Twitter: “Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.” The post was deleted Monday afternoon.

Rice, with his wife at his side, apologized publicly in May. The Ravens’ coach, John Harbaugh, said he stood by Rice, his star running back, and Ravens fans gave Rice a loud ovation during a preseason game.

However, Harbaugh said Monday that the new video, which he said he was seeing for the first time, made things different.

“It changed things, of course,” Harbaugh said.

He added, “When someone you care about does wrong, and is faced with the consequences of doing wrong, and rightfully so, it is tough, it is hurtful.”

Goodell, who has wide discretion to penalize players for violating the league’s personal conduct policy, was condemned for giving Rice what many considered a light suspension, especially compared with harsher penalties for players who take performance-enhancing drugs. The N.F.L. received hundreds of phone calls in protest, and petitions with tens of thousands of signatures were collected.

The new video led to calls Monday from advocates for victims of domestic violence for Goodell to penalize Rice retroactively. Hours later, the Ravens announced Rice’s release on their Twitter account. Soon after, the league said it had indefinitely suspended Rice.

“Commissioner Roger Goodell has announced that based on the new video evidence that became available today, he has imposed an indefinite suspension on Ray Rice,” the N.F.L. said in a statement. Rice will have to apply to be reinstated.

Advocates applauded the actions taken Monday. “The Ravens have sent a strong message against domestic violence,” said Judy Harris Kluger, executive director for Sanctuary for Families, a nonprofit agency in New York that helps victims of domestic violence. “It was impossible to ignore or explain away.”

Over the next three years, Rice, the Ravens’ second career leading rusher and a three-time Pro Bowl player, was to receive $9.5 million in salary, $9 million in signing bonuses and an additional $5.2 million in performance bonuses, according to the website Spotrac.com. Contracts often include terms that allow teams to terminate a deal with a player if he acts in a way that is detrimental to the team.

The N.F.L. Players Association did not return calls for comment.

The league may have to overhaul the way it investigates player malfeasance, sports lawyers said Monday. A spokesman for the N.F.L. said in July that Goodell took his cue in the investigation in part from law enforcement officials who had access to more information than the league.

But Goodell has also said that the N.F.L. should be held to a higher standard.

“The N.F.L. is going to have to review its due diligence in this case,” said Mark Conrad, who teaches sports law at Fordham University. “Some have said the league should treat it as a criminal matter, but it’s a very public league, and if they want to keep their many constituents happy, they are going to have to find a new way of doing it.”

Rutgers University, where Rice played, also distanced itself from him on Monday, removing a video on the team’s website.

The university’s athletic director, Julie Hermann, called the TMZ.com video “very disturbing” and said it “serves to reinforce the ongoing need to educate and bring awareness to the issue of domestic violence.”

Zach Schonbrun contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 9, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: After Punch Is Seen, Rice Is Out. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

N.F.L. Continues to Face Questions Over Video of Ray Rice

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 9, 2014

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Ray Rice, center, celebrating with fans after the Ravens defeated the Patriots in the A.F.C. championship game in January 2013.

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The N.F.L. remained on the defensive Tuesday as questions mounted over its handling of the domestic abuse case involving one of its star running backs, Ray Rice.

Commissioner Roger Goodell went on national television to address what the N.F.L. knew about a graphic video that showed Rice punching and knocking out his then-fiancée in an elevator. The video was released Monday by TMZ, a celebrity gossip website, prompting the Baltimore Ravens to terminate Rice’s contract and the N.F.L. to suspend him indefinitely.

Goodell said he had not seen the video of Rice knocking out his fiancée.

“We assumed there was a video, we asked for a video, but we were never granted that opportunity,” Goodell told CBS News on Tuesday. “No one in the N.F.L. to my knowledge” had seen the video.

In a statement earlier Tuesday, the league said it had asked law enforcement officials for “any and all information about the incident, including any video that may exist” and “that video was not made available to us, and no one in our office saw it until yesterday.” But the league also declined to say if any of its investigators had seen the video, and why it had not requested the video from the hotel where the assault was recorded by security cameras.

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Ray Rice and his wife, Janay Palmer Rice, arrived at a courthouse in New Jersey in May for a hearing in the assault case.

On Tuesday, TMZ said an employee of the hotel, which recently closed, claimed that the N.F.L. saw the video from inside the elevator before it suspended Rice for two games in July, a decision that led to a backlash from women’s groups, advocates for victims of domestic abuse and some players.

Rice was in the midst of serving that suspension and would have been eligible to play in the Ravens’ third game of the season, on Sept. 21.

On Monday, the N.F.L. said that during its investigation, it had not seen the more graphic video. The league had said it initially suspended Rice for two games in part because prosecutors had dropped the felony assault charge against him in favor of court-supervised counseling.

Goodell has been accused of not understanding the severity of the domestic violence and not doing more to unearth evidence in the Rice case. Some commentators have called on Goodell to step down.

Legal experts said the N.F.L. probably had access to the Atlantic City police report that said that surveillance footage showed that “both parties were involved in a physical altercation.”

The police also noted that the fiancée, Janay Palmer, now Janay Rice, was struck by Rice with his hand, “rendering her unconscious” while she was in the elevator.

Goodell said the N.F.L. had seen the less graphic video published by TMZ soon after the assault in February, video that was taken from a camera in a hallway and showed Rice dragging his fiancée from the elevator.

According to advocates for victims of domestic violence, that video should have been enough to prompt Goodell to suspend Rice for more than two games.

“It didn’t leave a lot to the imagination,” said Kim Gandy, the president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

Gandy, who spoke with Goodell at length before he strengthened the league’s domestic violence policy last month, said she applauded the commissioner’s tougher stance and blamed prosecutors in New Jersey for reducing the charges against Rice.

“It’s a sad commentary on the criminal justice system that there wasn’t stronger action taken,” she said. “I guess celebrity has its privileges.”

The league said its investigators spoke to the New Jersey State Police and “reached out multiple times” to the Atlantic City Police Department and the Atlantic County prosecutor’s office. The league added that it did not interfere in the investigation, which led a grand jury to indict Rice on felony assault charges. Goodell said the league was “particularly reliant on law enforcement” in these cases because it was the most dependable source of information.

Rice’s original two-game suspension caused such a furor that in August, Goodell took the unusual step of publicly apologizing and strengthening the league’s rules. Players or league officials found to have committed domestic violence will now receive a six-game suspension.

Goodell did not, however, revisit Rice’s original suspension until this week.

Goodell has been seeking to explain his decisions and refocus the public’s attention on the current football season, which began last week.

Earlier Tuesday, Robert K. Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, came to Goodell’s defense. That interview was also broadcast on CBS, which paid the N.F.L. an estimated $250 million to carry eight Thursday night football games this season.

“The way he has handled this situation himself, coming out with the mea culpa in his statement a couple of weeks ago, or 10 days ago, and setting a very clear policy of how we conduct ourselves in the N.F.L., I thought was excellent,” Kraft said on “CBS This Morning.” “Anyone who is second-guessing that doesn’t know him.”

Kraft added that he thought Rice would never play in the N.F.L. again. “I would be shocked if some team would pick him up,” he said.

The Ravens had not taken any public action against Rice until Monday. Coach John Harbaugh stood by Rice this summer, and on Monday, he told reporters that he would be willing to help Rice and his wife if needed.

But the team has continued to cut ties with him. The Ravens announced that they would offer an exchange for his jerseys at stadium stores. The Patriots did the same last year after tight end Aaron Hernandez was charged with murder.

In a letter to fans that hold personal seat licenses for home games, Stephen J. Bisciotti, the Ravens’ owner, said that “we did not do all we should have done and no amount of explanation can remedy that.”

He said that after the assault in February, Rice told the team that he and his fiancée “had consumed a great deal of alcohol, they had had an argument and that they struck each other.”

Bisciotti said the team began its own investigation and spoke with representatives of the casino, the police who arrested the couple, the prosecutor and a lawyer who represented both Rice and his wife. The team asked the casino to view video of the assault from inside the elevator, but the casino declined to share it. The local police and the prosecutor’s office also refused.

When the prosecutor, who had seen the video, reduced the charge against Rice, the team effectively ended its investigation.

Separately, Nike said Tuesday it had severed ties with Rice, and EA Sports said it had removed him from the Madden 15 video game.

Amid the fallout, Janay Rice said her life has turned into a nightmare after her husband was suspended and the Ravens severed their contract with him.

“I woke up this morning feeling like I had a horrible nightmare, feeling like I’m mourning the death of my closest friend,” she wrote in a post on Instagram Tuesday, according to The Baltimore Sun. “But to have to accept the fact that it’s reality is a nightmare in itself.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 2014, on page B13 of the New York edition with the headline: N.F.L. Continues to Face Questions Over Video of Rice. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Ravens’ Rice Draws 2-Game Suspension From Goodell

By KEN BELSONJULY 24, 2014

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Ravens running back Ray Rice practiced at training camp on Thursday, but offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak will have to plan an offense without him for two games.

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With training camps opening across the N.F.L., Commissioner Roger Goodell has begun handing out suspensions to players for various instances of unacceptable behavior in the off-season. Running back Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens drew the first punishment, receiving a two-game ban Thursday in connection with an incident in which he was accused of assaulting a woman who was then his fiancée and is now his wife.

The penalty imposed on Rice, which Goodell accompanied with a letter to him that was made public by the league, was another example of the immense power Goodell wields in such matters. But it immediately attracted considerable criticism, with everyone from commentators to players to women’s advocates to writers on social media noting that other players in the N.F.L. had been suspended for more than two games for actions that were hardly as threatening as what Rice was accused of doing.

However, Rice’s case is not the only difficult one Goodell is addressing. Also in line to be potentially penalized is Jim Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, who was arrested in March on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and who later had his driver’s license suspended for a year. Goodell’s treatment of Irsay will be closely watched by players, who want to see how the commissioner handles a case involving an owner, who, in effect, is one of his bosses.

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Commissioner Roger Goodell is expected to impose several penalties for off-season misbehavior.

Still, on Thursday, all of the attention was focused on the Rice case. The two-game suspension that Goodell imposed, for violating the league’s personal-conduct policy, stems from Rice’s arrest after an altercation last February with Janay Palmer in an elevator in Atlantic City. A video of the incident, in which Palmer appears to be unconscious, subsequently surfaced, and Rice ended up being charged in March with felony assault.

But Rice has since entered a pretrial intervention program and will not serve any jail time, and he and Palmer are now married.

Goodell, who also levied financial penalties against Rice on Thursday exceeding $500,000, met with the player last month as he considered what steps to take, and he referred to that encounter in the letter that the league released.

“As you acknowledged during our meeting, your conduct was unquestionably inconsistent with league polices and the standard of behavior required of everyone who is part of the N.F.L.,” Goodell said in the letter. “The league is an entity that depends on integrity and in the confidence of the public, and we simply cannot tolerate conduct that endangers others or reflects negatively on our game. This is particularly true with respect to domestic violence and other forms of violence against women.”

Still, many of those who wondered why Rice did not get more than a two-game suspension noted that under the league’s collective bargaining agreement, players who test positive for the first time for a performance-enhancing drugs are suspended for four games, or twice what Rice received. That penalty increases to eight games for a second offense and a full-year suspension for a third.

Although the drug issue is a serious one, it does not elicit the fears and concerns that the Rice incident did, with its overriding image of violence against women. And that made many people upset that Rice received a lighter penalty than someone who might have taken a banned substance, perhaps even unintentionally.

Even a first-year player in the N.F.L., with barely any practices under his belt, weighed in.

“No one should put his hands on a woman,” said the player, Calvin Pryor, the first-round draft pick of the Jets, according to Yahoo Sports. "That’s the way I was raised.”

According to a person in the N.F.L. with knowledge of Goodell’s deliberations in the Rice case, Goodell took his cue from the legal developments in the matter. Rice will not go to jail, and the initial felony charge was reduced to what amounted to counseling. Rice and his wife also appeared contrite, speaking publicly together.

“I believe that you are sincere in your desire to learn from this matter and move forward toward a healthy relationship and successful career,” Goodell said in his letter.

Goodell’s punishment will not keep Rice from participating in the Ravens’ training camp and from playing in preseason games. After Goodell acted on Thursday, Rice issued a statement in which he said his goal was “to earn back the trust of the people, especially the children, I let down because of this incident.”

“I am a role model, and I take that responsibility seriously,” he added. “My actions going forward will reveal that.”

Rice’s coach, John Harbaugh, said: “There are consequences when you make a mistake like that. I stand behind Ray. He’s a heck of a guy. He’s done everything right since.”

Goodell’s judgment will remain in the spotlight. He may also suspend linebacker Aldon Smith of the San Francisco 49ers, who was arrested in April on charges of making a bomb threat at an airport in Los Angeles. The charges were later dropped. Smith also pleaded no contest to three felony weapons charges and two misdemeanor counts of driving under the influence. This month, a judge in California sentenced Smith to community service but no jail time.

Josh Gordon of the Cleveland Browns could face a yearlong suspension after reportedly failing a drug test for the third time. Greg Hardy of the Carolina Panthers was arrested in May on domestic violence charges and could also be suspended.

Then there is Irsay. Last year, team officials from Denver and Detroit were suspended after being caught driving while intoxicated. Owners have been fined in recent years, but Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. of the 49ers was the last one to be suspended. That was in 1998, after he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of concealing an extortion plot.

Whatever Goodell decides in these cases, comparisons are certain to be made and questions raised.

“When you have a disciplinary policy where the commissioner controls everything,” said Robert A. Boland, who teaches sports law at New York University and was previously an N.F.L. agent, “there will always be some inequities.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 25, 2014, on page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: Ravens’ Rice Draws Two-Game Ban From Goodell Over Assault Case. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Assault Charges Add to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil

Cardinals’ Jonathan Dwyer Arrested as Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy Leave Teams

By PAT BORZI and STEVE EDERSEPT. 17, 2014

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Arizona’s Jonathan Dwyer was arrested Wednesday in a case the authorities said involved two July episodes at his home.

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EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — Jonathan Dwyer of the Arizona Cardinals was arrested in a domestic violence investigation Wednesday as the N.F.L. continued to find itself under siege for its handling of such cases.

Before Dwyer’s arrest, the Minnesota Vikings reversed course, placing Adrian Peterson, a star running back facing child abuse charges, on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list. The Carolina Panthers did the same with Greg Hardy, a defensive end appealing a domestic violence case.

The Phoenix police, in a statement, said detectives arrested Dwyer, a running back, in Tempe on charges of aggravated assault in a domestic violence case stemming from two separate episodes at his home in southeast Phoenix in late July.

Dwyer, who was deactivated by the Cardinals on Wednesday night, denied that any physical assaults took place, the police said. They said he was being booked at the Maricopa County Jail on a count of aggravated assault causing a fracture, a count of aggravated assault involving a minor, two counts of criminal damage and a count of preventing the use of a phone in an emergency.

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The Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson signed autographs last month in Kansas City.

The victims were said to be a 27-year-old woman and an 18-month-old child. The police said the woman left the state with the child after the episodes. Police then received the complaint in the case on Sept. 11.

The Cardinals said they learned of the allegations Wednesday when notified by the police. “We will continue to closely monitor this as it develops and evaluate additional information as it becomes available,” the team’s statement said.

An N.F.L. spokesman said Dwyer’s case would be reviewed under the N.F.L.’s personal conduct policy.

Earlier Wednesday, mounting pressure from sponsors and the public forced the Vikings to bar Peterson from practices and games while he deals with his arrest in Texas on charges that he beat his 4-year-old son.

The decision, announced in an email at 12:47 a.m. Central time, came 38 hours after the Vikings said Peterson would rejoin the team. His reinstatement drew criticism from fans, women’s groups and sponsors, who said the team was insensitive to domestic violence and child abuse.

“We made a mistake, and we needed to get this right,” Zygi Wilf, a Vikings co-owner, said at a news conference Wednesday. “It’s important to listen to our fans, the community and our sponsors.”

After consulting with Peterson, the N.F.L. and Peterson’s agent, Peterson was placed on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list, where he will remain until his legal situation is resolved. Peterson will receive his full $11.75 million base salary but cannot take part in team activities.

Wilf’s brother Mark, a co-owner and the team president, denied that the league pressured the Vikings to make the move.

“This is our decision 100 percent,” he said. “We were aiming to get it right, and we feel we got it right.”

Nike said Wednesday it had suspended its contract with Peterson and made his jerseys unavailable online.

“Nike in no way condones child abuse or domestic violence of any kind and has shared our concerns with the N.F.L.,” the company said in a statement.

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Greg Hardy, a Carolina Panthers defensive end, was found guilty of assaulting his girlfriend — a verdict that he is appealing.

The Panthers’ Hardy agreed to go on the same exempt list Wednesday as he appeals his domestic violence conviction. He was found guilty in July of assaulting and threatening to kill his girlfriend. His trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 17. Hardy played in Week 1, was deactivated last Sunday and had continued to practice with the team. He will also receive his full $13.12 million base salary.

“It’s been handled as well as we could,” Panthers Coach Ron Rivera said at a news conference Wednesday.

Peterson is accused of injuring his son while disciplining him with a tree branch, commonly known as a switch, last May in Spring, Tex. Peterson turned himself in to Montgomery County authorities early Saturday morning and was inactive Sunday for Minnesota’s 30-7 loss to New England. Free on $15,000 bail, he is scheduled to make his first court appearance Oct. 8.

In response to Peterson’s reinstatement Monday, fans who ran a Vikings online message board shut it down. And the Radisson hotel chain, based in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, suspended its Vikings sponsorship. Marilyn Carlson Nelson, the former chairman of Carlson Inc., which owns Radisson, was a co-chairwoman of the bid committee that landed the 2018 Super Bowl for Minneapolis.

The backlash accelerated Tuesday. Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat who helped the Vikings receive public financing for their new stadium, and Senator Al Franken, also a Democrat, criticized the decision. Dayton called Peterson’s actions “a public embarrassment” and demanded the team suspend him.

Fran Tarkenton, a Hall of Fame quarterback who led the Vikings to three Super Bowls, told Fox News that he was embarrassed by the team’s original decision to let Peterson play.

Castrol Motor Oil terminated a sponsorship contract with Peterson. A spokesman for U.S. Bank, whose president, Richard Davis, a co-chairman of the Super Bowl bid committee with Carlson Nelson, said the company was monitoring the situation closely. An appearance by Vikings players at a Minneapolis orphanage was canceled.

Mark Wilf declined to address whether the team underestimated the backlash from the decision to reinstate Peterson. “I don’t want to Monday morning quarterback what it was,” he said.

A Radisson spokesman, Benjamin Gardeen, said in an email Wednesday that the company’s sponsorship remained suspended. On Monday, the Radisson logo appeared on a banner behind Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman as he discussed Peterson’s reinstatement. A different banner at Wednesday’s news conference had no such logos.

Vikings cornerback Captain Munnerlyn, one of the few players willing to comment Wednesday, said the club’s reversal surprised him. Munnerlyn said Peterson did nothing wrong, and his own mother disciplined him the same way.

“I don’t think it’s fair at all,” Munnerlyn said. “I think he should be able to play. He hasn’t been convicted of anything. All these allegations, or this and that, pictures out, but he hasn’t been convicted of nothing.”

The Vikings’ handling of the situation inflamed a national debate about domestic violence in the N.F.L. Last week, a graphic video showing Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancée led Commissioner Roger Goodell to indefinitely suspend the former Baltimore Ravens running back.

Late Tuesday, Rice appealed that penalty, arguing that he should not have been suspended twice for the same episode. In July, Goodell said Rice would have to sit out the first two games of the regular season.

Steve Eder reported from New York, and Ken Belson contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Arrest Adds to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Media |NYT Now

In Ray Rice Scandal, TMZ Scores on a Fumble

SEPT. 14, 2014

Inside

David Carr

THE MEDIA EQUATION

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The N.F.L., arguably the three most powerful letters in branding, bumped into three other letters — TMZ — and was thrown for a huge loss.

Last week, the gossip website TMZ released a video in which Ray Rice, the star running back of the Baltimore Ravens, is shown cold-cocking his fiancée in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino. The National Football League and its commissioner, Roger Goodell, are now in a position of having to explain why Mr. Rice was suspended for just two games and whether league officials had seen the video before issuing the suspension. Robert S. Mueller III, the former director of the F.B.I., has been tapped to investigate the matter.

It’s a huge story that has spread to every corner of the media, in part because the N.F.L. plays such a core role in American life. And TMZ now has the league on the run.

Unlike so many media brands, TMZ doesn’t derive its power from its reputation — kind of the opposite, really — but from its aggression. After the N.F.L. meted out a penalty widely criticized as too lenient, TMZ applied pressure and — probably — some money to shake loose cold, hard evidence that the punishment hardly fit the crime.

The N.F.L., which has led a somewhat charmed life in terms of news coverage, is now besieged by punishing headlines. In addition to the Rice scandal, Adrian Peterson, a star running back for the Minnesota Vikings, was indicted Friday on child abuse charges. On the same day, the league admitted in court documents that one-third of retired players would suffer from long-term cognitive problems, many at a young age. Over the long haul, the rugged news is bound to take some sparkle out of game day and, perhaps, slow the business momentum of a league that has known only growth.

Not everyone has given the league a pass, and TMZ, since launching a sports site a few years ago, has brought remarkable aggression to the locker room and beyond. Obtaining the grainy security video that depicted the attack inside the elevator was a journalistic act that rendered words, and the N.F.L.’s stance on the incident, pretty much beside the point. We all saw what happened.

In this instance, the value of the information derived from the artifact, not the outlet that released it. There is a lesson in there for legacy news organizations that believe they can hold back the tide on insurgents because they have a different and deeper relationship with consumers. It has become clear that audiences will tune into and believe whoever has the goods.

TMZ has a tactical advantage. While networks continue to play peekaboo about whether they pay for news — many do — TMZ is more than happy to pony up for information that will tilt the field and draw hits. A line in the sand long drawn by journalism’s church ladies and observed by most mainstream organizations has all but been blown away. Most people don’t care where the news came from or how it was obtained. And if the N.F.L. is not interested in seeing what happened in the elevator, the rest of us certainly are.

Seeing is more than believing; it is telling. When Mr. Rice knocked out Janay Palmer, the woman he would eventually marry, it did not scan as an emotional act. He took her out casually, seeming unsurprised when she dropped to the floor. His easy savagery explains why he pulled her out of the elevator with all of the ceremony of taking out the garbage.

TMZ is a gossip site, but gossip is news by another name when the subjects or their actions rise to the level of public interest. I’ve visited its offices, and underneath the newsroom set you see on syndicated television, there is a beast that must be fed. Harvey Levin, TMZ’s founder, buys-sells-trades his way to scoops big and small, and he knows a big story when he sees it.

TMZ may be owned by Time Warner, but it is an ill-mannered guerrilla outfit taking aim at and drawing blood from big, fat targets. Unlike the broadcast networks and ESPN, which have become increasingly dependent on the mighty N.F.L. for continued relevance and profit, TMZ is an outrider that reports without regard to propriety or relationships. It’s no coincidence that TMZ also broke the story of the National Basketball Association owner Donald Sterling’s racist remarks by posting an audio clip of his hateful words. He was eventually compelled to sell the team.

But the professional sports leagues aren’t the only big organizations that should be quaking in their boots. As journalists, we like to think that the august platforms we work on and our learned interpretation of facts create value and credibility, but in an age of digital artifacts and digital distribution, the pure act of discovery can create big news. The N.B.A. and N.F.L. exposés, along with an earlier story about sexual assault at Florida State University, created mayhem because each story relied on the publication of police reports, video or audio, combined with reporting. Tiger Woods also ended up deeply damaged by TMZ’s exposing ugly facts and has never seemed to fully recover.

We live in a time when if it can be known, it will be known. By now, people have learned the hard way to be careful about what they commit to paper, but much of what we are seeing is people living their life and doing the things they do when no one is looking. For some, that might be talking in racist ways to girlfriends, and for others, that might mean hitting them and then spitting on them.

Once that information is out there in a way that can be embedded and referred to, it goes from being hidden to being everywhere. Video, in particular, is a powerful medium when combined with the network effects of the web. Part of the reason that President Obama is leading us into yet another conflict in a distant place is the profound effect of the videos depicting the beheadings of two American journalists.

The Rice video was so profoundly disgusting that it has managed to implicate a whole league and may have imperiled the N.F.L.’s commissioner, depending on what he knew and when he knew it.

The implications are odious enough to break up the general bromance between ESPN and the N.F.L. The cable network is now pursuing the story with guns blazing, but at some point people are going to stop asking why the N.F.L. did not seek the TMZ video and wonder why the sports press didn’t either. The N.F.L.’s dominance in live-action television means that it is often given the benefit of the doubt by the news divisions of big media companies. It’s worth noting that Time Warner, the owner of TMZ, has few big deals with the N.F.L.

The influence of a site that was initially named after the Thirty Mile Zone — a shorthand used by the industry to describe the area around Hollywood — has grown to the 3,000-mile zone, a countrywide reach. There’s a reason for that. All the world’s a stage, as Shakespeare pointed out, and all the men and women merely players — they have their exits and their entrances, and by now we can be pretty sure that those players will be known, their deeds will become legend and consequences will ensue.

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Baseball

Right Up to Retirement, Derek Jeter Is Still Playing the Game

SEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

Derek Jeter's home run Thursday night against the Blue Jays was his first at Yankee Stadium this year.

Sports of The Times

By MICHAEL POWELL

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

He flexed his knees and settled into the batter’s box like a man into his garden, needing just another moment to root his right foot into the dirt. Then he pulled his left shoulder in, as if to fit into a crowded subway car, waggled his bat and awaited the pitch.

R. A. Dickey, the Toronto Blue Jay, tossed up a fat mistake of a fastball, and Derek Jeter unleashed that compact swing. The ball soared deep into the left-field stands.

Jeter trotted quickly around the bases, no preening. He’d done this 259 times before.

For a minute or so, Yankee Stadium got loud and raucous. There’s a nip to the air, which means September, which means the time of Yankees domination.

Except not this year and not last year, either. Save for their loving “Der-ek Je-ter!” chants, the fans passed most of the night in somnolence, like old hounds no longer bothering to respond to the September whistle. The Yankees are driving around in the far suburbs of the playoff race only because several of their rivals are in a state of epic collapse. The Yankees had a 5-5 record in the 10 games entering Friday, and remained five games off the wild-card pace.

Continue reading the main story

Interactive Graphic

342,000 Swings Later, Derek Jeter Calls It a Career

The Times, with an assist from Jeter, has tried to calculate the number of times he has swung a bat in his professional career — in practice and in games.

OPEN Interactive Graphic

The team has truly promising young pitchers, two of whom, Shane Greene and the towering Dellin Betances, pitched Thursday night. But their lineup is a Tomb of the Ancients. All but one of the regulars have passed their 30th birthdays, at least two have wandered north of 34 and two, Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki, have passed 40 years old. (In the wings is the cryogenic Alex Rodriguez, seemingly fated to return next season at 39.)

The age-old Yankee way, which is to spend like a giddy King Midas on free agents, has failed of late.

For now, the Yankees offer endless evocations of the glorious past. It begins hours before the game, with montages of the Babe, Lou Gehrig, Joltin’ Joe, Louisiana Lightning, Mickey Mantle, Jorge Posada and so on and on. In right-center field, glowering beneath the Hess sign, is a spectral photo of a suspicious looking George M. Steinbrenner III. “THE BOSS.”

The announcer hawks a signed magazine collection: “All Our Yesterdays.”

Where is Oscar Gamble and that magnificent Afro of his? Is Roy White suiting up?

Derek Jeter has taken his place in this line of march, just as Mariano Rivera did last year. Jeter’s wrists and bat no longer spring cat-quick, and he does not pretend otherwise. After the game, a reporter informed him that he had just hit his first home run at Yankee Stadium this year. He arched a sardonic eyebrow.

“Thank you,” he told the reporter. “Thank you.”

Continue reading the main story

Timeline

Highlights and Milestones: Derek Jeter

The longtime Yankees shortstop is in his 20th and final season. His many milestones and career highlights are compiled here with related video, and articles and photos from the Times archive.

OPEN Timeline

Age for an athlete is a merciless mistress. Judged against his peers at shortstop, Jeter has not embarrassed himself, but he ranks last offensively. He has the lowest on-base percentage, the lowest slugging average, the lowest OPS.

This is in no fashion to knock Jeter. My sons and I share a lifelong Mets affliction. Yet even my pack of wolves never managed to loose a howl of boos for Jeter. (Nor, truth be told, could we hoot at Mariano or Bernie Williams. It almost became a problem for us, but that’s a psychiatric lament for another day.)

I watched Willie Mays stumble about in the late-afternoon shadows at Shea Stadium. Henry Aaron hit .229 with 10 homers and the great shortstop Ernie Banks hit .193 in their last turn. No shame is to be found; only melancholy.

Rivera somehow departed looking at the top of his game, but that felt like his own, private joke on the gods.

The 2014 Yankees have overachieved, and that could be because of Manager Joe Girardi. In this age of metrics, few reliable ones have emerged for the baseball manager. This could lead to the conclusion that most managers don’t matter. But perhaps it is just that the best, by the nature of the job, work on psyches, and that’s hit-and-miss labor.

Opponents have outscored the Yankees substantially this year. Virtually their entire starting pitching staff has fallen to injuries. Yet you watch Girardi, and he is energy and motion: studying the broken swing of Mark Teixeira, the team’s .217-hitting cleanup batter; sprinting to kibitz with this player and whisper in the ear of that one.

Joe Torre did a fine job of keeping an expensive, finely tuned car purring. Girardi is more like the backyard mechanic, forever noodling under the hood of the 1977 Mustang in hopes of eking out a few more miles.

Continue reading the main story Slide Show

Slide Show|22 Photos

Derek Jeter’s Two Decades of Excellence

Derek Jeter’s Two Decades of Excellence

Murray Chass, a knowledgeable baseball hand, has taken the role of Madame Defarge, and recently demanded General Manager Brian Cashman’s head. Certainly Cashman had had the benefit of tossing gilded dice all these years, and no doubt he will again this off-season. But he also rooted around in the bargain bin this year and plucked out excellent finds, like Martin Prado and Chris Young.

He has had more luck than the Mets’ Sandy Alderson, who last year signed Curtis Granderson, a Yankees castoff. A lefty pull hitter in Citi Field’s death valley is not a comforting sight.

But, as Mets fans are prone to, I digress.

Yet you wonder if the Yankees formula needs remixing. For years, driven by Steinbrenner’s demand to win-win-always-win, the Yankees paid top dollar for the best free-agent hitters and pitchers, many of whom were older. This worked well, particularly as baseball people and writers argued that, thanks to the wonders of modern nutrition and personal fitness, athletes could dominate deep into their 30s, perhaps even to 40.

Yes, well, writers are the last naifs. To the extent that players’ career peaks had been extended, that perhaps owed to whatever could be crammed into a pill or a syringe. Certainly this current crop of Yankees is performing more or less as 30-something players typically performed, which is to say in fits and starts, while being prone to injury. It’s hard to win pennants that way.

On Thursday, a scrum of 25 or so reporters and photographers gathered around Jeter at his locker, asking him the same questions he has been asked since spring training.

What’s your favorite part of this game? Is it walking down that hallowed Yankees hall? Heading up those steps to the Yankees’ dugout? Jeter cocked his head, and peered at the romantic-minded reporter.

“Playing the game,” Jeter replied. “Playing the game.”

With that, Jeter excused himself, grabbed his glove and trotted out to the field. By the time the reporters got out there, he was at shortstop, fielding grounders, taking that skip step and soft-tossing to first base.

Ancients and nostalgia could wait. The game was still all.

Email: powellm@nytimes.com

Email: powellm@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Game Still Jeter’s Focus, Right Up to the End. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Home

342,000 Swings Later, Derek Jeter Calls It a Career

By Shan Carter, Joe Ward and David Waldstein

The Times, with an assist from Jeter, has attempted to calculate the number of times he has swung a bat in his professional career — in practice and in games.

September 14, 2014

To see every swing, you would need to watch this motion nonstop for more than . Better make some coffee.

At-Bats

Jeter averages about 2 swings every time he comes to bat.

Pregame

He takes 60 swings before every game (30 in the indoor batting cage and 30 on the field in batting practice).

Regular Season

Jeter has swung the bat about times for every one of his hits (practice swings included).

Home Runs

Jeter does not have a power stroke. It has taken about 1,300 swings for each of his home runs.

Total Hits

If you add his postseason and All-Star Game hits, Jeter’s total jumps to .

Pause

Need a rest from all these swings? So did Jeter. He took Novembers and Decembers off, and he never practiced at home. “You would have a hard time finding a baseball at my house besides one that’s got writing on it,” he said.

Postseason

Jeter is the career playoff leader in postseason hits, games played, singles and doubles, and he is tied for first in triples. So he is probably the leader in October swings, with 10,800 in practice and in games.

Regular Season

Jeter has faced more than 46,000 regular-season pitches and has swung at nearly half of them.

Spring Training

In 22 spring camps, Jeter has added about 61,500 swings to his career total.

His Career

His total, including about 31,000 swings from his minor league years, is about .

“If you had told me it was a million, I wouldn’t have been surprised,” said Jeter’s teammate Mark Teixeira.

“It’s just what we do. It’s part of the job. People in other fields do things over and over again in their jobs, I’ve just been doing this a long time.”

— Derek Jeter

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College Football |NYT Now

Boxing Is in Elijah Holyfield’s Blood, but Football Is in His Future

By MIKE TIERNEYSEPT. 19, 2014

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Elijah Holyfield (13), a son of the boxer Evander Holyfield, fields football scholarship offers at Woodward Academy, near Atlanta.

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CLARKSTON, Ga. — The public address announcer’s setup for the opening kickoff — “back for Woodward Academy, No. 13, Elijah Holyfield” — was still echoing through the stadium Friday when the ball descended into the player’s midsection.

By the time some unknowing spectators on the host Clarkston High side of the field received confirmation that Elijah Holyfield was related to that Evander Holyfield, the young player had gone 97 yards untouched into the end zone.

Three touchdowns followed in the first half for Elijah, the eighth of 11 children of the 51-year-old Evander, an overachieving boxer remembered almost as much for not knowing when to shut down his career as for the titles he claimed along the way. His last bout, presumably, was in May 2011.

Elijah is making his own name in another physically harsh sport. He is regarded as among the most coveted junior running backs in the country, with prestigious colleges programs vying to sign him.

The elder Holyfield might have heavyweight titles to his name, but he is watching his son head down a path he himself once considered.

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Holyfield during a touchdown return of the opening kickoff Friday against Clarkston. He had four touchdowns at halftime.

Upon returning from the 1984 Summer Olympics, where he lost a bid for a gold medal amid questionable judging, Evander revealed to his manager a desire to play football at the University of Georgia, as a possible steppingstone to a roster spot with the N.F.L.’s Atlanta Falcons.

This goal was grandiose beyond reach. A much smaller Holyfield had quit his Alabama high school team in 10th grade over a lack of playing time, and he had not played football since.

Holyfield heeded the manager’s advice to stay with boxing. Instead of the value of a scholarship, his likely monetary ceiling for football, he amassed an estimated $200 million in the ring.

“Elijah tells people, ‘My daddy loves football more than he loves boxing,’ ” said Evander, who said the sentiment was true.

Elijah dabbled in boxing as a child and might have carried on the family tradition except that his brawling tendencies too often precluded punch prevention.

“He loved to brawl,” Evander said. “Anything that is rough and tough, he likes it.”

Besides, the gravitational pull to football was too strong. The 5-foot-11 Elijah, not quite as tall as his 6-2 father, already has filled out to a thick 200 pounds. Evander takes delight that Elijah is just as inclined to run over a tackler than around him, saying, “He looks for reasons to truck you.”

The recruiting service 247Sports rates Elijah as the No. 25 prospect among the nation’s 11th-grade running backs. A composite ranking of the major recruiting sites, compiled by 247Sports, places him 20th.

“He’s not your prototypical big back, but he runs hard and with authority,” said Steve Wiltfong, the service’s national recruiting director. “He loves contact. Doesn’t go down easy.”

Scholarship offers are flooding in, the latest from Arkansas and Michigan State, according to the service. Wiltfong views Michigan as the narrow leader, while Evander characterizes the competition as wide open.

Indeed, a Holyfield might suit up for Georgia — some 30 years later — if Elijah accepts the Bulldogs’ recent offer. But Evander hopes interest from Georgia Tech evolves into an option. An avid sports enthusiast, he knows that Tech’s ground-oriented offense is well-suited to Elijah.

It took all of one play for Elijah, who lives with his mother, to establish his rapid scoring pace this season. The season-opening kickoff three weeks ago, aimed at teammates, was deflected. Elijah scooped up the bouncing ball and dashed 84 yards to the end zone.

Five more touchdowns later, all on rushes from scrimmage, Evander assumed his son’s evening was over and left in the third quarter to attend a family reunion. He missed another score.

In their postgame chat, Evander, master of an individual sport, reminded Elijah that a group effort had helped lead to the seven touchdowns.

“I told him: ‘Don’t think you did this by yourself. When you talk to the media, you let them know it’s a team sport,’ ” said Evander, who wears a T-shirt to games bearing Elijah’s name and number with the adage “Win the Battle, Win the Day.”

“I don’t want nobody to think I got the big head,” said Evander, who cannot resist the role of proud father, “but he is my son.”

Standing behind the team bench Friday, Evander reacted to each touchdown with little more than a subtle fist pump. But he could not resist a smile when, after one score, a Woodward lineman approached and extended a hand to the former champion.

“Mr. Holyfield,” he said, with a firm shake, “I enjoy blocking for your son.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Boxing in His Blood, but Football in His Future. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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College Football |NYT Now

Saturday’s College Football Games to Watch

By FRED BIERMANSEPT. 19, 2014

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Florida State's Sean Maguire will step in for Jameis Winston against a defense that will be daring him to throw the ball.

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22 CLEMSON at 1 FLORIDA STATE

8 p.m. Eastern, ABC

Last season, quarterback Jameis Winston and the Seminoles traveled to Death Valley and absolutely crushed Clemson, 51-14. The game was a crucial step on their national title run and a big part of why Winston went on to win the Heisman. That was a matchup of top-five teams, while in this one, Florida State is a favorite even though Winston has been suspended for the game for shouting obscenities.

Sean Maguire will step in against a defense that will be daring him to throw the ball. He definitely has the weapons. Receiver Rashad Greene has been superb, and Nick O’Leary is a hard-nosed, old-school tight end who had a monster game in this matchup last season.

Clemson was supposed to be fearsome up front, with Vic Beasley leading the way, but the Tigers’ line was not impressive in a loss to Georgia. If the Tigers can force Maguire into some mistakes and get out to an early lead, this one will be closer than many people think.

FLORIDA at 3 ALABAMA

3:30 p.m., CBS

Florida needed triple overtime last week to avoid losing to Kentucky in the Swamp for the first time since 1979. Gators Coach Will Muschamp is taking a lot of heat, and a victory on the road against Alabama would help quiet some of his critics. That seems like a tall order, however, as Florida is a two-touchdown underdog. One matchup that everyone is looking forward to is the one between Alabama receiver Amari Cooper and Florida defensive back Vernon Hargreaves III. Cooper is one of the best receivers in the nation and is getting some Heisman momentum going, while Hargreaves may be the best cornerback in the Southeastern Conference.

4 OKLAHOMA at WEST VIRGINIA

7:30 p.m., Fox

West Virginia kept it close against Alabama to open the season, but almost blew a 22-point lead against Maryland last week. The Mountaineers play a quick-tempo, air-it-out style (Clint Trickett threw for 511 yards and 4 touchdowns against Maryland), and this should be an interesting test for an improved Oklahoma defense. The Sooners are without running back Keith Ford, but the freshman Samaje Perine is a 243-pound bruiser who will look to take advantage of a West Virginia defense that allowed 288 yards rushing to Alabama. Oklahoma quarterback Trevor Knight and receiver Sterling Shepard make up one of the most exciting combinations in the Big 12. If the Oklahoma defense can step up, the Sooners will roll. Otherwise, expect a shootout.

FRED BIERMAN

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Games to Watch. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football | N.F.L. Roundup

New Policy on Substance Abuse Reduces Josh Gordon’s Ban to 10 Games

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 19, 2014

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Under the N.F.L.’s former policy, Browns receiver Josh Gordon had faced a one-year suspension for repeated drug violations.

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The N.F.L. and its players association said Friday that they had finished overhauling their substance abuse policy, less than a week after they updated similar policies for performance-enhancing drugs.

The new policies will allow some star players, including Wes Welker of the Denver Broncos and Josh Gordon of the Cleveland Browns, to return to the field sooner. Gordon, who received a one-year ban for repeated drug violations, will now sit out 10 games.

The league is set to test for human growth hormone for the first time and will use a third-party arbitrator to hear appeals of positive tests. Also, players who test positive for banned stimulants during the off-season will no longer be suspended and will instead be referred to the league’s substance abuse program.

Players who test positive for marijuana for the first time will be referred to the substance abuse program, but subsequent violations will result in a two-game fine, a four-game fine, a four-game suspension, a 10-game suspension and a one-year ban.

The threshold for a positive marijuana test will be more than doubled.

Players who are convicted of driving while impaired will be suspended for two games without pay for a first offense. They will be suspended for at least eight games without pay for a second offense.

DOLPHIN SUSPENDED AGAIN Miami defensive end Dion Jordan was suspended for the second time this year for a violation of the N.F.L.’s substance abuse policy, and he must sit out the next four games without pay.

As a result of the two violations, Jordan will miss the Dolphins’ first six games. He is in treatment, the team said.

Jordan was first suspended July 3 after testing positive for a prohibited stimulant. That suspension, originally for four games, was lifted under the terms of the league’s new policy on performance-enhancing substances, which took effect Wednesday. As the Dolphins were notified Friday that the suspension was lifted, they were advised of the second suspension, Coach Joe Philbin said. (AP)

PROTECTIVE ORDER SOUGHT The authorities in Minnesota filed a petition seeking a protective order for the 4-year-old son of Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson.

In the petition, Hennepin County Human Services asked a judge to block Peterson from using corporal punishment or physical discipline on the boy. It also would block unauthorized or unsupervised contact, and require Peterson to complete a parenting assessment.

Peterson faces a child abuse charge in Texas for using a wooden switch to spank the boy in May. He has said he meant only to discipline the boy and not to hurt him. The order says Peterson told investigators in Texas that he also used a belt to spank his son.

Peterson has been dropped from the Vikings’ active roster while the criminal case against him is pending in Texas, where he has an Oct. 8 arraignment.

“This petition reflects that a conscientious government agency wants to work with the parent to protect a child and to ensure that alternative methods of discipline are adopted,” Rusty Hardin, Peterson’s attorney, said in a statement. “Adrian is very willing to continue cooperating with authorities in every way in order for them to conclude he is a good parent.”

According to the petition, the child visited Peterson in Montgomery County, Tex., from about May 6 to 22. His mother reported possible abuse to Hennepin County Child Protection services on May 22. Separate exams by a doctor May 22 and a nurse practitioner May 23 documented injuries “clinically diagnostic of child physical abuse.”

A May 29 exam found the boy still had traces of the injuries “10 days after the last known time he was physically abused.” (AP)

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: New Policy on Substance Abuse Reduces Gordon’s Ban to 10 Games. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football

Breaking Silence, but Offering Little

SEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|2:04

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L.

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L. N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for his role in poor decision-making surrounding domestic violence cases and promised a revamped personal conduct policy to address future cases. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

TV Sports

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

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Maybe Commissioner Roger Goodell should have extended his public silence about the domestic violence crisis that has been roiling the N.F.L.

His 44-minute news conference on Friday was a mix of mea culpas, evasions and non-answers. His demeanor was wooden, his new information thin.

He did not seem ready for all the questions even as he felt he had something to say to journalists who were clamoring for him to speak up.

It is tempting to compare Goodell’s performance to that of N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver when he outlined his strong punishment of Donald Sterling, the former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.

Silver was passionate and angry at a specific target: Sterling’s racism, which struck at the core of the league. Goodell made himself a target with his apologies for mishandling the Ray Rice case.

But he could not summon the sort of angst and fire Silver displayed when he talked about being “personally distraught” over Sterling’s statements.

More important was the inadequacy of some of Goodell’s answers. He did not respond directly to a question about why there was no electronic evidence of a request to the Atlantic City authorities for the second video that showed Rice punching his future wife, Janay Palmer, in a casino elevator. Goodell suggested that the reason he should not resign as commissioner was that he had acknowledged his mistake and was moving forward.

He danced inelegantly around a question about what Rice had said to him in their meeting that was inconsistent with Rice’s account of assaulting Palmer, then his fiancée. Then, as a coda that should have substituted for any comments, he said he did not want to prejudge Rice’s appeal of his indefinite suspension. But if he did not want to prejudge any issues, why did he unambiguously say “yes” when asked if he still believed no one in his office had the second, more incendiary video from inside the elevator? That matter is part of the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, a former director of the F.B.I., into the league’s actions in the Rice case.

Goodell seemed to feel that flaying himself verbally was a way to avoid questions. Asked how many difficult conversations he had with N.F.L. sponsors, he expressed disappointment in himself, but never gave a direct answer. He avoided a follow-up question about whether the league had come close to losing a sponsor, and told the reporter to speak to the sponsors.

Goodell can be credited for his new domestic violence initiatives and for conceding that when he talked to Rice and his wife, he should have used the law enforcement protocol of speaking with them separately. But a devoted viewer of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” could have advised him of that.

Goodell, who stood before a blue backdrop festooned with 10 N.F.L. shields, came armed with inaccurate legal information about Greg Hardy, the Carolina Panthers defensive end who was convicted in July of assaulting and threatening his girlfriend. “He was convicted and then what happens when he appeals that, it is wiped out until he goes to a jury trial,” Goodell said, adding: “There was a conviction. It gets removed until the jury trial.”

Not true. Daniel C. Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School, said, “Convictions are taken as authoritative legal facts until and unless they are overturned.”

A county court judge found Hardy guilty and sentenced him to 18 months’ probation. The sentence is stayed pending his appeal, which will be heard by a jury.

And in lauding Mueller, Goodell twice called him the “longest-serving” F.B.I. director. Mueller served for a dozen years, but somebody named J. Edgar Hoover held the position for 48.

Email: sandor@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Breaking Silence, but Offering Little. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

In Domestic Violence Cases, N.F.L. Has a History of Lenience

By BILL PENNINGTON and STEVE EDERSEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

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On April 10, 2007, after more than 50 National Football League players had been arrested in the previous football season, Commissioner Roger Goodell was widely hailed for instituting a newly stringent personal conduct policy. Mr. Goodell threatened to banish players for off-the-field transgressions and installed himself as the judge and jury presiding over every case.

Mr. Goodell insisted that he would mete out discipline without waiting for the judicial system.

“It is my job — not law enforcement’s job — to protect the National Football League,” he said at the time.

But in his role as the N.F.L.’s hard-bitten sheriff, Mr. Goodell appears to have had a major blind spot: domestic violence cases. Players charged with domestic violence routinely received considerably lighter punishments than players accused of other offenses, like drug use or drunken driving. Often, they were not punished at all. On Friday, seven years after he implemented the personal conduct policy, Mr. Goodell acknowledged publicly that it had failed and would be overhauled.

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On Friday, seven years after he implemented the personal conduct policy, Roger Goodell acknowledged publicly that it had failed and would be overhauled.

“We should have had the personal conduct policy reviewed more frequently, to make the changes necessary to deal with the issues that have changed,” he said at a news conference in which he announced that outside experts would help the league devise a new system for handling domestic violence cases.

An examination of dozens of arrests of N.F.L. players since Mr. Goodell established his personal conduct policy in 2007 — and the fines and penalties doled out by the league — shows that suspensions of two to four games, and sometimes more, were far more likely for players arrested on drunken driving, marijuana possession or weapon charges. A vast majority of players charged with domestic violence crimes, if they were disciplined by the league at all, received one-game suspensions even after pleading guilty to lesser related charges or entering pretrial intervention programs.

The disparity in punishments within the league is illustrated in numerous cases. On Nov. 25, 2011, for example, Green Bay Packers linebacker Erik Walden was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his live-in girlfriend. The charge was reduced to disorderly conduct and then dismissed after Walden agreed to perform 50 hours of community service and receive counseling.

The N.F.L. suspended Walden for one game.

Less than two months earlier, the police seized two and a half pounds of marijuana sent to the home of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Jerome Simpson. The league suspended Simpson for three games.

“I don’t think the N.F.L. did anything more than give lip service to the notion that they were taking domestic abuse seriously,” said Ann DeLaney, an advocate for victims of domestic violence and the former executive director of the Julian Center in Indianapolis, a victim support group.

Referring to the Ray Rice case, Ms. DeLaney continued, “That’s what they did this time until it was caught on video.”

Mr. Rice, then a Baltimore Ravens running back, was suspended for only two games after being accused of assaulting his fiancée, Janay Palmer, in February; Ms. Palmer is now married to Mr. Rice. After a firestorm of criticism that the punishment was inadequate, Mr. Goodell increased the league’s minimum suspension for a first-time domestic violence offense to six games. After a video surfaced of Mr. Rice knocking out Ms. Palmer in a hotel elevator, Mr. Goodell suspended Mr. Rice indefinitely.

Some of the cases drew criticism at the time, but the recent high-profile episodes have led to a firestorm of protest from inside and outside football.

Tyrone Thomas, a Washington lawyer who advises on sports cases, said the N.F.L. had always had the power to take a tougher tack in instances in which there were accusations of domestic violence, but had chosen not to. Mr. Thomas said that the N.F.L. had treated domestic violence as a back-burner concern, and that punishing players caught doping or driving under the influence had been a higher priority.

“There certainly could have been a harsher interpretation of certain standards,” Mr. Thomas said.

In multiple cases since 2007, the N.F.L.’s response to domestic violence arrests appeared arbitrary.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|2:04

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L.

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L. N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for his role in poor decision-making surrounding domestic violence cases and promised a revamped personal conduct policy to address future cases. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

Within the first year of the personal conduct policy, the contrast in the handling of different cases was on display when three members of the Pittsburgh Steelers — running back Najeh Davenport, linebacker James Harrison and wide receiver Cedrick Wilson — were accused in domestic violence cases, according to news reports at the time.

Mr. Davenport, who was accused during the season, was never suspended and was acquitted after a trial that took place after the season. Mr. Harrison, a star and an important player during the Steelers’ run to the Super Bowl after the 2008 season, also was not suspended. But Mr. Wilson, a lesser-known player, was dropped from the team within hours of his arrest, and he never played in the N.F.L. again.

During the last seven years, when a domestic abuse arrest involved a player who was not a starter or a major contributor to the team, the player was sometimes released by his team. In those cases, the league would not have had to consider a suspension.

Mr. Harrison’s agent, William Parise, said the league had made the right call with Mr. Harrison. “There was never anything there,” Mr. Parise said. “He did not strike her or do anything like that. He didn’t press charges. She didn’t press charges. And the league dropped the whole thing.”

In one of the higher-profile cases, Brandon Marshall, a wide receiver with the Denver Broncos at the time, was initially suspended for three games over events that included his being arrested on charges of assaulting his girlfriend. But his suspension was later reduced to one game.

In 2010, Tony McDaniel, a defensive lineman for the Miami Dolphins, was suspended for one game for violating the league’s personal conduct policy after he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct after a domestic dispute with his live-in girlfriend, according to The Sun-Sentinel newspaper in South Florida. He was sentenced to probation and ordered to attend counseling.

In another case in 2008, Michael Boley, a linebacker with the Atlanta Falcons at the time, was suspended by the league for a game after he was charged with battery. His wife at the time had told the police that he “became physical with her.” The case did not go to trial.

His lawyer, Randall Kessler of Atlanta, said it was troubling that Mr. Boley had been punished by the N.F.L.

“I was not happy that he was suspended based on an allegation, but I’m glad it ended there,” Mr. Kessler said.

Later, the police investigated Mr. Boley on child abuse allegations, which were raised amid a child-custody dispute. The outcome of that investigation is unclear.

Besides the Rice case, the N.F.L. has also been harshly criticized for its handling of three other recent abuse cases — those of Adrian Peterson, a star running back for the Minnesota Vikings, who has been accused of injuring one of his children; Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy, who was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend; and San Francisco 49ers defensive end Ray McDonald, who was arrested last month on suspicion of domestic violence.

Mr. Peterson was kept of out one game and then reinstated before an outcry led to his being suspended indefinitely. Mr. Hardy played in one game, but is being kept out while still being paid. Mr. McDonald has continued to play for the team, which has said it is waiting for his case to be resolved judicially.

Nita Chaudhary, a founder of UltraViolet, a women’s rights advocacy group, remained critical of the N.F.L. on Friday despite Goodell’s pledge to revamp the league’s personal conduct policy and penalties.

“This press circus did nothing to change Goodell’s long history of inaction on and blatant mishandling of domestic violence in the N.F.L.,” Ms. Chaudhary said in a statement. “We call on all of the N.F.L.’s sponsors to take a stand against domestic violence by withdrawing their support for the N.F.L. until Goodell is out of office.”

Elisa Choi contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In N.F.L. Get-Tough Policy, Blind Spot for Abuse. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

A Punch Is Seen, and a Player Is Out

Ray Rice Cut by Ravens and Suspended by N.F.L.

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 8, 2014

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Ray Rice at a news conference with his wife, Janay, on May 23. Rice was initially suspended for two games by the N.F.L. before the Ravens terminated his contract on Monday.

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The National Football League’s handling of a domestic violence case is under renewed scrutiny after a graphic video emerged Monday, leading to the termination of the Baltimore Ravens star running back Ray Rice’s contract and his suspension from the league.

The video shows Rice punching his fiancée, who is now his wife, in the face, leaving her motionless on the floor of a hotel elevator in Atlantic City in February. He then dragged her unconscious body from the elevator.

Rice was charged with felony assault in March, but his wife, Janay Palmer, declined to testify. The charges were dropped and court-supervised counseling was ordered. Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, disciplined Rice in July with a two-game suspension, a penalty that was widely criticized as too lenient.

Previously published video of the altercation was taken from a camera outside the elevator and showed only the moments after Rice hit Palmer. But the emergence of the new video, published by the website TMZ, raised questions about what the N.F.L. knew, and when. A league spokesman said “no one in our office has seen it until today,” but he did not respond to inquiries about whether any of the league’s investigators who do not work in the office had previously seen the video.

Continue reading the main story

Surveillance video obtained by TMZ (warning: graphic).

“What makes the N.F.L. look especially bad in this case is the sense that the only reason they suspended Ray Rice indefinitely was to save face, rather than to actually address or punish the problem at hand,” said S. Adam Brasel, a professor of marketing at Boston College. “Do people think the N.F.L. would have done the same if they got the footage internally rather than having the whole world see it on TMZ?”

The league enjoys unmatched popularity, with soaring TV ratings and billions of dollars in revenue. But it has been tarnished by several embarrassing issues in recent years, including homophobic and racist bullying.

Late last month, after an uproar over his handling of the Rice case, Goodell admitted that he had mishandled the case and announced new, tougher standards for players and league employees who are found to have committed domestic violence.

After saying for weeks that he had acted appropriately by suspending Rice for two games, Goodell said that in the future, any N.F.L. employee, including nonplayers, would be suspended for six games for a first offense of domestic violence and a minimum of a year for a second offense.

In a letter to team owners, he said he took responsibility “both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn’t get it right.”

He did not, however, revisit Rice’s suspension — until the video was posted Monday.

The Ravens had not previously disciplined Rice in any public way, and after the episode, the team said on Twitter: “Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.” The post was deleted Monday afternoon.

Rice, with his wife at his side, apologized publicly in May. The Ravens’ coach, John Harbaugh, said he stood by Rice, his star running back, and Ravens fans gave Rice a loud ovation during a preseason game.

However, Harbaugh said Monday that the new video, which he said he was seeing for the first time, made things different.

“It changed things, of course,” Harbaugh said.

He added, “When someone you care about does wrong, and is faced with the consequences of doing wrong, and rightfully so, it is tough, it is hurtful.”

Goodell, who has wide discretion to penalize players for violating the league’s personal conduct policy, was condemned for giving Rice what many considered a light suspension, especially compared with harsher penalties for players who take performance-enhancing drugs. The N.F.L. received hundreds of phone calls in protest, and petitions with tens of thousands of signatures were collected.

The new video led to calls Monday from advocates for victims of domestic violence for Goodell to penalize Rice retroactively. Hours later, the Ravens announced Rice’s release on their Twitter account. Soon after, the league said it had indefinitely suspended Rice.

“Commissioner Roger Goodell has announced that based on the new video evidence that became available today, he has imposed an indefinite suspension on Ray Rice,” the N.F.L. said in a statement. Rice will have to apply to be reinstated.

Advocates applauded the actions taken Monday. “The Ravens have sent a strong message against domestic violence,” said Judy Harris Kluger, executive director for Sanctuary for Families, a nonprofit agency in New York that helps victims of domestic violence. “It was impossible to ignore or explain away.”

Over the next three years, Rice, the Ravens’ second career leading rusher and a three-time Pro Bowl player, was to receive $9.5 million in salary, $9 million in signing bonuses and an additional $5.2 million in performance bonuses, according to the website Spotrac.com. Contracts often include terms that allow teams to terminate a deal with a player if he acts in a way that is detrimental to the team.

The N.F.L. Players Association did not return calls for comment.

The league may have to overhaul the way it investigates player malfeasance, sports lawyers said Monday. A spokesman for the N.F.L. said in July that Goodell took his cue in the investigation in part from law enforcement officials who had access to more information than the league.

But Goodell has also said that the N.F.L. should be held to a higher standard.

“The N.F.L. is going to have to review its due diligence in this case,” said Mark Conrad, who teaches sports law at Fordham University. “Some have said the league should treat it as a criminal matter, but it’s a very public league, and if they want to keep their many constituents happy, they are going to have to find a new way of doing it.”

Rutgers University, where Rice played, also distanced itself from him on Monday, removing a video on the team’s website.

The university’s athletic director, Julie Hermann, called the TMZ.com video “very disturbing” and said it “serves to reinforce the ongoing need to educate and bring awareness to the issue of domestic violence.”

Zach Schonbrun contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 9, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: After Punch Is Seen, Rice Is Out. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football

Ex-F.B.I. Leader’s Ray Rice Inquiry Poses Risk

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 11, 2014

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A fan in an altered Ray Rice jersey before Thursday’s game between the Ravens and the Steelers.

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CBS altered its planned opening for the first night of its coverage of “Thursday Night Football” to cover the Ray Rice story.

The network’s preproduced opening for all the games this season includes a song by Jay Z called “Run This Town,” on which the singer Rihanna is heard, although CBS said the connection with Rihanna, who has been involved in incidents of domestic violence in the past, “was not the overriding factor” in the decision to change the opening.

“We also dropped a comedy piece we had planned,” said Jen Sabatelle, a spokeswoman for CBS Sports. “Many planned elements were pulled so we could cover the story with the right tone and focus,” she said.

The opening with the Jay Z song will be used on other games this season, she said.

It was the latest fallout from the billowing controversy over the N.F.L.’s handling of the former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, who was suspended indefinitely by the league on Monday after graphic video was released showing him punching his then-fiancée in February.

N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell, reeling from criticism that he has not fully answered questions about whether he had seen that video, took a page from the chief executive’s handbook on Wednesday when he hired an independent investigator to look into the case.

No doubt the league intends for Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director, to sate the public’s interest about what Goodell and the league knew about the graphic video, which was taken months before Goodell suspended Rice for two games. Goodell said on national television that he had not seen the video until Monday after it was made public by TMZ, a celebrity website.

After the video became public and the league suspended Rice indefinitely, critics charged that Goodell was either lying about having not seen the video or that he did not do a thorough enough investigation into the incident. Goodell said that the league asked law enforcement agencies for all video about the incident, but that their request was denied.

Now an investigator with an impressive reputation will try to sort out the matter. Goodell said that Mueller would be given “the full cooperation of N.F.L. personnel and access to all N.F.L. records,” and his standing in law enforcement should ease any suspicion that the league may try to water down the findings.

Having Mueller look into the matter will also allow Goodell to decline to answer any questions about the affair until after the investigation is final and made public.

But the strategy has its dangers. Mueller, who retired from the F.B.I. in 2013 and now works for the law firm WilmerHale, will want to be as thorough as possible and not appear in any way craven to his employer.

“His reputation is really on the line,” said John M. Dowd, who was hired by Major League Baseball to investigate several matters, including reports that Pete Rose gambled on baseball. “If it comes out too light, it won’t look good. At the end of the day, what’s most important to him is his reputation, which means more to him than money. I can’t believe he’ll want to pull his punches.”

To ensure that the league doesn’t impede the investigation, Mueller will report to John Mara, the owner of the New York Giants, and Art Rooney II of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are lawyers. On Thursday, they said they will stay out of the way.

“Our role is not to conduct or direct the investigation but to support Mr. Mueller and assist him in gaining whatever access or resources he needs,” Mara and Rooney said in a statement. “Our sole motive here is to get the truth and then share Mr. Mueller’s findings with the public.”

The owners said that Mueller was told to take as much time as he needed, and to answers specific questions about “what efforts were made by league staff to obtain the video” and “to determine whether, in fact, the video was ever delivered to someone at the league office, and if so, what happened to the video after it was delivered.”

The N.F.L. is no stranger to independent investigations. Last year, the league hired Theodore Wells, a prominent defense lawyer, to look into allegations of workplace misconduct swirling around the Miami Dolphins. Wells was hired a week after Jonathan Martin, an offensive lineman on the Miami Dolphins, left the team and accused several teammates of bullying.

Wells’s 144-page report, issued two weeks after the Super Bowl in February, determined that three Miami offensive linemen “engaged in a pattern of harassment” toward Martin and an assistant trainer. The league now includes seminars during training camp to clarify rules on bullying.

Mueller’s report may be more damaging to the league because it will look at behavior in N.F.L. headquarters, and allegations of a potential cover-up.

With the spotlight on the N.F.L. bright, Mueller will have his challenges. He might have to interview former members of the F.B.I. who have worked as investigators for the N.F.L. He will also have to develop a relationship with the technology department at the league’s headquarters to ensure he can retrieve any relevant emails.

The N.F.L. has promised to cooperate and make the findings public, which should give Mueller leverage with anyone he hopes to interview, said Michael Bromwich, who was the inspector general at the Department of Justice in the 1990s.

“He will have a lot of power to remind people about these promises,” Bromwich said. “These investigations can be a little tricky, but in many ways they are even more difficult if they take place behind a curtain rather than in the public eye.”

Bill Carter contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 12, 2014, on page B13 of the New York edition with the headline: Ex-F.B.I. Leader’s Inquiry Into Handling of Rice Incident Poses Risks. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

N.F.L. Domestic Violence Policy Toughened in Wake of Ray Rice Case

By KEN BELSONAUG. 28, 2014

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N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged in a letter to team owners that he made a mistake imposing only a two-game ban on the Ravens’ Ray Rice.

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In a rare mea culpa, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday that he had mishandled the Ray Rice case, in which the Baltimore Ravens running back was suspended for two games after being accused of assaulting his fiancée.

The suspension was announced late last month to an instant and furious uproar from women’s groups, organizations supporting victims of domestic violence and league players who felt the penalty was too light and inconsistent with punishments for other offenses.

“My disciplinary decision led the public to question our sincerity, our commitment and whether we understood the toll that domestic violence inflicts on so many families,” Goodell said in a letter to team owners. “I take responsibility both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn’t get it right. Simply put, we have to do better. And we will.”

Goodell said that effective immediately any N.F.L. employee — not only a player — who is found to have engaged in assault, battery, domestic violence or sexual assault that involved physical force will be suspended without pay for six games for a first offense. Second-time offenders will be banished from the league for at least one year.

Goodell said that second-time offenders could petition to be reinstated after one year, but that “there will be no presumption or assurance that the petition will be granted.”

The about-face by Goodell, the most powerful executive in American sports, was stunning in its earnestness and clarity. The commissioner wrote frequently in the first person and admitted that he had lost sight of not only the seriousness of domestic violence, but also the league’s role as a leader in the sports world. Coming a month after the suspension of Rice, Goodell’s decision appeared considered, not rushed.

But it is also one of the few times during his eight-year tenure that Goodell has publicly admitted to making such a mistake. Since becoming commissioner in 2006, he has grappled with one crisis after another, from players using guns to spying by teams to bullying and the use of homophobic and racist language by players. He has rarely backpedaled on his decisions even in the face of withering criticism.

Perhaps most significantly, Goodell has equivocated on the issue of concussions and their impact on the health of players. For years, Goodell and the league dismissed mounting evidence about the dangers of repeated head hits, including in front of members of Congress.

The league has since changed rules and pledged tens of millions of dollars to study the impact of concussions, but the commissioner has never acknowledged the league’s past role in trying to sidestep the issue.

That evasion may cost the league dearly. Frustration over the league’s stance is one reason nearly 5,000 retired players sued the N.F.L. and Riddell, a helmet manufacturer, for hiding from them the dangers of concussions. A federal judge has preliminarily approved a landmark 65-year settlement that would award millions of dollars to players with severe neurological disorders, and spend tens of millions more to monitor other players.

Unlike concussions, which have an impact on the game and the finances of the N.F.L., the league’s stance on domestic violence is not purely a financial issue. While the league has spent years courting female fans by, among other things, having its players wear pink cleats to raise awareness of breast cancer, Goodell also announced his new policy a week before the start of the regular season and ahead of a three-day weekend, when many people are on vacation.

Goodell initially defended the decision to suspend Rice for two games. He said he spoke directly to Rice and noted that he avoided a trial by entering a counseling program. “He is a young man that really understands the mistake he made and he is out and about and determined to make a positive difference,” Goodell said at the beginning of August.

But as blowback continued, he apparently recognized the issue was larger than just Rice. In his 2,000-word letter and memo, Goodell said that his decision was based as much on the obligation of the league to be held to a higher standard than other sports leagues and institutions.

“Much of the criticism stemmed from a fundamental recognition that the N.F.L. is a leader, that we do stand for important values, and that we can project those values in ways that have a positive impact beyond professional football,” he wrote.

Groups that criticized Goodell for being insensitive to the issue of domestic abuse applauded him for reversing course.

“This decision by N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell to change the league’s policy on how it disciplines players who beat their wives and girlfriends is a big win, not just for women, but for all N.F.L. players, staff and fans,” said Becky Bond, the political director of Credo, a women’s rights group.

The N.F.L. Players Association, which has often been at loggerheads with the commissioner over his penalties for players, did not publicly endorse Goodell’s tougher stance. In a statement, the union said only that it was informed of the N.F.L.’s decision and that “if we believe that players’ due process rights are infringed upon during the course of discipline, we will assert and defend our members’ rights.”

While other leagues employ an independent arbitrator to hear player appeals, the N.F.L. is essentially the judge and jury in disciplinary cases not covered by the collective bargaining agreement. This has led many commentators to compare Rice’s suspension over accusations that he assaulted his fiancée in an elevator to the four-game suspensions for players who violated the league’s drug policy.

On Wednesday, the league upheld its one-year suspension of Cleveland Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon for violating its substance-abuse policy. Afterward, Gordon criticized the league for not exercising “better discretion and judgment in my case.”

Still, Gordon’s penalty was based on guidelines agreed on between the league and the players union, not the commissioner. Goodell’s decision to more severely penalize those who commit domestic violence, on the other hand, has set a precedent.

“This is very rare,” said Marc Ganis, a consultant to several teams. “Goodell’s admission of having erred on something this important to society is very rare and speaks volumes about the confidence the N.F.L. has to admit its mistake.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 29, 2014, on page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: Goodell Admits He Was Wrong in Rice Case. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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College Football |NYT Now

Jameis Winston Out for Entire Game as Florida State Extends Ban

By MARC TRACYSEPT. 20, 2014

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Florida State reversed course late Friday, suspending Jameis Winston for all of Saturday's game.

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The Heisman Watch

Florida State reversed course late Friday, suspending quarterback Jameis Winston for the whole game, instead of the first half, against No. 22 Clemson on Saturday night.

“Based upon the results of our continuing investigation into Tuesday’s incident involving Jameis Winston, we have decided to not play him for the entire game,” the interim president Garnett Stokes and Athletic Director Stan Wilcox said in a statement sent after 11 p.m. Eastern.

Florida State said Wednesday that Winston, last season’s Heisman Trophy winner, would be suspended for the first half of the top-ranked Seminoles’ game, which is at home, after he shouted an obscene statement in the student union.

“As a result of his comments yesterday, which were offensive and vulgar, Jameis Winston will undergo internal discipline and will be withheld from competition for the first half of the Clemson game,” Stokes and Wilcox said in a statement Wednesday.

At a news conference just after the suspension was issued, Winston said he wanted to apologize “to the university, to my coaches and to my teammates” and called his behavior “selfish.” He added, “I did something, so I’ve got to accept my consequences.”

It is the latest episode involving Winston, who was accused in late 2012 of raping a fellow student. This month, the woman’s lawyer said Florida State had begun a disciplinary inquiry into the case. In May, Winston admitted stealing $32 worth of crab legs from a supermarket.

Winston’s comments Tuesday, which were sexual in nature and played off a meme, came at a time when there is public outcry over some football players’ treatment of women.

The backup Sean Maguire, a sophomore who has thrown 26 passes in his college career, will start the game in Winston’s place.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: Winston Out for Game as F.S.U. Extends Ban. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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College Football |NYT Now

Jameis Winston Suspended for First Half of Florida State-Clemson Game

By MARC TRACYSEPT. 17, 2014

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Jameis Winston shouted an obscene statement in public on Florida State’s campus Tuesday.

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Florida State said Wednesday that quarterback Jameis Winston, last season’s Heisman Trophy winner, would be suspended for the first half of the top-ranked Seminoles’ home game Saturday against No. 22 Clemson after he shouted an obscene statement in the student union Tuesday.

“As a result of his comments yesterday, which were offensive and vulgar, Jameis Winston will undergo internal discipline and will be withheld from competition for the first half of the Clemson game,” Florida State’s interim president, Garnett S. Stokes, and Athletic Director Stan Wilcox said in a joint statement. The university declined to comment further.

At a news conference Wednesday, just after the suspension was issued, Winston said he wanted to apologize “to the university, to my coaches and to my teammates” and called his behavior “selfish.”

“I did something,” he said, “so I’ve got to accept my consequences.”

He added, “We’re going to think about moving forward and winning the game.”

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The Heisman Watch

It is the latest episode involving Winston, who was accused in late 2012 of raping a fellow student. Prosecutors declined to file charges in that case. The New York Times reported in April that the woman had promptly contacted the police and that the Tallahassee Police Department had conducted virtually no investigation. This month, the woman’s lawyer said Florida State had begun a disciplinary inquiry into the case.

In May, Winston admitted stealing $32 worth of crab legs from a supermarket.

Winston’s comments Tuesday, which were sexual in nature, played off a meme — a running gag, essentially — in which passers-by shout the phrase in videos ostensibly taken from live news broadcasts. The incident was first reported Tuesday by the website Deadspin, which collated Twitter messages of several eyewitnesses.

The comments come at a time when there is public outcry over some football players’ treatment of women, stemming primarily from the recently released video of the former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice punching his then-fiancée in an elevator.

During Florida State Coach Jimbo Fisher’s weekly conference call Wednesday morning, before the official suspension, he said that Winston’s comments were “not a good decision” and that he was contemplating discipline.

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Multimedia Feature

Errors in Inquiry on Rape Allegations Against FSU’s Jameis Winston

An accusation against Jameis Winston, a marquee quarterback for Florida State, did not prompt an in-depth inquiry by either the university or the police. By the time prosecutors got the case it was nearly a year old.

OPEN Multimedia Feature

It is not typical for a university president to take such a hands-on approach to disciplining a student, even one who is a prominent athlete. That the statement came partly from Stokes’s office reflected Winston’s prominence and the continued sensitivity over his participation in athletics.

“As the university’s most visible ambassadors, student-athletes at Florida State are expected to uphold at all times high standards of integrity and behavior that reflect well upon themselves, their families, coaches, teammates, the Department of Athletics and Florida State,” Stokes and Wilcox, the athletic director, said in the statement.

The game in which Winston will miss time is important for his team. Most experts predicted that Florida State (2-0) would repeat as national champion this season. Clemson, an Atlantic Coast Conference foe, and Notre Dame, which the Seminoles will play Oct. 18, are seen as the teams most likely to derail Florida State’s bid for an undefeated regular season.

Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, whose office recently published a report on sexual assault that found that athletic departments handled accusations against athletes at more than one in five campuses, said, “I take little comfort in a suspension of 30 minutes from a game for shouting obscenities when this university and local law enforcement purposefully failed to investigate serious allegations of rape against this same star athlete.”

The latest episode could also present a significant obstacle to Winston’s becoming only the second player to win a second Heisman. Winston won the award as a freshman last season after he was not charged in the rape case.

“It continues to reinforce the notion that he’s a bad-character guy — something we were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt over after he wasn’t charged with rape,” said Chris Huston, who runs the Heisman Pundit website.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: F.S.U. Gives Winston Brief Ban for Remark. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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College Football |NYT Now

Jameis Winston Case Said to Be Subject of Florida State Inquiry

By WALT BOGDANICHSEPT. 4, 2014

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Jameis Winston won the Heisman Trophy last season and led his team to the Bowl Championship Series title in January.

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Nearly 21 months after a female student accused Jameis Winston, Florida State’s marquee quarterback, of sexually assaulting her in his apartment, the university has begun a disciplinary inquiry into the case, the woman’s lawyer said Thursday.

Florida State officials interviewed the woman last month, spending a little more than an hour asking questions, said the lawyer, John Clune.

“We thought it went very well,” he said. “The school seemed to take it very seriously.”

Other people connected to the case were also interviewed, he added, but he declined to identify them.

Clune’s client withdrew from Florida State late last year after her accusations became public. She has since enrolled in another university.

The inquiry stems from an encounter in December 2012 that began at a popular Tallahassee bar, Potbelly’s, and ended at Winston’s off-campus apartment. The woman promptly contacted the police, but as The New York Times reported in April, the Tallahassee Police Department conducted virtually no investigation and contacted the prosecutor’s office only after word of the allegation was leaked to the news media months later.

Last December, the local prosecutor, William N. Meggs, announced that he lacked evidence to charge Winston, who went on to win the Heisman Trophy and lead his team to the national championship in January. Only then did Florida State officials attempt to interview Winston about the sexual assault accusation. At the time, he declined to answer questions, and the university took no action.

On Thursday, asked about the new inquiry, a university spokeswoman, Browning Brooks, said privacy rules barred her from commenting on any specific case. However, she said, “in general, complainants control the timing in our process.”

David Cornwell, a lawyer advising Winston’s family, said Florida State was merely following federal rules that require an inquiry into any accusation of a possible sex crime. Cornwell said he did not expect the result of the student inquiry to be any different than the local prosecutor’s decision not to file charges.

Clune, the accuser’s lawyer, said Florida State had “assured us the proceeding would go forward, but what the time frame would be and what exactly that means we’ll have to wait and see.”

He added: “There are some good people who want to do the right thing on one side of campus, then you have one of the most powerful athletic departments in the country on the other side of the campus with the No. 1 football team in the nation. I think we will find out pretty quickly how that struggle will shake out.”

Florida State’s handling of the accusation against Winston is the focus of a federal investigation into whether the university violated rules designed to combat sexual crimes. Dozens of other colleges and universities are also being investigated by the federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Garnett S. Stokes, Florida State’s interim president, on Wednesday announced new initiatives aimed at preventing sexual violence on campus. They include a search for a full-time employee to coordinate the university’s compliance with federal rules on sexual harassment, and a requirement that all new students participate in educational programs on that subject.

A version of this article appears in print on September 5, 2014, on page B12 of the New York edition with the headline: New Inquiry Into Winston Case, Lawyer Says. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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College Football |NYT Now

Florida State’s Jameis Winston Is Cited for Shoplifting Shellfish

By BEN SHPIGELAPRIL 30, 2014

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Jameis Winston must complete at least 20 hours of community service to avoid being criminally charged.

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Jameis Winston, Florida State’s Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, found himself in off-the-field trouble once again on Tuesday night when he was cited for shoplifting seafood from a grocery store in Tallahassee, Fla.

Winston, 20, said he took “full responsibility” for making the “terrible mistake” of ordering $32.72 worth of crawfish and crab legs from the deli at a Publix near the Florida State campus and, after picking the food up, departing without paying. He called the incident a moment of “youthful ignorance.”

This is Winston’s fourth incident in the last 18 months involving law enforcement. He was not charged or arrested in any of the cases, including a rape case.

The athletic department at Florida State announced Wednesday that its baseball coach, Mike Martin, had suspended Winston, who is also a pitcher and an outfielder, from the team indefinitely.

Maj. Michael Wood of the Leon County Sheriff’s Office said surveillance video confirmed that it was Winston who left the grocery store’s premises. Wood said that when deputies arrived at Winston’s residence a few hours later, after midnight, Winston was “very cooperative” and acknowledged his misstep.

Winston told deputies that he realized after arriving at home that he had forgotten to pay but that he had not made an effort to contact Publix or to return to the store to buy the items.

“I’m not here to vindicate or vilify Jameis,” said Wood, who began his news conference Wednesday by emphasizing that Winston had not been arrested or charged with a crime. “The facts are not in dispute. He left without paying. I can’t see inside of his head to know what he was thinking.”

Wood said that because Winston had no criminal history and was a first-time offender, he was eligible for a civil citation program. He must complete at least 20 hours of community service to avoid being criminally charged, and he will probably repay the $32.72, Wood said. Winston, in a statement released by his lawyer, said he was grateful for the opportunity to perform the community service.

Jimbo Fisher, Florida State’s football coach, said in a statement that he supported the decision to suspend Winston from the baseball team and added that he would “also make sure that Jameis meets all obligations, which I know he will.”

Florida State athletes who receive a civil citation are eligible to practice and compete, but their head coach may choose to issue additional punishment.

“I am confident he will complete his community service obligation and the situation will be resolved soon,” Martin, the baseball coach, said in a statement.

Winston led Florida State’s football team to an undefeated record and a national championship.

He set freshman records in the Football Bowl Subdivision for touchdown passes and passing yards despite spending most of the second half of the season under scrutiny because of the rape allegations.

His encounters with law enforcement began in November 2012, when he was among a group of Florida State football players who were questioned after windows were smashed during a BB gun fight. The following July, the police were called to a Burger King in Tallahassee, with an employee saying Winston was stealing soda.

The most serious allegation surfaced in November, when Winston was investigated in a sexual battery case.

His accuser’s lawyer said the Tallahassee Police Department urged her not to press charges. Winston’s lawyer, Tim Jansen, has said the sex was consensual, a claim denied by the woman’s family. Officials in Florida said in December that there was not enough evidence to charge Winston. A recent investigation by The New York Times revealed that the inquiries by the university and the Tallahassee police into the accuser’s charge were flawed.

“I realize that I am in the public spotlight, and my conduct needs to be above reproach,” Winston said Wednesday. “Over the last year, I’ve learned that my accomplishments on the fields can be a wonderful thing for my school, teammates, friends and family. At the same time, I must realize that my mistakes are magnified and can bring great embarrassment to all those who support me every day.

“I make no excuses for my actions and will learn and grow from this unfortunate situation. I hope and pray my friends and family will view me as the 20-year-old young man that I am and support me through this unfortunate situation.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 1, 2014, on page B17 of the New York edition with the headline: Winston Is Cited for Stealing Shellfish. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Women’s Views on N.F.L. Dim in Wake of Domestic Violence Cases

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 17, 2014

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As part of its outreach to women, the N.F.L. held a fashion show Tuesday in Manhattan, featuring models and actresses, to showcase its latest collections.

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This time of year, families throughout the Chicago area schedule their weekends around the Bears. Nearly half the city’s televisions tune in to Bears games when they play, and an empty seat is rarely seen at Soldier Field.

Nicole Larvick, a 30-year-old mother in Chicago, said “it would take a lot” for her family to stop watching football. But this week, with the N.F.L. struggling to deal with unseemly accusations of domestic violence and child abuse by some of its biggest stars, Ms. Larvick has a new perspective.

“Before this week I held the N.F.L. in a different view,” Ms. Larvick said as she waited for her children outside an elementary school on Chicago’s North Side. “It seemed different — like families and communities were important to them. But I know it’s just a business now.”

Like Ms. Larvick, women around the country expressed disillusionment this week as the N.F.L. desperately tried to stanch the public criticism around several controversial cases: Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice punching his fiancée in the face, a police report describing abuse of a 4-year-old by Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, and the league’s prediction in court documents that nearly a third of its players would end up with severe brain damage.

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Kristin Kile of La Palma, Calif., said of Ray Rice’s punishment, “Maybe the N.F.L. would have reacted more if his wife hadn’t stuck up for him.”

The league announced Wednesday that Peterson and the Carolina Panthers’ Greg Hardy, who is appealing a guilty verdict for assaulting and threatening his ex-girlfriend, were barred from all team activities until their cases were resolved. But by day’s end, another N.F.L. player had been arrested in a domestic-violence case: Arizona Cardinals running back Jonathan Dwyer.

Critics of the league’s handling of these issues include fans of all types, as well as politicians and some of the N.F.L.’s biggest corporate sponsors. But the anger voiced by women — including those who count themselves as fans — is particularly troubling for the N.F.L., which has invested heavily in trying to overcome its reputation as a domain for alpha males and find new consumers for its merchandise.

“I think the league is tone deaf to a lot of cultural things,” said Elise Johnson, 50, a social worker from Manhattan Beach, Calif. She added: “Society has evolved. I don’t think the N.F.L. has evolved.”

Executives at the N.F.L. claim that a significant portion of their millions of fans are women. This helps them bolster their assertion that football is America’s pre-eminent sport while also underscoring the immense possibilities for adding to the $10 billion in revenue the league generates each year.

“The matriarch of the family predetermines an awful lot that goes on, from what sport you play to what media you watch to what products get bought,” Mark Waller, the N.F.L.’s chief marketing officer, said in explaining why women were important to the league. “The role of the female in the household is huge. On the emotional side, the role that the female builds that a family can gather around is fundamental. That sort of communal aspect, which is such a part of the game in America.”

Five years ago, around the time Commissioner Roger Goodell said he wanted to turn the league into a $25 billion business by 2027, the N.F.L. set out to court women, “listening to their needs much more aggressively and really trying to get under the skin of what needs they have and what can we do better,” Mr. Waller said.

Photo

Emily Gutierrez of Santa Fe Springs, Calif., a new N.F.L. fan, said: “I haven’t really paid too much attention to what’s been happening. It would probably be different if it was the Broncos, but I guess we just focus on our team.”

The most visible manifestation of that effort appears annually in October, when the league covers much of the game in pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month.

Another example of the N.F.L.’s outreach to women was on display Tuesday night at a chic Manhattan event space, where the league held a fashion show to roll out its latest collections, complete with actresses and Victoria’s Secret models.

“This week has certainly been tough for us, but we know we have to do better,” Leo Kane, senior vice president for consumer products at the N.F.L., said to start the event. He then moved on to thank the designers and licensees.

“The league could have a real problem on their hands,” said Ira Mayer, who writes the Licensing Letter, which tracks sports licensing. According to his calculations, the league generated about $30 million in royalties from the sale of women’s apparel last year. “They already have a public relations problem and a sponsor problem, and that can translate to the licensing market, too,” he said.

Goodell has scrambled to mitigate the damage to the league’s reputation in the weeks after he initially suspended Rice for only two games. After consulting advocates for victims of domestic abuse, he apologized a month later because he “didn’t get it right” and announced stiffer penalties for players and employees found to have committed domestic abuse. But the uproar has only intensified this week.

The Radisson Hotel chain suspended its endorsement deal with the Vikings. Anheuser-Busch, one of the league’s most prominent sponsors, said Tuesday that it had told the league it was concerned with the N.F.L.’s handling of the scandals.

Photo

An image on Twitter of an altered CoverGirl ad became a lightning rod.

A CoverGirl ad campaign featuring N.F.L. team colors became an Internet lightning rod when someone altered an image to put a black eye on the model for the Ravens, drawing greater attention to the company’s relationship with the league and catalyzing public pressure for CoverGirl to sever ties.

“As the mother of two school-age children, I’m dismayed that a major sports organization like the N.F.L. does not take allegations of abuse serious,” said Katherine Johnson, 41, a football fan in Sarasota, Fla. “Why do sponsors serve as the voice of reason and morality in the N.F.L.? Why can’t we demand and expect better as fans, as women, and as a society from a multibillion-dollar sports business?”

Amid the outcry, Goodell appointed four women to help shape the league’s policies on domestic abuse and hired Cynthia Hogan as the N.F.L.’s chief lobbyist in Washington. She has worked in the Obama administration and helped Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. shape the Violence Against Women Act when he was in the Senate.

Indra Nooyi, the PepsiCo chairman and chief executive, said: “I urge them to seize this moment. How they handle these cases going forward can help shape how we as a nation, as a society and as individuals treat domestic violence and child abuse.”

Leigh Ann Tuohy, the mother who was portrayed in the football film “The Blind Side,” said in a telephone interview Wednesday that the N.F.L. should have included women in the decision-making process from the beginning, not after the scandal erupted. “We need to be included,” she said. “I guarantee there wasn’t a woman involved in any of these decisions.”

Ms. Tuohy said she knew Rice and Peterson, as well as Hardy, who grew up in Tennessee, where she lives. She said their transgressions were out of character. “Good people do bad things,” she said, adding that she did not think female fans would abandon the N.F.L. because of this issue.

Other women said they, too, would continue watching. Stephanie Cobb, a 51-year old from Long Beach, Calif., said she and her family were big sports fans, and her youngest son, Jack, 14, roots for Adrian Peterson. “It’s a shame, and it’s sad,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s a problem for the N.F.L. as a whole. It’s all about personal responsibility.”

For many N.F.L. supporters, football fandom is local. Despite everything that has happened over the past week, Ms. Larvick, the Bears fan in Chicago, said it would take something else to compel her family to stop watching.

“Something would have to happen with the Bears,” she said. “If Jay Cutler did what Ray Rice did, I would stop watching.”

Billy Witz contributed reporting from Los Angeles; Ben Strauss from Chicago; Tom Spousta from Sarasota, Fla.; and Pat Borzi from Minneapolis.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Women’s Views on N.F.L. Dim. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Tennis

U.S.T.A. Faces Suit Over Sabbath Schedule

By MARY PILONSEPT. 19, 2014

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A senior tennis team with Orthodox Jewish members is suing the United States Tennis Association over its refusal to change a tournament schedule to accommodate the players’ observance of the Sabbath.

The team qualified for the tournament, the U.S.T.A. Eastern Adult Section Championships, by winning the Long Island division of its U.S.T.A. summer league, according to a complaint filed Friday in the Southern District Court of New York. But the U.S.T.A. refused to change its schedule for the tournament, which will be held in Schenectady, N.Y., from Sept. 27 to 29, the complaint said.

Nine of the 12 members of the team, the Long Beach Lipschik, are Orthodox Jews who observe the Sabbath. They do not play or travel from sundown on Fridays to sundown on Saturdays.

“Our competitive spirit is in it,” the team’s captain, Nathan Rothman, said in an interview earlier this week. “You win, you expect to play. The team has been extraordinarily frustrated that the U.S.T.A. has not been able to find a solution.”

The U.S.T.A. said in a statement that it “has a firm policy not to discriminate against our participants on any basis, including on religious observance.” The statement also said that the U.S.T.A. “makes every effort to accommodate participants in our tournaments, including accommodating scheduling conflicts caused by religious observance.”

Rothman’s team competes in the U.S.T.A.’s 55-and-over men’s division.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S.T.A. Faces Suit Over Sabbath Schedule. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Tennis | Sports Briefing | Tennis

David Goffin Tops Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to Reach Semifinals

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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Eighth-seeded David Goffin downed top-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 1-6, 7-6 (5), 7-5, to reach the Moselle Open semifinals in Metz, France. Goffin next plays Jan-Lennard Struff, who won when third-seeded Philipp Kohlschreiber retired when trailing, 5-0. Second-seeded Gaël Monfils also advanced, hitting 12 aces in a 6-3, 6-4 win over seventh-seeded Jerzy Janowicz. He faces No. 6 João Sousa, who beat Paul-Henri Mathieu, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4).

■ The Davis Cup final between France and Roger Federer’s Switzerland will be held at the Pierre Mauroy stadium in Lille, France. France, third on the list of Davis Cup winners behind Australia and the United States, is bidding for a 10th title. Switzerland is looking for its first.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: Goffin Tops Tsonga to Reach Semifinals. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Golf | Sports Briefing | Golf

Reto Shoots 66 to Grab Classic Lead

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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Paula Reto birdied her final hole for a six-under-par 66 and a three-stroke lead in the Yokohama Tire L.P.G.A. Classic in Prattville, Ala. Reto had five birdies in a six-hole stretch on her opening nine. Reto, 24, finished with eight birdies and two bogeys to reach 13-under 131. Mi Jung Hur, tied for the first-round lead with top-ranked Stacy Lewis at 64, was second after a 70. Hur had four birdies and two bogeys. Lewis was third at nine under after a 71.

■ Zac Blair topped the Web.com Tour Championship leader board at 13 under when second-round play was suspended because of darkness in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: Reto Shoots 66 to Grab Classic Lead. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Sports | Sports Briefing | Boxing

Floyd Mayweather Jr. Told to Appear Before Regulators

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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Nevada boxing regulators have ordered Floyd Mayweather Jr. to appear before them next week to answer questions about scenes from a Showtime network show before his fight last Saturday against Marcos Maidana. They want to ask Mayweather about two lengthy fights in his gym in which the fighters did not get a rest break, and a scene showing marijuana being used at his Las Vegas mansion.

Mayweather was shown on the “All Access” show cheering on two fighters at his gym. They fought 31 minutes straight without taking a break. Mayweather explained on camera that the fighters would go until one of them quit, much like in the early days of boxing a century ago.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: Mayweather Told to Appear Before Regulators. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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College Football | Sports Briefing | College Football

Harvard Wins Opener

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 20, 2014

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Andrew Casten ran for 153 yards and three touchdowns to help Harvard beat Holy Cross, 41-18, in the Crimson’s opener in Cambridge, Mass. Harvard scored twice in a 24-second span in the third quarter to take a 27-18 lead.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: Harvard Wins Opener. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Sports | Sports Briefing | Mixed Martial Arts

U.F.C. Penalizes Two of Its Fighters

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 19, 2014

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Ultimate Fighting Championship has suspended the light heavyweight Anthony Johnson indefinitely and terminated Thiago Silva’s contract. Johnson (18-4) is a top 205-pound contender, but the U.F.C. suspended him after a report from BloodyElbow.com said that the mother of Johnson’s children had accused him of abusive acts. Silva (16-3) was arrested in Florida in February after the authorities said he had threatened to shoot his estranged wife and her boyfriend. He was released after his arrest, but was re-signed this month when the charges against him were dropped. The U.F.C. cited new “video and audio evidence” in releasing Silva again Friday.

A version of this brief appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: U.F.C. Penalizes Two of Its Fighters. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Soccer |NYT Now

In Hope Solo Case, Soccer Turns a Blind Eye Toward Domestic Violence

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Hope Solo extended her shutout record to 73 in the United States national women’s soccer team’s 4-0 victory over Mexico in Rochester.

Sports of The Times

By JULIET MACUR

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There were smiles all around Thursday night when Hope Solo extended her shutout record to 73 in the United States national women’s soccer team’s 4-0 victory over Mexico in Rochester.

Fans cheered, and the players, as they often do, posed for photos and signed autographs with the young girls who revere them. Ah, to be a strong and successful role model, especially for the next generation, and to have the honor to represent your country.

But look past the patina of glee and here’s what you will see: a team and a league — not named the N.F.L. this time — that are tone-deaf when it comes to domestic violence and how they handle players who have been accused of it.

It takes a lot to match the N.F.L. these days when it comes to missteps in the handling of players charged with assaulting family members and loved ones. But Thursday, at a time when domestic violence in sports is dominating the national conversation, U.S. Soccer did just that — again — by keeping Solo in goal when she shouldn’t have been anywhere near it.

Photo

Hope Solo appeared in Kirkland Municipal Court on June 23 in connection with her arrest on domestic violence charges.

Solo, one of the biggest and most marketable stars in women’s sports, is facing domestic violence charges from an episode over the summer in which she is accused of punching her sister and her 17-year-old nephew at a late-night party.

According to a police account of the episode, Solo was the primary aggressor and instigator of an assault at a family party that left her sister and nephew with noticeable injuries to their heads and faces. She has pleaded not guilty; her trial is set for November.

One can argue the differences between an N.F.L. player punching his soon-to-be wife and a soccer star brawling with her family, but it is indisputable that both qualify as domestic violence.

The glaring contrast in Solo’s case is that while several football players recently accused of assaults have been removed from the field, she has been held up for praise by the national team. On Thursday she was even given the honor of wearing the captain’s armband in celebration of her setting the team’s career record for shutouts in its previous game.

The question is why. Celebrating Solo’s achievement right now is like allowing running back Adrian Peterson, who has been accused of child abuse, to continue to play for the Minnesota Vikings — and then awarding him the game ball for his next 100-yard game.

If that wouldn’t happen in the N.F.L., it shouldn’t happen in women’s sports, either.

Yet U.S. Soccer, showing that it has no sense regarding this issue, went ahead and gave Solo a very public pat on the back.

Every case involving domestic violence charges has its own circumstances, including the one in 2012 in which Solo’s boyfriend at the time was accused of assaulting her. (Those charges were later dropped.) When Ray Rice, Greg Hardy and Adrian Peterson were arrested, there were loud calls for those players to be suspended. The response to Solo’s case? The sound of crickets — except on game days, when it changes to applause. And that’s inexcusable.

Maybe everyone is just too busy calling out the N.F.L. for its ineptitude, but a light needs to shine on Solo’s legal problems, too. It shows that domestic violence isn’t committed only by men, even if Solo is eventually cleared of the charges against her.

The court has ordered Solo to stay away from her sister and nephew and to refrain from drinking alcohol. At the same time, U.S. Soccer and the Seattle Reign, her team in the National Women’s Soccer League, have put on blinders. Solo played on as Seattle advanced to the league’s title game last month, and she played on this week as the national team continued preparations for next month’s qualifiers for the 2015 Women’s World Cup.

The Reign rationalized their decision to keep her on the field by saying they were gathering evidence on the case. U.S. Soccer is apparently following suit.

How convenient for Solo, and for them, that her trial will not start until after the United States has claimed its place in the World Cup. If she were a marginal player, though, I bet both organizations would have benched her without a second thought.

It’s possible to understand the team’s cowardice: A league trying to sustain itself has an incentive to protect its stars.

But how does U.S. Soccer rationalize giving Solo the honor of playing for the national team, or of then making her its captain?

Before Solo set the shutout record, Neil Buethe, a spokesman for U.S. Soccer, told USA Today that the organization knew Solo was dealing with “a personal situation,” which played down the gravity of the accusations against her.

“At the same time,” he said, justifying the celebration of Solo’s impending record, “she has an opportunity to set a significant record that speaks to her hard work and dedication over the years with the national team. While considering all factors involved, we believe that we should recognize that in the proper way.”

Buethe did not immediately respond to emails and voice mail messages Friday. Solo has apologized on Facebook for what she characterized as “a highly unfortunate incident.” She said she looked forward to getting back on the field, “where I belong.”

But actually she doesn’t. Not in a world in which female and male athletes are ever to be treated equally.

Email: juliet@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: Women’s Soccer Turns a Blind Eye to Domestic Violence. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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In Domestic Violence Cases, N.F.L. Has a History of Lenience

By BILL PENNINGTON and STEVE EDERSEPT. 19, 2014

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On April 10, 2007, after more than 50 National Football League players had been arrested in the previous football season, Commissioner Roger Goodell was widely hailed for instituting a newly stringent personal conduct policy. Mr. Goodell threatened to banish players for off-the-field transgressions and installed himself as the judge and jury presiding over every case.

Mr. Goodell insisted that he would mete out discipline without waiting for the judicial system.

“It is my job — not law enforcement’s job — to protect the National Football League,” he said at the time.

But in his role as the N.F.L.’s hard-bitten sheriff, Mr. Goodell appears to have had a major blind spot: domestic violence cases. Players charged with domestic violence routinely received considerably lighter punishments than players accused of other offenses, like drug use or drunken driving. Often, they were not punished at all. On Friday, seven years after he implemented the personal conduct policy, Mr. Goodell acknowledged publicly that it had failed and would be overhauled.

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On Friday, seven years after he implemented the personal conduct policy, Roger Goodell acknowledged publicly that it had failed and would be overhauled.

“We should have had the personal conduct policy reviewed more frequently, to make the changes necessary to deal with the issues that have changed,” he said at a news conference in which he announced that outside experts would help the league devise a new system for handling domestic violence cases.

An examination of dozens of arrests of N.F.L. players since Mr. Goodell established his personal conduct policy in 2007 — and the fines and penalties doled out by the league — shows that suspensions of two to four games, and sometimes more, were far more likely for players arrested on drunken driving, marijuana possession or weapon charges. A vast majority of players charged with domestic violence crimes, if they were disciplined by the league at all, received one-game suspensions even after pleading guilty to lesser related charges or entering pretrial intervention programs.

The disparity in punishments within the league is illustrated in numerous cases. On Nov. 25, 2011, for example, Green Bay Packers linebacker Erik Walden was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his live-in girlfriend. The charge was reduced to disorderly conduct and then dismissed after Walden agreed to perform 50 hours of community service and receive counseling.

The N.F.L. suspended Walden for one game.

Less than two months earlier, the police seized two and a half pounds of marijuana sent to the home of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Jerome Simpson. The league suspended Simpson for three games.

“I don’t think the N.F.L. did anything more than give lip service to the notion that they were taking domestic abuse seriously,” said Ann DeLaney, an advocate for victims of domestic violence and the former executive director of the Julian Center in Indianapolis, a victim support group.

Referring to the Ray Rice case, Ms. DeLaney continued, “That’s what they did this time until it was caught on video.”

Mr. Rice, then a Baltimore Ravens running back, was suspended for only two games after being accused of assaulting his fiancée, Janay Palmer, in February; Ms. Palmer is now married to Mr. Rice. After a firestorm of criticism that the punishment was inadequate, Mr. Goodell increased the league’s minimum suspension for a first-time domestic violence offense to six games. After a video surfaced of Mr. Rice knocking out Ms. Palmer in a hotel elevator, Mr. Goodell suspended Mr. Rice indefinitely.

Some of the cases drew criticism at the time, but the recent high-profile episodes have led to a firestorm of protest from inside and outside football.

Tyrone Thomas, a Washington lawyer who advises on sports cases, said the N.F.L. had always had the power to take a tougher tack in instances in which there were accusations of domestic violence, but had chosen not to. Mr. Thomas said that the N.F.L. had treated domestic violence as a back-burner concern, and that punishing players caught doping or driving under the influence had been a higher priority.

“There certainly could have been a harsher interpretation of certain standards,” Mr. Thomas said.

In multiple cases since 2007, the N.F.L.’s response to domestic violence arrests appeared arbitrary.

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Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L.

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L. N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for his role in poor decision-making surrounding domestic violence cases and promised a revamped personal conduct policy to address future cases. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

Within the first year of the personal conduct policy, the contrast in the handling of different cases was on display when three members of the Pittsburgh Steelers — running back Najeh Davenport, linebacker James Harrison and wide receiver Cedrick Wilson — were accused in domestic violence cases, according to news reports at the time.

Mr. Davenport, who was accused during the season, was never suspended and was acquitted after a trial that took place after the season. Mr. Harrison, a star and an important player during the Steelers’ run to the Super Bowl after the 2008 season, also was not suspended. But Mr. Wilson, a lesser-known player, was dropped from the team within hours of his arrest, and he never played in the N.F.L. again.

During the last seven years, when a domestic abuse arrest involved a player who was not a starter or a major contributor to the team, the player was sometimes released by his team. In those cases, the league would not have had to consider a suspension.

Mr. Harrison’s agent, William Parise, said the league had made the right call with Mr. Harrison. “There was never anything there,” Mr. Parise said. “He did not strike her or do anything like that. He didn’t press charges. She didn’t press charges. And the league dropped the whole thing.”

In one of the higher-profile cases, Brandon Marshall, a wide receiver with the Denver Broncos at the time, was initially suspended for three games over events that included his being arrested on charges of assaulting his girlfriend. But his suspension was later reduced to one game.

In 2010, Tony McDaniel, a defensive lineman for the Miami Dolphins, was suspended for one game for violating the league’s personal conduct policy after he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct after a domestic dispute with his live-in girlfriend, according to The Sun-Sentinel newspaper in South Florida. He was sentenced to probation and ordered to attend counseling.

In another case in 2008, Michael Boley, a linebacker with the Atlanta Falcons at the time, was suspended by the league for a game after he was charged with battery. His wife at the time had told the police that he “became physical with her.” The case did not go to trial.

His lawyer, Randall Kessler of Atlanta, said it was troubling that Mr. Boley had been punished by the N.F.L.

“I was not happy that he was suspended based on an allegation, but I’m glad it ended there,” Mr. Kessler said.

Later, the police investigated Mr. Boley on child abuse allegations, which were raised amid a child-custody dispute. The outcome of that investigation is unclear.

Besides the Rice case, the N.F.L. has also been harshly criticized for its handling of three other recent abuse cases — those of Adrian Peterson, a star running back for the Minnesota Vikings, who has been accused of injuring one of his children; Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy, who was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend; and San Francisco 49ers defensive end Ray McDonald, who was arrested last month on suspicion of domestic violence.

Mr. Peterson was kept of out one game and then reinstated before an outcry led to his being suspended indefinitely. Mr. Hardy played in one game, but is being kept out while still being paid. Mr. McDonald has continued to play for the team, which has said it is waiting for his case to be resolved judicially.

Nita Chaudhary, a founder of UltraViolet, a women’s rights advocacy group, remained critical of the N.F.L. on Friday despite Goodell’s pledge to revamp the league’s personal conduct policy and penalties.

“This press circus did nothing to change Goodell’s long history of inaction on and blatant mishandling of domestic violence in the N.F.L.,” Ms. Chaudhary said in a statement. “We call on all of the N.F.L.’s sponsors to take a stand against domestic violence by withdrawing their support for the N.F.L. until Goodell is out of office.”

Elisa Choi contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In N.F.L. Get-Tough Policy, Blind Spot for Abuse. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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A Punch Is Seen, and a Player Is Out

Ray Rice Cut by Ravens and Suspended by N.F.L.

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 8, 2014

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Ray Rice at a news conference with his wife, Janay, on May 23. Rice was initially suspended for two games by the N.F.L. before the Ravens terminated his contract on Monday.

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The National Football League’s handling of a domestic violence case is under renewed scrutiny after a graphic video emerged Monday, leading to the termination of the Baltimore Ravens star running back Ray Rice’s contract and his suspension from the league.

The video shows Rice punching his fiancée, who is now his wife, in the face, leaving her motionless on the floor of a hotel elevator in Atlantic City in February. He then dragged her unconscious body from the elevator.

Rice was charged with felony assault in March, but his wife, Janay Palmer, declined to testify. The charges were dropped and court-supervised counseling was ordered. Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, disciplined Rice in July with a two-game suspension, a penalty that was widely criticized as too lenient.

Previously published video of the altercation was taken from a camera outside the elevator and showed only the moments after Rice hit Palmer. But the emergence of the new video, published by the website TMZ, raised questions about what the N.F.L. knew, and when. A league spokesman said “no one in our office has seen it until today,” but he did not respond to inquiries about whether any of the league’s investigators who do not work in the office had previously seen the video.

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Surveillance video obtained by TMZ (warning: graphic).

“What makes the N.F.L. look especially bad in this case is the sense that the only reason they suspended Ray Rice indefinitely was to save face, rather than to actually address or punish the problem at hand,” said S. Adam Brasel, a professor of marketing at Boston College. “Do people think the N.F.L. would have done the same if they got the footage internally rather than having the whole world see it on TMZ?”

The league enjoys unmatched popularity, with soaring TV ratings and billions of dollars in revenue. But it has been tarnished by several embarrassing issues in recent years, including homophobic and racist bullying.

Late last month, after an uproar over his handling of the Rice case, Goodell admitted that he had mishandled the case and announced new, tougher standards for players and league employees who are found to have committed domestic violence.

After saying for weeks that he had acted appropriately by suspending Rice for two games, Goodell said that in the future, any N.F.L. employee, including nonplayers, would be suspended for six games for a first offense of domestic violence and a minimum of a year for a second offense.

In a letter to team owners, he said he took responsibility “both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn’t get it right.”

He did not, however, revisit Rice’s suspension — until the video was posted Monday.

The Ravens had not previously disciplined Rice in any public way, and after the episode, the team said on Twitter: “Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.” The post was deleted Monday afternoon.

Rice, with his wife at his side, apologized publicly in May. The Ravens’ coach, John Harbaugh, said he stood by Rice, his star running back, and Ravens fans gave Rice a loud ovation during a preseason game.

However, Harbaugh said Monday that the new video, which he said he was seeing for the first time, made things different.

“It changed things, of course,” Harbaugh said.

He added, “When someone you care about does wrong, and is faced with the consequences of doing wrong, and rightfully so, it is tough, it is hurtful.”

Goodell, who has wide discretion to penalize players for violating the league’s personal conduct policy, was condemned for giving Rice what many considered a light suspension, especially compared with harsher penalties for players who take performance-enhancing drugs. The N.F.L. received hundreds of phone calls in protest, and petitions with tens of thousands of signatures were collected.

The new video led to calls Monday from advocates for victims of domestic violence for Goodell to penalize Rice retroactively. Hours later, the Ravens announced Rice’s release on their Twitter account. Soon after, the league said it had indefinitely suspended Rice.

“Commissioner Roger Goodell has announced that based on the new video evidence that became available today, he has imposed an indefinite suspension on Ray Rice,” the N.F.L. said in a statement. Rice will have to apply to be reinstated.

Advocates applauded the actions taken Monday. “The Ravens have sent a strong message against domestic violence,” said Judy Harris Kluger, executive director for Sanctuary for Families, a nonprofit agency in New York that helps victims of domestic violence. “It was impossible to ignore or explain away.”

Over the next three years, Rice, the Ravens’ second career leading rusher and a three-time Pro Bowl player, was to receive $9.5 million in salary, $9 million in signing bonuses and an additional $5.2 million in performance bonuses, according to the website Spotrac.com. Contracts often include terms that allow teams to terminate a deal with a player if he acts in a way that is detrimental to the team.

The N.F.L. Players Association did not return calls for comment.

The league may have to overhaul the way it investigates player malfeasance, sports lawyers said Monday. A spokesman for the N.F.L. said in July that Goodell took his cue in the investigation in part from law enforcement officials who had access to more information than the league.

But Goodell has also said that the N.F.L. should be held to a higher standard.

“The N.F.L. is going to have to review its due diligence in this case,” said Mark Conrad, who teaches sports law at Fordham University. “Some have said the league should treat it as a criminal matter, but it’s a very public league, and if they want to keep their many constituents happy, they are going to have to find a new way of doing it.”

Rutgers University, where Rice played, also distanced itself from him on Monday, removing a video on the team’s website.

The university’s athletic director, Julie Hermann, called the TMZ.com video “very disturbing” and said it “serves to reinforce the ongoing need to educate and bring awareness to the issue of domestic violence.”

Zach Schonbrun contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 9, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: After Punch Is Seen, Rice Is Out. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Assault Charges Add to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil

Cardinals’ Jonathan Dwyer Arrested as Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy Leave Teams

By PAT BORZI and STEVE EDERSEPT. 17, 2014

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Arizona’s Jonathan Dwyer was arrested Wednesday in a case the authorities said involved two July episodes at his home.

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EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — Jonathan Dwyer of the Arizona Cardinals was arrested in a domestic violence investigation Wednesday as the N.F.L. continued to find itself under siege for its handling of such cases.

Before Dwyer’s arrest, the Minnesota Vikings reversed course, placing Adrian Peterson, a star running back facing child abuse charges, on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list. The Carolina Panthers did the same with Greg Hardy, a defensive end appealing a domestic violence case.

The Phoenix police, in a statement, said detectives arrested Dwyer, a running back, in Tempe on charges of aggravated assault in a domestic violence case stemming from two separate episodes at his home in southeast Phoenix in late July.

Dwyer, who was deactivated by the Cardinals on Wednesday night, denied that any physical assaults took place, the police said. They said he was being booked at the Maricopa County Jail on a count of aggravated assault causing a fracture, a count of aggravated assault involving a minor, two counts of criminal damage and a count of preventing the use of a phone in an emergency.

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The Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson signed autographs last month in Kansas City.

The victims were said to be a 27-year-old woman and an 18-month-old child. The police said the woman left the state with the child after the episodes. Police then received the complaint in the case on Sept. 11.

The Cardinals said they learned of the allegations Wednesday when notified by the police. “We will continue to closely monitor this as it develops and evaluate additional information as it becomes available,” the team’s statement said.

An N.F.L. spokesman said Dwyer’s case would be reviewed under the N.F.L.’s personal conduct policy.

Earlier Wednesday, mounting pressure from sponsors and the public forced the Vikings to bar Peterson from practices and games while he deals with his arrest in Texas on charges that he beat his 4-year-old son.

The decision, announced in an email at 12:47 a.m. Central time, came 38 hours after the Vikings said Peterson would rejoin the team. His reinstatement drew criticism from fans, women’s groups and sponsors, who said the team was insensitive to domestic violence and child abuse.

“We made a mistake, and we needed to get this right,” Zygi Wilf, a Vikings co-owner, said at a news conference Wednesday. “It’s important to listen to our fans, the community and our sponsors.”

After consulting with Peterson, the N.F.L. and Peterson’s agent, Peterson was placed on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list, where he will remain until his legal situation is resolved. Peterson will receive his full $11.75 million base salary but cannot take part in team activities.

Wilf’s brother Mark, a co-owner and the team president, denied that the league pressured the Vikings to make the move.

“This is our decision 100 percent,” he said. “We were aiming to get it right, and we feel we got it right.”

Nike said Wednesday it had suspended its contract with Peterson and made his jerseys unavailable online.

“Nike in no way condones child abuse or domestic violence of any kind and has shared our concerns with the N.F.L.,” the company said in a statement.

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Greg Hardy, a Carolina Panthers defensive end, was found guilty of assaulting his girlfriend — a verdict that he is appealing.

The Panthers’ Hardy agreed to go on the same exempt list Wednesday as he appeals his domestic violence conviction. He was found guilty in July of assaulting and threatening to kill his girlfriend. His trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 17. Hardy played in Week 1, was deactivated last Sunday and had continued to practice with the team. He will also receive his full $13.12 million base salary.

“It’s been handled as well as we could,” Panthers Coach Ron Rivera said at a news conference Wednesday.

Peterson is accused of injuring his son while disciplining him with a tree branch, commonly known as a switch, last May in Spring, Tex. Peterson turned himself in to Montgomery County authorities early Saturday morning and was inactive Sunday for Minnesota’s 30-7 loss to New England. Free on $15,000 bail, he is scheduled to make his first court appearance Oct. 8.

In response to Peterson’s reinstatement Monday, fans who ran a Vikings online message board shut it down. And the Radisson hotel chain, based in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, suspended its Vikings sponsorship. Marilyn Carlson Nelson, the former chairman of Carlson Inc., which owns Radisson, was a co-chairwoman of the bid committee that landed the 2018 Super Bowl for Minneapolis.

The backlash accelerated Tuesday. Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat who helped the Vikings receive public financing for their new stadium, and Senator Al Franken, also a Democrat, criticized the decision. Dayton called Peterson’s actions “a public embarrassment” and demanded the team suspend him.

Fran Tarkenton, a Hall of Fame quarterback who led the Vikings to three Super Bowls, told Fox News that he was embarrassed by the team’s original decision to let Peterson play.

Castrol Motor Oil terminated a sponsorship contract with Peterson. A spokesman for U.S. Bank, whose president, Richard Davis, a co-chairman of the Super Bowl bid committee with Carlson Nelson, said the company was monitoring the situation closely. An appearance by Vikings players at a Minneapolis orphanage was canceled.

Mark Wilf declined to address whether the team underestimated the backlash from the decision to reinstate Peterson. “I don’t want to Monday morning quarterback what it was,” he said.

A Radisson spokesman, Benjamin Gardeen, said in an email Wednesday that the company’s sponsorship remained suspended. On Monday, the Radisson logo appeared on a banner behind Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman as he discussed Peterson’s reinstatement. A different banner at Wednesday’s news conference had no such logos.

Vikings cornerback Captain Munnerlyn, one of the few players willing to comment Wednesday, said the club’s reversal surprised him. Munnerlyn said Peterson did nothing wrong, and his own mother disciplined him the same way.

“I don’t think it’s fair at all,” Munnerlyn said. “I think he should be able to play. He hasn’t been convicted of anything. All these allegations, or this and that, pictures out, but he hasn’t been convicted of nothing.”

The Vikings’ handling of the situation inflamed a national debate about domestic violence in the N.F.L. Last week, a graphic video showing Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancée led Commissioner Roger Goodell to indefinitely suspend the former Baltimore Ravens running back.

Late Tuesday, Rice appealed that penalty, arguing that he should not have been suspended twice for the same episode. In July, Goodell said Rice would have to sit out the first two games of the regular season.

Steve Eder reported from New York, and Ken Belson contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Arrest Adds to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Assault Charges Add to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil

Cardinals’ Jonathan Dwyer Arrested as Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy Leave Teams

By PAT BORZI and STEVE EDERSEPT. 17, 2014

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Arizona’s Jonathan Dwyer was arrested Wednesday in a case the authorities said involved two July episodes at his home.

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EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — Jonathan Dwyer of the Arizona Cardinals was arrested in a domestic violence investigation Wednesday as the N.F.L. continued to find itself under siege for its handling of such cases.

Before Dwyer’s arrest, the Minnesota Vikings reversed course, placing Adrian Peterson, a star running back facing child abuse charges, on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list. The Carolina Panthers did the same with Greg Hardy, a defensive end appealing a domestic violence case.

The Phoenix police, in a statement, said detectives arrested Dwyer, a running back, in Tempe on charges of aggravated assault in a domestic violence case stemming from two separate episodes at his home in southeast Phoenix in late July.

Dwyer, who was deactivated by the Cardinals on Wednesday night, denied that any physical assaults took place, the police said. They said he was being booked at the Maricopa County Jail on a count of aggravated assault causing a fracture, a count of aggravated assault involving a minor, two counts of criminal damage and a count of preventing the use of a phone in an emergency.

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The Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson signed autographs last month in Kansas City.

The victims were said to be a 27-year-old woman and an 18-month-old child. The police said the woman left the state with the child after the episodes. Police then received the complaint in the case on Sept. 11.

The Cardinals said they learned of the allegations Wednesday when notified by the police. “We will continue to closely monitor this as it develops and evaluate additional information as it becomes available,” the team’s statement said.

An N.F.L. spokesman said Dwyer’s case would be reviewed under the N.F.L.’s personal conduct policy.

Earlier Wednesday, mounting pressure from sponsors and the public forced the Vikings to bar Peterson from practices and games while he deals with his arrest in Texas on charges that he beat his 4-year-old son.

The decision, announced in an email at 12:47 a.m. Central time, came 38 hours after the Vikings said Peterson would rejoin the team. His reinstatement drew criticism from fans, women’s groups and sponsors, who said the team was insensitive to domestic violence and child abuse.

“We made a mistake, and we needed to get this right,” Zygi Wilf, a Vikings co-owner, said at a news conference Wednesday. “It’s important to listen to our fans, the community and our sponsors.”

After consulting with Peterson, the N.F.L. and Peterson’s agent, Peterson was placed on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list, where he will remain until his legal situation is resolved. Peterson will receive his full $11.75 million base salary but cannot take part in team activities.

Wilf’s brother Mark, a co-owner and the team president, denied that the league pressured the Vikings to make the move.

“This is our decision 100 percent,” he said. “We were aiming to get it right, and we feel we got it right.”

Nike said Wednesday it had suspended its contract with Peterson and made his jerseys unavailable online.

“Nike in no way condones child abuse or domestic violence of any kind and has shared our concerns with the N.F.L.,” the company said in a statement.

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Greg Hardy, a Carolina Panthers defensive end, was found guilty of assaulting his girlfriend — a verdict that he is appealing.

The Panthers’ Hardy agreed to go on the same exempt list Wednesday as he appeals his domestic violence conviction. He was found guilty in July of assaulting and threatening to kill his girlfriend. His trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 17. Hardy played in Week 1, was deactivated last Sunday and had continued to practice with the team. He will also receive his full $13.12 million base salary.

“It’s been handled as well as we could,” Panthers Coach Ron Rivera said at a news conference Wednesday.

Peterson is accused of injuring his son while disciplining him with a tree branch, commonly known as a switch, last May in Spring, Tex. Peterson turned himself in to Montgomery County authorities early Saturday morning and was inactive Sunday for Minnesota’s 30-7 loss to New England. Free on $15,000 bail, he is scheduled to make his first court appearance Oct. 8.

In response to Peterson’s reinstatement Monday, fans who ran a Vikings online message board shut it down. And the Radisson hotel chain, based in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, suspended its Vikings sponsorship. Marilyn Carlson Nelson, the former chairman of Carlson Inc., which owns Radisson, was a co-chairwoman of the bid committee that landed the 2018 Super Bowl for Minneapolis.

The backlash accelerated Tuesday. Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat who helped the Vikings receive public financing for their new stadium, and Senator Al Franken, also a Democrat, criticized the decision. Dayton called Peterson’s actions “a public embarrassment” and demanded the team suspend him.

Fran Tarkenton, a Hall of Fame quarterback who led the Vikings to three Super Bowls, told Fox News that he was embarrassed by the team’s original decision to let Peterson play.

Castrol Motor Oil terminated a sponsorship contract with Peterson. A spokesman for U.S. Bank, whose president, Richard Davis, a co-chairman of the Super Bowl bid committee with Carlson Nelson, said the company was monitoring the situation closely. An appearance by Vikings players at a Minneapolis orphanage was canceled.

Mark Wilf declined to address whether the team underestimated the backlash from the decision to reinstate Peterson. “I don’t want to Monday morning quarterback what it was,” he said.

A Radisson spokesman, Benjamin Gardeen, said in an email Wednesday that the company’s sponsorship remained suspended. On Monday, the Radisson logo appeared on a banner behind Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman as he discussed Peterson’s reinstatement. A different banner at Wednesday’s news conference had no such logos.

Vikings cornerback Captain Munnerlyn, one of the few players willing to comment Wednesday, said the club’s reversal surprised him. Munnerlyn said Peterson did nothing wrong, and his own mother disciplined him the same way.

“I don’t think it’s fair at all,” Munnerlyn said. “I think he should be able to play. He hasn’t been convicted of anything. All these allegations, or this and that, pictures out, but he hasn’t been convicted of nothing.”

The Vikings’ handling of the situation inflamed a national debate about domestic violence in the N.F.L. Last week, a graphic video showing Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancée led Commissioner Roger Goodell to indefinitely suspend the former Baltimore Ravens running back.

Late Tuesday, Rice appealed that penalty, arguing that he should not have been suspended twice for the same episode. In July, Goodell said Rice would have to sit out the first two games of the regular season.

Steve Eder reported from New York, and Ken Belson contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Arrest Adds to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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HistorySource |NYT Now

Harry Truman, Five-Card Stud and the Cold War

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Michael Beschloss

@BeschlossDC

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This photograph may seem to show President Harry Truman, behind closed doors, playing poker while pondering the future of the Cold War world.

But in fact, as president, Truman almost never let himself be photographed during poker. The Truman in this picture is several years beyond his 1953 retirement.

Unaware of the photographer, Truman is playing his regular game at Kansas City’s exclusive 822 Club; his partners are mostly Republican businessmen. (With his old instinct for constructing ethnically balanced political tickets, Truman also played poker with friends at a predominantly Jewish country club.)

Truman was not the only president who loved poker. Warren Harding convened his “poker cabinet” twice a week over cigars and bootlegged whisky, in defiance of Prohibition, sparking rumors that he once gambled away some of the White House china. (One of Harding’s poker chums, Albert Fall, secretary of the interior, went to prison in the Teapot Dome scandal.)

Franklin Roosevelt employed poker varieties like nickel-ante stud to take the measure of appointed officials and members of Congress. One participant noticed that Roosevelt “studied the players as much as he did the cards.”

One night upstairs at the Executive Mansion, when the Senate and the House were about to adjourn — or so legend has it — F.D.R. ordained that whichever player was on top when it happened would be victorious. But when the call from Capitol Hill came, around 9:30 p.m., Roosevelt was behind and was said to conceal the news until he could take the lead.

Truman’s successor, Dwight Eisenhower, dismissed poker as unseemly for a president (he had taken up bridge), but in the Army, he played such an effective game — he called poker his “favorite indoor sport” — that his winnings paid for his dress uniform and an engagement ring for the woman who became his wife, Mamie. In time Ike spurned poker because he felt he was taking so much of his fellow officers’ cash.

During World War II, although he belonged to the Society of Friends, which opposed gambling, Richard Nixon cleaned up in five-card stud and other forms of poker while serving in the Navy in the South Pacific, reputedly earning the king’s ransom of about $8,000 (nearly $98,000 today).

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Sporting a pith helmet, Nixon observed that “whoever is talking the loudest is pretty sure to be bluffing.” Still, one Navy friend watched the quiet player they called “Nick” relieve a senior officer of $1,500 (almost $20,000 now) with only two deuces.

Harry Truman was the president most publicly identified with poker, which seemed natural for a product of the Kansas City political machine led by the back-room Democratic boss Tom Pendergast.

Truman preferred what was described as a “frantic” high-low poker, which he called Vinson, after his favorite partner, Fred Vinson of Kentucky (whom he later named chief justice), playing with poker chips he had ordered specially embossed with the presidential seal. Truman’s famous motto, “The Buck Stops Here,” which was emblazoned on a sign atop his Oval Office desk, was a poker expression.

In March 1946, on the night before the Cold War started in earnest, Truman sat down to poker with Winston Churchill, who was wearing his zippered siren suit. The two men were riding aboard the presidential train, which was rushing across Missouri.

Churchill had played poker for decades. “This man is cagey and is probably an excellent player,” Truman had quietly warned his advisers. “The reputation of American poker is at stake, and I expect every man to do his duty.”

“Boss, this guy’s a pigeon,” scoffed Truman’s roguish aide (and World War I Army pal) Gen. Harry Vaughan, who added, “If you want us to give it our best, we’ll have his underwear.” By the time the game stopped at 2:30 a.m., the former British prime minister had indeed lost about $250.

Later that day, in a milestone address in Fulton, Mo., Churchill declared that an “Iron Curtain” had descended across Europe. Had there been any question before, Harry Truman was now the first Cold War president.

As the confrontation with Moscow accelerated, it was only partly by coincidence that the language of Truman’s beloved pastime — bluff, gamble, hidden cards, showdown — was adopted by political leaders, generals and strategists.

The metaphor of poker ran through Cold War history. For instance, in 1953, President Eisenhower deliberately bluffed his way toward an armistice in the Korean War, which remains in force today, by sending a message, through channels intended to be intercepted by the enemy, that he was weighing the imminent use of nuclear weapons.

When President John F. Kennedy, in 1962, faced down the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who thereupon reluctantly agreed to remove missiles from Cuba, Vice President Lyndon Johnson privately summarized J.F.K.’s performance by saying, “He plays a damn good hand of poker.”

In 1971, President Nixon sought to end the American estrangement from China, hoping that this gamble would unnerve the Soviets into pressuring the North Vietnamese to end the Southeast Asia war. Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, boasted to a reporter that his boss “wasn’t the best poker player in the Pacific for nothing.”

But the shrewdest player of all may have been a president who had never especially favored poker. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan upped the ante against the Soviets by increasing defense spending and devising his Strategic Defense Initiative (S.D.I.), both of which, he hoped, would spur the Kremlin, feeling outgunned, to sue for peace.

Historians will argue for decades over how much Reagan’s strategy encouraged it, but on a weekend in November 1986, inside a little house in Reykjavik, Iceland, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed to destroy both countries’ nuclear arsenals if Reagan would pledge to shut down S.D.I. and trim the United States defense budget.

At that moment, the end of the Cold War came into view. Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz, pronounced the private bargaining “the highest stakes poker game ever played.” As both poker aficionado and champion of freedom, Harry Truman would have been delighted.

Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, is the author of nine books and a contributor to NBC News and “PBS NewsHour.” Follow him on Twitter at @BeschlossDC.

The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

A version of this web log appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: Presidents, Poker and the Cold War. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Hockey

With John Tavares Back, Islanders Are Eager for Season

By ALLAN KREDASEPT. 19, 2014

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There is much to wonder about the Islanders’ coming season. The team’s surplus of forwards, two new goaltenders and the return of a healthy captain, John Tavares, will all bear watching.

But what is known for sure is that this will be the final season for the franchise on Long Island before it moves to Barclays Center in Brooklyn next season after 43 years at Nassau Coliseum. New owners are also expected to take control in 2016.

On the opening day of training camp Friday, returning players were focused on trying to erase the memory of a disappointing 2013-14 campaign, in which the team finished last in the Metropolitan Division.

“I’ve only been here three years, but there’s definitely a bittersweet feeling knowing this is the last year of the Coliseum,” said Brock Nelson, 22, who could find himself on the team’s top line with Tavares and Kyle Okposo. “We have to do our best and work hard for a strong push this season.”

The team has 16 forwards who have played in the N.H.L. All of them will not be on the bench Oct. 10 when the Islanders visit the Carolina Hurricanes to start the season. General Manager Garth Snow will have a chance to trade one or two for another defenseman.

Photo

John Tavares has not played an N.H.L. game since early February, when he injured a knee at the Olympics.

Snow did some spending over the summer, signing the experienced Russian forwards Mikhail Grabovski (four years, $20 million) and Nikolay Kulemin (two years, $5.6 million), and adding the veteran goaltenders Jaroslav Halak and Chad Johnson.

Jack Capuano is beginning his fifth year as the Islanders’ coach, the longest tenure in the Metropolitan Division.

Capuano’s methods worked enough magic to get the Islanders to the playoffs after the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, when they lost to the conference-best Pittsburgh Penguins in six games. He is focused on getting his team back.

“There are a lot of loyal fans here, and we want to make it special for them, though obviously it’s not something we’re going to think about every day,” said Capuano, who along with his staff guided 63 players in three groups through their first-day paces. “We have to have that singular focus; we want to get the feeling back we had against Pittsburgh in the playoffs. That will motivate us.”

Tavares, the team’s leader, said he was as happy as a player could be for the first practice. He has not played in an N.H.L. game since early February, when he injured a knee at the Olympics, and after a summer of recovery, the wait surely felt like an eternity.

“I’m really anxious to dive right back into it,” he said. “The nerves and energy getting ready for the season were there. If I ever lose that feeling, I shouldn’t be playing. This is what I love to do. I couldn’t be more excited.”

Tavares and his teammates have much work to do after a season when they were essentially knocked out of playoff contention by Christmas.

Left wing Matt Martin, who has won the team’s Bob Nystrom Award the last three seasons for “leadership, hustle and dedication,” said history lessons were never far away. Martin, 25, who is starting his sixth season with the Islanders, said he realizes that links to the past will be mentioned constantly in the coming campaign.

“I’ve become friends with Islanders greats like Nystrom and Clark Gillies, and I see how close those players still are,” Martin said, referring to members of the team that won four straight Stanley Cups from 1980 to ’83. “We’re going to miss this place, so we really want to give it the right sendoff. There a lot of memories here, and they are meaningful to me, too.”

One of the youngest Islanders, the first-round draft pick Joshua Ho-Sang, 18, was mesmerized as he skated on a line with Tavares and Anders Lee.

“The best part of my day on a line with John Tavares, he really helped me out with the drills,” Ho-Sang said. “He called me ‘Sanger,’ and I just thought it cool that he knew my name. This is very special. I want to take everything day by day.”

The same holds true for Capuano, who is eager to get back into the fray with his captain at full speed.

“We had a long summer — too long — so we’re all happy to be back,” the coach said. “I like the fact that we push one another. We’re going to maximize that. And it’s really good to see Johnny back out there. He wants to get back to leading this hockey club.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D6 of the New York edition with the headline: With Tavares Back, Islanders Are Eager for Season. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Olympics

South Korea Is Awarded Berths in 2018 Olympic Tournaments

By JEFF Z. KLEINSEPT. 19, 2014

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South Korea’s men’s and women’s national teams have been granted automatic entry into the Olympic ice hockey tournaments at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, the International Ice Hockey Federation announced Thursday, despite the country’s low ranking in the sport.

The international federation made the decision to grant the South Koreans a place in the Olympic Games they will host after the Korea Ice Hockey Association presented a four-year, $20 million plan to intensify the development of its national teams.

The decision means neither South Korean team will have to participate in qualifying tournaments to reach the Olympics.

South Korea ranks 23rd among the world’s 49 men’s teams and 24th among the world’s 38 women’s teams. Although tournament details for Pyeongchang have not been completed, 12 teams are expected to compete for medals in the men’s competition and eight teams in the women’s.

“Korean hockey has been working for a long time for this opportunity, and to have this presented to us today is overwhelming,” said Jim Paek, the former N.H.L. player who was hired in July to direct the Korean hockey program. “I don’t want to make any promises, but as long as we focus on the process every day to get better, I think we’ll be very competitive, and hopefully we’ll represent the country well.”

René Fasel, the international federation’s president, said that because of South Korea’s plans to invest in its national teams, “Korea should have a chance to show the world it is capable of competing at the highest level of international hockey.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D6 of the New York edition with the headline: South Korea Is Awarded Berths in 2018 Olympic Tournaments. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Hockey

Olympics? First, Small Goals

Jim Paek Is Building South Korean Hockey Program

By JEFF Z. KLEINAUG. 14, 2014

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Jim Paek, a two-time Stanley Cup winner with Pittsburgh, coaches the South Korean men’s national team and directs the nation’s hockey program.

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In the 1990s, Jim Paek harbored an unusual wish for a hockey player who had grown up in suburban Toronto; played in Oshawa, Ontario, and Muskegon, Mich.; and won two Stanley Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

“It was always a dream of mine to be part of the Korean national team,” he said.

Last month, Paek, 47, was named the coach of the South Korea men’s national team and the director of the country’s hockey program. The job comes with enormous responsibility and no great chance of success. South Korea will host the 2018 Winter Olympics, but its men’s team is ranked 23rd among the 49 hockey-playing countries and may face a daunting road to qualify for the 12-team Olympic tournament.

“I believe in the process,” Paek said by phone from his home in Grand Rapids, Mich. “It’d be great to say, ‘Yeah, we’d like to move up into the top 16 in the world first, and hopefully make the Olympics.’ But if it’s not the Olympics, so be it. What’s important is that we’re competitive and improve every day.”

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Paek, rear center, was an assistant for the Grand Rapids Griffins, a Red Wings affiliate, before his South Korea coaching job.

Paek is starting almost from scratch. There are only 2,100 registered hockey players in South Korea, including just 120 adult males. (The United States has 138,000 adult male players.)

Although South Korea has had impressive success at recent Winter Games — 26 gold medals since 1992, 21 in short-track speedskating — it has never qualified for Olympic hockey.

“The 2018 Olympics is only one part of my job,” Paek said. “A big part is to build hockey in Korea from the grass roots up, to look 10, 20 years down the road, where we can develop and grow as a hockey nation. About 1,400 of our players are kids — how do we develop those kids?”

If Paek is to lead Korean hockey on a long, winding journey, he is well prepared for it.

Born in Seoul, he immigrated with his family to Canada when he was 1. He came up through the competitive hockey ranks in suburban Toronto, thrived in the Ontario Hockey League with the Oshawa Generals and was drafted as a defenseman by the Penguins.

“Growing up, I never had any fellow Korean, Japanese, Chinese players,” Paek said. “There were different cultures, but Asians? I can’t even think of one growing up.”

Paek said he did not face a lot of “racial stuff” at the rink, although there was some.

“I tried to beat everybody up, but that just wasn’t working out,” he said. “As you grow up, you mature. You realize that the more you think about it, the more it’ll bother you. So I came to look at it as, ‘It hurts more when you degrade my playing, not who I am.’ ”

In October 1990, Paek, believed to be the first Korean player to appear in the N.H.L., made his league debut, and he won the Cup with the Penguins in 1991 and ’92. He played in the N.H.L. through 1994-95 and retired as a player in 2003.

Afterward he became a coach and was an assistant with the Detroit Red Wings’ affiliate in Grand Rapids for nine years until taking the South Korea job last month.

Despite Paek’s successful career, he joked that he was the black sheep of his family. One sister is a gynecologist, the other is a lawyer for a hospital, and his brother works for a pharmaceutical company.

“My dad was a doctor in Korea,” he said. “At that time Korea was still under martial law; it was a tough place to live, I guess. We immigrated to Canada because he had an opportunity to work at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and to give his family a better life.”

But Paek’s father could not work as a doctor in Canada without going back to school to be relicensed.

“He couldn’t afford to do that, so he worked as a biochemist doing research,” Paek said. “As the years went on, he started his own hospital supplies company.”

That work often took Paek’s father to Korea and kept active the family connection between the two countries. Paek and other Canadian players of Korean descent visited South Korea to conduct hockey clinics in 1982 and 1987, and they hosted Korean high school teams that traveled to Toronto to learn the game.

Paek continued to go back and forth teaching hockey until his professional career ended in 2002. Even though he does not speak Korean, his credentials were well established and made him a natural choice to run South Korea’s hockey program.

On Friday, Paek will visit South Korea for the first time since getting the job and will start figuring out how he will proceed over the next three and a half years. One of the biggest decisions for Paek, now a dual citizen of Canada and the United States, is whether he, his wife and their two young children will move to Seoul full time.

But the hockey nuts and bolts of the job are hard enough.

“There are so many things to think about and develop,” Paek said.

Chief among them is the difficult task the South Korean men face to qualify for the Pyeongchang Olympics. Under current International Ice Hockey Federation rules, there is no automatic qualification for the Olympic hosts. For the 2010 and 2014 Olympics, the top nine teams in the world rankings earned automatic berths, while the remaining three berths went to lower-ranked teams that survived a series of qualifying tournaments.

The host nation has had a men’s hockey team at every Winter Olympics, and the I.I.H.F., which has not announced the qualification procedure for 2018, may choose to continue the tradition by granting South Korea a berth.

But even if that happens, the Koreans will want to avoid an embarrassing drubbing on international hockey’s biggest stage. At the I.I.H.F.’s second-tier tournament in April, South Korea went 0-5, was outscored by 34-14 and was relegated to world hockey’s third tier for 2015.

South Korea has three clubs in the Asian League Ice Hockey, the only significant professional league in the region. Those clubs provide most of the national team’s roster.

Paek said his immediate goal was to get South Korea back up to the second tier. He is counting on the country’s dozen or so high school teams and five university teams to supply players for the short term.  He is also hoping that Richard Park, believed to be the N.H.L.’s second Korean player, might join his coaching staff.

Park, 38, said he was deciding whether to continue his playing career in Europe or North America, take an off-ice position with an N.H.L. organization, or join the South Korea staff. He will accompany Paek to Seoul this week.

“Jim was a huge role model for me growing up,” said Park, who was 13 or 14 when he first met Paek and later played alongside him for a season in the old International Hockey League. “We always will share that bond, the fact that we came up in a sport that’s not very prominent in our culture, and we both kind of made it, right? I would like to think that we’ve been a source of inspiration to the Korean people.”

However inspiring Paek may be, he must still get results.

“It would be nice to set up something like the junior system in Canada and the United States in Korea, but we’ll have to see if we have the resources,” he said. “In the meantime, maybe short track is a great option. You see these young kids, their skating ability, the aggressiveness they have. Transfer that to hockey — why not?”

Could that lead to a Korean Miracle on Ice in 2018? Paek laughed.

“It was a great story for the Americans, but then reality sets in,” Paek said. “Still, if we get better every day, you never know what’ll happen.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 15, 2014, on page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Olympics? First, Small Goals. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Baseball | Yankees 5, Blue Jays 3

Ellsbury Shows His Worth, and His Fragility, to the Yanks

By ZACH SCHONBRUNSEPT. 19, 2014

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Jacoby Ellsbury, right, and Ichiro Suzuki after both scored on a third-inning homer by Ellsbury.

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Jacoby Ellsbury showcased the type of talent on Friday that the Yankees expected of him when he signed for more than $150 million in the off-season: doubling, homering, scoring twice, manning center field and using his speed to prompt an error on a throw to first base that allowed a crucial run to score.

But his athletic abilities have seemed to dovetail with a propensity for injury throughout his career. The timing of the latest injury could not have been worse for a Yankee team still trying to hang on to the fringes of the playoff race.

In the fourth inning of Friday’s 5-3 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays, Ellsbury appeared to grab at his right hamstring upon landing on first base after he had beaten out a double-play attempt. He remained in the game to finish the inning, but Manager Joe Girardi did not like what he saw and removed Ellsbury before the top of the fifth.

“Anytime a guy comes out and grabs his hamstring, you’re concerned,” Girardi said.

Ellsbury was sent to have a magnetic resonance imaging exam, and the results were not immediately available. The team was calling it a right hamstring strain.

Girardi had already said he would be surprised if Ellsbury was able to return to the lineup Saturday and even acknowledged the possibility that the injury could keep him out for the remaining nine games.

“It’s a distinct possibility,” Girardi said.

The Yankees just lost their utility man Martin Prado for the rest of the season after he had an appendectomy, and this was unfortunate timing for another major injury. They began the day five games behind the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland Athletics in the hunt for one of the American League’s two wild-card spots, with 10 games remaining. Even with seven of those games at home, and the emotional element of the team’s commemorating the end of Derek Jeter’s 20-year career, the gap seemed like a lot for the Yankees to bridge.

Ellsbury has proved remarkably durable for the Yankees this season, playing in his 149th game Friday — the most since he appeared in 158 games for Boston in 2011. That year, he finished second in the voting for A.L. Most Valuable Player award.

Though he has been streaky throughout his first season with the Yankees, Ellsbury could always be dangerous. He was having one of those dynamic games Friday — doubling and scoring in the first, blasting a two-run homer in the third and helping put the Yankees ahead by 5-2 by hustling out a potential double-play ball in the fourth.

That hustle might have inadvertently cost him.

The Yankees’ early outburst came against Mark Buehrle, a starter they have a plentiful history with. Buehrle’s lone victory against them came 10 years ago, and his 12 consecutive losses to the Yankees are the most by any pitcher against any team since Jamey Wright dropped 12 in a row to the Houston Astros between 1997 and 2005.

Hiroki Kuroda continued his impressive bounce-back season at age 39, and after limiting the Blue Jays to seven hits in six and two-thirds innings, he is now 5-3 with a 3.25 earned run average since the All-Star break.

He ended last season by losing seven of his final eight decisions, and pitched poorly in the month of April, but he has certainly steadied himself. He said he had not made up his mind whether he wanted to return next season.

“The next outing, I may end my career there,” he said through an interpreter.

Friday’s win was preserved by the bullpen. After Kuroda left with two outs and a runner on first in the seventh, Josh Outman allowed a double to Jose Reyes, and Esmil Rogers then came in to face the slugger Jose Bautista with the tying run in scoring position.

After a 10-pitch at-bat, which included several healthy cuts, Bautista walked to load the bases for Encarnacion. But Encarnacion chased a low slider and sent a dribbler to Jeter, who completed the force at second to end the threat.

INSIDE PITCH

If all goes well with his start Sunday, Masahiro Tanaka is likely to make another start before the end of the regular season, Joe Girardi said. That should help tell the Yankees what they need to know about Tanaka’s health, he said. But Girardi did not seem willing to entertain any ideas of having Tanaka throw more than twice over the next nine games, even if the season comes down to the final day. “If he comes through those two, we’ll look at it,” Girardi said. “But I don’t think there will be any more starts for him in the regular season.” Tanaka is expected to throw 70 to 75 pitches on Sunday, Girardi said.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D7 of the New York edition with the headline: Ellsbury Shows His Worth, and His Fragility, to the Yanks. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Baseball | Roundup

Tigers Widen Lead Atop A.L. Central

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSSEPT. 20, 2014

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Ian Kinsler hit a two-run homer, everyone in Detroit’s starting lineup had a hit by the fourth inning, and the visiting Tigers pounded the second-place Kansas City Royals, 10-1, on Friday night to add another game to their American League Central lead.

Justin Verlander (14-12) had all the support he needed by the end of the first inning, when the Tigers had shelled Vargas (11-10) for three runs on five hits. Detroit tacked on a run in the second, added another in the fourth and then broke things open with a five-run fifth.

The Tigers (85-68) now lead the division by one and a half games. They are 12-5 against the Royals this season.

METS 5, BRAVES 0 Lucas Duda hit a two-run homer as the Mets beat host Atlanta, but were eliminated from playoff contention. Atlanta can be eliminated with any combination of three Pirates wins or Braves losses.

PIRATES 4, BREWERS 2 Russell Martin hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning as Pittsburgh inched closer to a playoff berth with a win over visiting Milwaukee. Martin sent a fastball from Jonathan Broxton into the seats beyond the center-field wall for his 11th home run of the season. Mark Melancon pitched a perfect ninth inning for his 31st save as the Pirates moved four and a half games in front of the Brewers for the second National League wild-card spot with nine days left in the regular season.

CARDINALS 2, REDS 1 John Lackey pitched seven and two-thirds dominant innings and Randal Grichuk and Matt Holliday hit consecutive home runs in the first inning of St. Louis’s home victory over Cincinnati.

The Cardinals, the N.L. Central leaders, had only five hits but maintained a two-and-a-half-game lead over the Pirates with eight games remaining. St. Louis’s magic number is seven for clinching a second straight division title and two over third-place Milwaukee for securing a fourth straight postseason berth.

NATIONALS 3, MARLINS 2 Adam LaRoche hit a two-run homer to help carry N.L.-leading Washington to victory over host Miami. Doug Fister allowed two runs and five hits in six and two-thirds innings for the Nationals, who have won six of seven. The Nationals (89-64) lead the Dodgers (88-66) by one and a half games for the best record in the league.

WHITE SOX 4, RAYS 3 Jose Quintana pitched into the eighth inning and Avisail Garcia hit a two-run double to lead visiting Chicago over Tampa Bay, eliminating the Rays from playoff contention. Chicago rookie Jose Abreu also had a run-scoring single during a four-run fifth inning, giving him 104 runs batted in for the season.

RED SOX 5, ORIOLES 3 David Ortiz hit two home runs, including a two-run drive in the 10th inning that lifted Boston over host Baltimore, the A.L. East champion, which rested several regulars, including Adam Jones, J. J. Hardy and Nick Markakis.

ROCKIES 15, DIAMONDBACKS 3 Michael Cuddyer hit a grand slam and drove in a career-high seven runs, leading Colorado to victory over visiting Arizona. Jordan Lyles pitched six innings for his first win in six weeks.

TALKS BEGIN ON ABUSE The recent spate of high-profile domestic violence cases involving Ray Rice and other N.F.L. players prompted Major League Baseball and the players union to open talks about the way that the sport should deal with such incidents.

Even though their collective bargaining agreement lasts through 2016, representatives of M.L.B. and the Major League Baseball Players Association were scheduled to meet Friday to begin negotiations that could continue for several weeks, or even months, to establish new policies and punishments for domestic violence.

Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement includes a voluntary treatment program for certain alcohol-related and off-field violent conduct. It also allows the commissioner or a team to impose discipline — though it does not say what form — if a player is charged with a crime “involving the use of physical force or violence, including but not limited to, sexual assault, domestic violence, resisting arrest, battery, and assault.”

“We view today’s meeting as an important first step in working with the commissioner’s office to address all of the issues connected to domestic violence,” Greg Bouris, a spokesman for the players union, wrote in an email.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D7 of the New York edition with the headline: Tigers Widen Lead Atop A.L. Central. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Assault Charges Add to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil

Cardinals’ Jonathan Dwyer Arrested as Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy Leave Teams

By PAT BORZI and STEVE EDERSEPT. 17, 2014

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Arizona’s Jonathan Dwyer was arrested Wednesday in a case the authorities said involved two July episodes at his home.

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EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — Jonathan Dwyer of the Arizona Cardinals was arrested in a domestic violence investigation Wednesday as the N.F.L. continued to find itself under siege for its handling of such cases.

Before Dwyer’s arrest, the Minnesota Vikings reversed course, placing Adrian Peterson, a star running back facing child abuse charges, on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list. The Carolina Panthers did the same with Greg Hardy, a defensive end appealing a domestic violence case.

The Phoenix police, in a statement, said detectives arrested Dwyer, a running back, in Tempe on charges of aggravated assault in a domestic violence case stemming from two separate episodes at his home in southeast Phoenix in late July.

Dwyer, who was deactivated by the Cardinals on Wednesday night, denied that any physical assaults took place, the police said. They said he was being booked at the Maricopa County Jail on a count of aggravated assault causing a fracture, a count of aggravated assault involving a minor, two counts of criminal damage and a count of preventing the use of a phone in an emergency.

Photo

The Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson signed autographs last month in Kansas City.

The victims were said to be a 27-year-old woman and an 18-month-old child. The police said the woman left the state with the child after the episodes. Police then received the complaint in the case on Sept. 11.

The Cardinals said they learned of the allegations Wednesday when notified by the police. “We will continue to closely monitor this as it develops and evaluate additional information as it becomes available,” the team’s statement said.

An N.F.L. spokesman said Dwyer’s case would be reviewed under the N.F.L.’s personal conduct policy.

Earlier Wednesday, mounting pressure from sponsors and the public forced the Vikings to bar Peterson from practices and games while he deals with his arrest in Texas on charges that he beat his 4-year-old son.

The decision, announced in an email at 12:47 a.m. Central time, came 38 hours after the Vikings said Peterson would rejoin the team. His reinstatement drew criticism from fans, women’s groups and sponsors, who said the team was insensitive to domestic violence and child abuse.

“We made a mistake, and we needed to get this right,” Zygi Wilf, a Vikings co-owner, said at a news conference Wednesday. “It’s important to listen to our fans, the community and our sponsors.”

After consulting with Peterson, the N.F.L. and Peterson’s agent, Peterson was placed on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list, where he will remain until his legal situation is resolved. Peterson will receive his full $11.75 million base salary but cannot take part in team activities.

Wilf’s brother Mark, a co-owner and the team president, denied that the league pressured the Vikings to make the move.

“This is our decision 100 percent,” he said. “We were aiming to get it right, and we feel we got it right.”

Nike said Wednesday it had suspended its contract with Peterson and made his jerseys unavailable online.

“Nike in no way condones child abuse or domestic violence of any kind and has shared our concerns with the N.F.L.,” the company said in a statement.

Photo

Greg Hardy, a Carolina Panthers defensive end, was found guilty of assaulting his girlfriend — a verdict that he is appealing.

The Panthers’ Hardy agreed to go on the same exempt list Wednesday as he appeals his domestic violence conviction. He was found guilty in July of assaulting and threatening to kill his girlfriend. His trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 17. Hardy played in Week 1, was deactivated last Sunday and had continued to practice with the team. He will also receive his full $13.12 million base salary.

“It’s been handled as well as we could,” Panthers Coach Ron Rivera said at a news conference Wednesday.

Peterson is accused of injuring his son while disciplining him with a tree branch, commonly known as a switch, last May in Spring, Tex. Peterson turned himself in to Montgomery County authorities early Saturday morning and was inactive Sunday for Minnesota’s 30-7 loss to New England. Free on $15,000 bail, he is scheduled to make his first court appearance Oct. 8.

In response to Peterson’s reinstatement Monday, fans who ran a Vikings online message board shut it down. And the Radisson hotel chain, based in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, suspended its Vikings sponsorship. Marilyn Carlson Nelson, the former chairman of Carlson Inc., which owns Radisson, was a co-chairwoman of the bid committee that landed the 2018 Super Bowl for Minneapolis.

The backlash accelerated Tuesday. Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat who helped the Vikings receive public financing for their new stadium, and Senator Al Franken, also a Democrat, criticized the decision. Dayton called Peterson’s actions “a public embarrassment” and demanded the team suspend him.

Fran Tarkenton, a Hall of Fame quarterback who led the Vikings to three Super Bowls, told Fox News that he was embarrassed by the team’s original decision to let Peterson play.

Castrol Motor Oil terminated a sponsorship contract with Peterson. A spokesman for U.S. Bank, whose president, Richard Davis, a co-chairman of the Super Bowl bid committee with Carlson Nelson, said the company was monitoring the situation closely. An appearance by Vikings players at a Minneapolis orphanage was canceled.

Mark Wilf declined to address whether the team underestimated the backlash from the decision to reinstate Peterson. “I don’t want to Monday morning quarterback what it was,” he said.

A Radisson spokesman, Benjamin Gardeen, said in an email Wednesday that the company’s sponsorship remained suspended. On Monday, the Radisson logo appeared on a banner behind Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman as he discussed Peterson’s reinstatement. A different banner at Wednesday’s news conference had no such logos.

Vikings cornerback Captain Munnerlyn, one of the few players willing to comment Wednesday, said the club’s reversal surprised him. Munnerlyn said Peterson did nothing wrong, and his own mother disciplined him the same way.

“I don’t think it’s fair at all,” Munnerlyn said. “I think he should be able to play. He hasn’t been convicted of anything. All these allegations, or this and that, pictures out, but he hasn’t been convicted of nothing.”

The Vikings’ handling of the situation inflamed a national debate about domestic violence in the N.F.L. Last week, a graphic video showing Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancée led Commissioner Roger Goodell to indefinitely suspend the former Baltimore Ravens running back.

Late Tuesday, Rice appealed that penalty, arguing that he should not have been suspended twice for the same episode. In July, Goodell said Rice would have to sit out the first two games of the regular season.

Steve Eder reported from New York, and Ken Belson contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Arrest Adds to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Corrections

Corrections: September 20, 2014

SEPT. 20, 2014

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NATIONAL

An article Thursday about the effect of artificial sweeteners on metabolism misstated the title of a researcher who commented on the study. Dr. Frank Hu is a professor of nutrition and epidemiology, not immunology, at the Harvard School of Public Health.

NEW YORK

An article in some editions on Sept. 10 about primary election results for legislative offices in New York State described the location of the Hudson Valley incorrectly. It is in upstate New York, not in western New York.

•

An article in some editions last Saturday about a decision by the principal of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts to decline a request by the performer Nicki Minaj to speak at the school, her alma mater, misspelled the title of her recent hit in some copies. It is “Anaconda,” not “Anacdona.”

THE ARTS

An article on Wednesday about the 2014 fellowships awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation misstated part of the title of a memoir by one of the winners, the cartoonist and graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel. It is “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” (not “Tragicomedy”).

WEEKEND

An art review on Friday about “Helen Frankenthaler: Composing With Color: Paintings 1962-1963” at Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue and “Morris Louis: Veils” at Mnuchin Gallery on East 78th Street misidentified a participant in the organization of the Frankenthaler show. While the Frankenthaler estate was involved in an exhibition last year at Gagosian’s Chelsea branch, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, not the estate, was involved in the organization of this show. The review also reversed the paints used in areas of Frankenthaler’s painting “Gulf Stream.” The “muscular swipes” are acrylic and the “thin, Rothko-esque patches” are oil.

SCIENCE TIMES

An article on Tuesday about stem cell therapies misstated federal policy concerning research on embryonic stem cell lines. In 2001, President George W. Bush prohibited the use of federal research funds to create new embryonic stem cell lines. He did not prohibit all creation of new embryonic stem cell lines. (Privately funded research at the time was unaffected and President Obama lifted the ban in 2009). The article also referred imprecisely to the approach of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research toward stem cell research. While the majority of the foundation’s current funding is for research in areas besides stem cells, it has not stopped funding stem cell research entirely.

•

A picture on Tuesday with an article about workers at industrial hog farms who carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria over several days was published in error. The photograph showed workers at a pork processing plant, not at a hog farm.

INSIDE THE TIMES

The attribution for the Quotation of the Day on Friday, taken from an article about calls for a federal judge, Mark E. Fuller, to resign in the wake of his being charged last month with battery for assaulting his wife, misidentified the state where he is a district court judge. As the article correctly noted, it is Alabama, not Georgia.

The Times welcomes comments and suggestions, or complaints about errors that warrant correction. Messages on news coverage can be e-mailed to nytnews@nytimes.com or left toll-free at 1-888-NYT-NEWS (1-888-698-6397). Comments on editorials may be e-mailed to letters@nytimes.com or faxed to (212) 556-3622.

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For newspaper delivery questions: 1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637) or e-mail customercare@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A2 of the National edition with the headline: Corrections. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Democrats Reject Indicted State Senator in Queens but Renominate One in Brooklyn

By JESSE McKINLEYSEPT. 10, 2014

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With full control of the New York State Legislature within reach in November, Democrats on Tuesday expelled one indicted lawmaker, held fast to another and reaffirmed their support for an embattled Bronx power broker at the heart of much of the party’s recent turmoil.

In a symbolic cleansing, primary voters in Queens decisively turned against State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, who is accused of trying to bribe his way onto the 2013 New York City mayoral ballot as a Republican. Leroy Comrie, a former city councilman, won in a landslide.

But John L. Sampson of Brooklyn, who is under federal indictment on charges that he embezzled more than $400,000 from the sale of foreclosed homes, survived a challenge as three other candidates split votes.

In another closely watched race, State Senator Tony Avella won a tight race against John Liu, a former New York City comptroller. Mr. Avella, 62, is a two-term incumbent in a solidly Democratic district. Mr. Liu, 47, was trying to make a political comeback after a damaging campaign-finance scandal that thwarted a mayoral bid. He was hoping to become the first Asian-American in the State Senate.

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State Senator Malcolm A. Smith of Queens, who faces trial in January, was defeated.

The primary punctuated a year in which Democrats — divided for several years by internal rivalries and acrimony — vowed to put aside those differences in pursuit of a simple majority in the state’s 63-seat upper chamber. Republicans have dominated the Senate for decades almost without interruption.

The Assembly, the lower chamber, has long been solidly in Democratic hands.

In November 2012, the Democrats seized a numeric advantage in the Senate but were later foiled when the Independent Democratic Conference, a breakaway group of Democrats, formed “a bipartisan power-sharing agreement” with Republicans.

The chamber’s current makeup is complex: The Senate has 29 Republicans, 24 mainstream Democrats, two open seats, two seats filled by Mr. Smith and Mr. Sampson (whom the Democrats have disavowed) and five Independent Democrats, including Mr. Avella. The final wild card is Simcha Felder, a Brooklyn Democrat who votes with the Republicans.

Photo

State Senator John L. Sampson, who has been indicted, won his primary in Brooklyn.

The Independent Democrats’ leader, Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester County, fended off a hard-fought challenge by G. Oliver Koppell, a former city councilman and state attorney general, who accused Mr. Klein of political opportunism and disloyalty to the party.

Mr. Klein’s group had faced increasing anger from the left in its second year in a leadership role. Liberals were particularly incensed by the failure of the so-called Dream Act, which would have allowed state tuition aid for undocumented immigrants.

Under pressure from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and others, Mr. Klein — who has been co-leader of the Senate under his power-sharing arrangement — agreed in June to rejoin the mainstream Democrats after the November election “to deliver the results that working families across this state still need.”

But some Democrats remain deeply skeptical of Mr. Klein’s promises — including supporters of Mr. Koppell’s primary challenge — and the tensions underlying the party’s fragile peace seemed apparent on Tuesday.

Photo

State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, who led a breakaway faction, survived.

At one polling place in Riverdale, in the Bronx, Howard Robinson, 61, said he was voting for Mr. Koppell because he was “fed up with corruption in Albany” and “the so-called Independent Democrats.”

“I want there to be a clear progressive majority in the State Senate,” Mr. Robinson said.

Others, however, said they voted for Mr. Klein because he had been able to compromise.

“We complain all the time that Washington isn’t working together,” Gisele Glynn, 76, said. “We tell them that all the time.” But she added that when people like Mr. Klein did work with Republicans, “we want the old guard back in.”

Photo

John Liu, a former New York City comptroller, was trying to make a political comeback in a closely watched race for a Senate seat in Queens. He lost to Tony Avella, a two-term incumbent.

The primary, of course, does not assure Democrats 32 seats; only the general election on Nov. 4 can determine that. Republicans, not surprisingly, have scoffed at the series of “ifs” that would lead to Democrats’ holding a majority, but Senator Michael Gianaris of Queens, a Democrat, seemed bullish on his party’s chances.

“The Senate Dems are in a better position at this point than at any point in the last four years,” Mr. Gianaris said, citing the support of Governor Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York and major labor organizations. “This is, by everyone’s account, a very different Democratic conference.”

Not all senators facing criminal charges were imperiled on Tuesday. Thomas W. Libous of Binghamton, 61, an influential Republican who was charged in July with lying to federal agents about his efforts to get his son a job at a law firm, beat back a primary challenge from Denver Jones, an upstate businessman. Mr. Libous, who is battling cancer, has has a close working relationship with Governor Cuomo.

Upstate offered a few surprises, including the defeat of Mark J. Grisanti, an incumbent Republican from the Buffalo area, who was beaten by Kevin Stocker, a conservative lawyer who touted his support for gun rights. In 2011, Mr. Grisanti was one of four Republicans who voted for legalization of same-sex marriage, Mr. Cuomo’s signature civil rights accomplishment. He is the last of the four to remain in office.

Democratic operatives see nearly a dozen possibly competitive races in November, including some on Long Island, where younger candidates like Ethan Irwin, a former Marine, are lining up against veteran Republican senators like Kemp Hannon of Nassau County. Several open upstate seats, including the Hudson Valley seat of Greg Ball, a conservative Republican who is not seeking re-election, may be in play.

Republicans counter that two Democrats from upstate New York — Senators Ted O’Brien of the Rochester area and Terry Gipson of the Hudson Valley — are vulnerable, as is Cecilia Tkaczyk, a first-term senator from a district outside Albany.

Democrats were also assured of another seat after a bitter primary between two lawyers to fill the seat vacated by Eric Adams, now the Brooklyn borough president. Jesse Hamilton, 51, a lawyer and community leader, and Rubain Dorancy, 43, a lawyer running on a platform of education reform, each tried to have the other removed from the ballot, without success. Mr. Hamilton won handily.

Correction: September 20, 2014

An article in some editions on Sept. 10 about primary election results for legislative offices in New York State described the location of the Hudson Valley incorrectly. It is in upstate New York, not in western New York.

Reporting was contributed by Matt Flegenheimer, Dan Glaun, Kate Pastor, Nate Schweber and Nikita Stewart.

A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 2014, on page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Democrats Reject Indicted State Senator in Queens but Renominate One in Brooklyn. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Twitter Erupts as Nicki Minaj’s Offer to School Is Declined

By KATE TAYLORSEPT. 12, 2014

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Nicki Minaj

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All sorts of things can ruin a principal’s day. A misbehaving student. A fire in the cafeteria kitchen. A teacher having a meltdown.

And then there’s Nicki Minaj. On Thursday afternoon, the rapper known for her racy lyrics, avant-garde fashion choices, and un-self-conscious celebration of her physical assets posted on Twitter, where she has 18.1 million followers, that the principal of her alma mater, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts, had turned down her offer to speak there.

“I wanted to go back to my HS and speak to the students but the new principal declined,” Ms. Minaj, 31, wrote. “No need for me to inspire them, I guess.”

“That school changed my life and I wanted to pay it forward to the students there now,” she added. Both LaGuardia students and Ms. Minaj’s fans reacted with anger and disbelief on Twitter.

“I’m a sophomore at LaGuardia and I think it’s disgusting you’re not allowed to come visit,” wrote one. “You’re the most successful alum,” she added.

“We want you here!” wrote another.

Others derided the principal, Dr. Lisa Mars, and some posted her phone number and email address. By Friday afternoon, Ms. Minaj’s fans had left 150 comments about Dr. Mars, many of them unprintable, on the website ratemyteachers.com. One commenter, who was definitely in the minority, praised Dr. Mars for “standing up for good morals.”

“There are too many parents with zero responsibility,” the commenter wrote, telling Ms. Minaj to go elsewhere.

The Department of Education said that Ms. Minaj had not been rejected out of prudishness. A spokesman said that MTV had asked to film Ms. Minaj’s appearance when after-school programs would be in session. The spokesman said that the department and the principal felt that it would be a disruption and proposed a weekend date instead, but Ms. Minaj and MTV had declined because of her schedule.

A representative for Ms. Minaj declined to comment.

Outside LaGuardia after school on Friday, several students and recent alumni said that they were disappointed in the decision. One said that students had simultaneously started playing Ms. Minaj’s recent hit, “Anaconda,” on their phones on Friday morning around the school as a protest.

But one student, who declined to give her name because she feared being suspended, said she did not think Ms. Minaj was a good role model and questioned her motives in coming to the school.

“It’s more publicity stunt than anything,” she said.

Correction: September 20, 2014

An article in some editions last Saturday about a decision by the principal of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts to decline a request by the performer Nicki Minaj to speak at the school, her alma mater, misspelled the title of her recent hit in some copies. It is “Anaconda,” not “Anacdona.”

Alex Vadukul contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 13, 2014, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Twitter Erupts as Rapper’s Offer to School Is Declined. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Arts |NYT Now

MacArthur Awards Go to 21 Diverse Fellows

Alison Bechdel, Terrance Hayes Among ‘Genius Grant’ Winners

By FELICIA R. LEESEPT. 17, 2014

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New MacArthur fellows include Joshua Oppenheimer, who made the highly debated film “The Act of Killing,” pictured.

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Twelve men and nine women, whose work is as diverse as studying the racial elements in perceptions of crime and translating contemporary Arab poetry, have been named the 2014 fellows of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The fellowships, based on achievement and potential, come with a stipend of $625,000 over five years and are among the most prestigious prizes for artists, scholars and professionals.

The awards are being announced on Wednesday by the foundation, which is based in Chicago.

The oldest fellow this year is Pamela O. Long, 71, a historian of science and technology in Washington, whose work explores connections between the arts and science. The youngest is Danielle S. Bassett, 32, a physicist at the University of Pennsylvania, who analyzes neuron interactions in the brain as people perform various tasks. She seeks to determine how different parts of the brain communicate and how that communication changes with learning or in the aftermath of a brain injury or disease.

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Alison Bechdel, a cartoonist and memoirist, is one of the artists among this year’s winners.

When she received the call informing her of the no-strings-attached windfall, Ms. Bassett recalled being stunned into silence.

“Halfway through, I said, ‘Are you absolutely sure you got the right person?’ ” Ms. Bassett said in a telephone interview. “Then they read my bio to me. It’s an unexpected honor and sort of validation.”

The artists among this year’s winners include Alison Bechdel, 54, a cartoonist and graphic memoirist in Bolton, Vt., whose 2006 memoir, “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” became a musical at the Public Theater in 2013; Samuel D. Hunter, 33, a New Yorker and the author of a widely produced 2012 play, “The Whale,” about a morbidly obese man; Joshua Oppenheimer, 39, a documentary filmmaker in Copenhagen who made the highly debated film “The Act of Killing,” about mass murder in Indonesia after a military coup; and Steve Coleman, 57, a composer and alto saxophonist in Allentown, Pa., whose nonprofit M-Base Concepts supports musical experimentation and mentors musicians.

The other artists are Terrance Hayes, 42, a poet and writing professor at the University of Pittsburgh who won a National Book Award for his collection “Lighthead,” which contains pop-culture and music themes; and Rick Lowe, 53, who was trained as a painter but founded Project Row Houses in Houston, bringing artists together to renovate houses and create community programs.

Several of the new fellows are combating pressing social problems, including violence against women and racial bias.

Jennifer L. Eberhardt, 49, a social psychologist at Stanford University, has conducted a series of experiments to show how mostly unconscious racial stereotypes can criminalize African-Americans. Using images of faces and objects flashed across a screen at speeds that range from subliminal to perceptible, Ms. Eberhardt discovered that subliminal exposure to a black face led subjects to better detect blurry images of weapons. A white face, conversely, inhibited detection of such objects.

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Samuel D. Hunter's play “The Whale” starred Shuler Hensley.

Her statistical analysis also showed that the “blacker” a defendant looks — as measured by skin color, hair texture and lip size — the more likely it was that the defendant would receive the death penalty if the victim was white. Police officers are more likely to judge as criminals those whose faces are the most stereotypically black, her research shows.

“It’s almost as if people are thinking of blackness as a crime,” Ms. Eberhardt said in a telephone interview. She is working with law enforcement agencies to improve policing and with anthropologists to counter implicit bias.

Sarah Deer, 41, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, develops policies and legislation to combat domestic abuse and sexual violence against American Indian women. Ms. Deer said she would use her MacArthur money to elevate the voices of such women, who she contends have been failed by both tribal courts and federal laws.

“Native Americans are the most victimized group for sexual violence and domestic violence,” Ms. Deer said in a telephone interview. “The treatment of native women that came with early settlement never stopped.”

Mary L. Bonauto, 53, a civil rights lawyer with the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders in Boston is among the other 2014 fellows whose talents have led her to advocacy work. Ms. Bonauto is credited as a major force behind the same-sex marriage cases that went to the Supreme Court. Another fellow well known in legal circles is Jonathan Rapping, 48, president and founder of Gideon’s Promise in Atlanta, which teaches public defenders to be more effective.

The other winners this year include Tami Bond, 50, an environmental engineer at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Craig Gentry, 41, a computer scientist at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.; John Henneberger, 59, a housing advocate in Austin, Tex.; and Mark Hersam, 39, a materials scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

They are joined by Jacob Lurie, 36, a mathematician at Harvard; Khaled Mattawa, 50, a translator and poet at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Ai-jen Poo, 40, a labor organizer in Chicago; Tara Zahra, 38, a historian of modern Europe at the University of Chicago; and Yitang Zhang, 59, a mathematician at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Correction: September 20, 2014

An article on Wednesday about the 2014 fellowships awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation misstated part of the title of a memoir by one of the winners, the cartoonist and graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel. It is “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” (not “Tragicomedy”).

A version of this article appears in print on September 17, 2014, on page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: MacArthur Awards Go to 21 Diverse Fellows. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Art & Design | Art Review

Color, Chemistry and Creativity

Helen Frankenthaler at Gagosian and Morris Louis at Mnuchin

By KAREN ROSENBERGSEPT. 18, 2014

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The Color Field artist Helen Frankenthaler’s “Cool Summer” (1962), at Gagosian Gallery.

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Color Field painting arrived, in the late 1950s, at a moment of simultaneous exhaustion and innovation: fatigue with the Abstract Expressionist hegemony on the one hand, and radical new developments in paint chemistry on the other.

These forces conspired in a movement to make paintbrushes superfluous and to give color, the essence of painting, even more primacy. As the critic and Color Field champion Clement Greenberg put it, “The more closely color could be identified with its ground, the freer would it be from the interference of tactile associations.”

Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis, egged on by Greenberg, were at the forefront of this color liberation. Working with new acrylics like Magna, which retained their bright hues even when thinned to a watery consistency, they made exceptionally vivid, viscous and immediate paintings on unprimed canvas. Their vigor can be savored in two gallery shows little more than a block apart: “Helen Frankenthaler: Composing With Color: Paintings 1962-1963,” at Gagosian, and “Morris Louis: Veils,” at Mnuchin Gallery.

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A painting from Morris Louis’s “Veils” series (1958-59), at Mnuchin Gallery.

The Louis works at Mnuchin date from 1958 to 1960; the Frankenthalers at Gagosian, from 1962 to 1963. But the Frankenthaler exhibition should really be seen first, in deference to the influence of her early stain paintings: specifically, “Mountains and Sea,” hailed as a precursor to Color Field painting. Louis saw this canvas in Frankenthaler’s studio in 1953, and later called it “a bridge between Pollock and what was possible.”

“Mountains and Sea” isn’t on view here, but, for some, it will still be fresh in mind as the centerpiece of a more substantial Frankenthaler exhibition, “Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler From 1950 to 1959,” at Gagosian’s Chelsea branch last year. That show explored her transition from sweeps of a loaded brush to watercolorlike stains. (This show was organized with the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation by John Elderfield, chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art and a consultant to the Gagosian.)

“Composing With Color” is a more focused, intimate event, with just 11 paintings on view. It finds Frankenthaler again in an in-between phase (or phases), moving from oil to acrylic and from linear, landscapelike elements to free-floating, amorphous blobs. Sometimes all of this is happening in a single painting; 1963’s “Gulf Stream” includes both muscular swipes of acrylic and thin, Rothko-esque patches of oil.

Frankenthaler also experimented by working on both sides of a canvas, flipping it over to reveal impressions of her studio floor and areas where the paint had seeped through. These works, known as her “floorboard” paintings, could get muddy (as in “Moat,” 1963).

In “Cool Summer” and “Hommage à M. L.,” from 1962, vertical and horizontal squiggles form loose clusters, separated from one another, and from the surrounding canvas, by the greasy-looking halos (the result of diluting oil with turpentine). In acrylic works a year later — “Pink Lady” and “Mountain Pool” — much has changed; the forms are spreading to the edges of the painting, the colors are bright yet revealing of the weave of the unprimed canvas, and the contours, though slightly feathery, have no halo.

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Works in Louis’s “Veils” series, at Mnuchin, were also made with Magna (an acrylic resin invented by a friend of Louis’s, the paint chemist Leonard Bocour). But the “Veils” works have a different impact; they respond to the centrifugal forces of Frankenthaler’s stain paintings with a strong, almost overpowering vertical thrust. And as the title of the series implies, they layer bright colors over one another and under silky washes of black or umber.

The result is a strange sensation of weightless accretion, as Greenberg recognized: “Louis spills his paint on unsized and unprimed cotton duck canvas, leaving the pigment almost everywhere thin enough, no matter how many different veils of it are superimposed, for the eye to sense the threadedness and wovenness of the fabric underneath. But ‘underneath’ is the wrong word. The fabric, being soaked in paint rather than merely covered by it, becomes paint in itself, color in itself, like a dyed cloth.”

In some ways, Louis’s immersive works seem to have more of an affinity with paintings by other Color Field artists like Newman and Rothko than they do with Frankenthaler’s stains; they evoke sublime, magisterial experiences of caves and grottos (as in the somber “Curtain,” with its stalactitelike points) or waterfalls (in the luscious “Tet,” on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art).

They also call attention to their technical precociosity, as Frankenthaler’s works rarely do — pulling the veil away just enough, at the edges, to reveal the complicated arrangements of colors beneath. (As Karen Wilkin observes in her essay in the Mnuchin catalog, Louis was reluctant to discuss his working methods. Diane Upright’s essays in his catalogue raisonné, the entirety of which is online, shed some light on them.)

A more thorough accounting of Color Field painting would probably have to start with Pollock and end with Stella, with Noland, Olitski, Rothko and Newman somewhere in between, alongside Frankenthaler and Louis (and Greenberg hovering over all of them, singing the swan song of the authoritarian critic). And it would have to contrast the starry-eyed expectations for the movement — the “what was possible,” in Louis’s words — with the reality of its displacement, before the 1960s had ended, by Pop and Minimalism.

But these two shows give us something much more candid and exhilarating: not a movement, exactly, but a moment of synergy among artists, critics and chemists.

Correction: September 20, 2014

An art review on Friday about “Helen Frankenthaler: Composing With Color: Paintings 1962-1963” at Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue and “Morris Louis: Veils” at Mnuchin Gallery on East 78th Street misidentified a participant in the organization of the Frankenthaler show. While the Frankenthaler estate was involved in an exhibition last year at Gagosian’s Chelsea branch, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, not the estate, was involved in the organization of this show. The review also reversed the paints used in areas of Frankenthaler’s painting “Gulf Stream.” The “muscular swipes” are acrylic and the “thin, Rothko-esque patches” are oil.

“Helen Frankenthaler: Composing With Color: Paintings 1962-1963” runs through Oct. 18 at Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison Avenue, near 76th Street; 212-744-2313, gagosian.com. “Morris Louis: Veils” runs through Oct. 18 at Mnuchin Gallery, 45 East 78th Street, Manhattan; 212-861-0020, mnuchingallery.com.

A version of this review appears in print on September 19, 2014, on page C26 of the New York edition with the headline: Color, Chemistry and Creativity. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Science |NYT Now

The Trials of Stem Cell Therapy

Stem Cells: Plenty of Hope, but Halting Progress

By KAREN WEINTRAUBSEPT. 15, 2014

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Embryonic stem cells, from a woman with Type 1 diabetes, were induced to turn into insulin-making beta cells, in hopes they could be implanted to cure the disease.

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Edgar Irastorza was just 31 when his heart stopped beating in October 2008.

A Miami property manager, break-dancer and former high school wrestler, Mr. Irastorza had recently gained weight as his wife’s third pregnancy progressed. “I kind of got pregnant, too,” he said. During a workout one day, he felt short of breath and insisted that friends rush him to the hospital. Minutes later, his pulse flatlined.

He survived the heart attack, but the scar tissue that resulted cut his heart’s pumping ability by a third. He couldn’t pick up his children. He couldn’t dance. He fell asleep every night wondering if he would wake up in the morning.

Desperation motivated Mr. Irastorza to volunteer for a highly unusual medical research trial: getting stem cells injected directly into his heart.

“I just trusted my doctors and the science behind it, and said, ‘This is my only chance,’ ” he said recently.

Over the last five years, by studying stem cells in lab dishes, test animals and intrepid patients like Mr. Irastorza, researchers have brought the vague, grandiose promises of stem cell therapies closer to reality.

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Edgar Irastorza, who had stem cells injected into his heart after a major heart attack, was break-dancing again a few years after the procedure.

Stem cells broke into the public consciousness in the early 1990s, alluring for their potential to help the body beat back diseases of degeneration like Alzheimer’s, and to grow new parts to treat conditions like spinal cord injuries.

Progress has been slow. The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, an early supporter of stem cell research, pulled much of its financial backing two years ago, saying that it preferred to invest in research that was closer to providing immediate help for Parkinson’s disease patients.

But researchers have been slowly learning how to best use stem cells, what types to use and how to deliver them to the body — findings that are not singularly transformational, but progressive and pragmatic.

As many as 4,500 clinical trials involving stem cells are underway in the United States to treat patients with heart disease, blindness, Parkinson’s, H.I.V., diabetes, blood cancers and spinal cord injuries, among other conditions.

Initial studies suggest that stem cell therapy can be delivered safely, said Dr. Ellen Feigal, senior vice president of research and development at the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the state stem cell agency, which has awarded more than $2 billion toward stem cell research since 2006 and is enrolling patients in 10 clinical trials this year.

In addition to continuing safety research, “now what we want to know is: Will it work, and will it be better than what’s already out there?” Dr. Feigal said.

Other hurdles include producing consistent, high-quality therapies, receiving federal approval and persuading insurers to cover the treatments.

Stem cells harvested from an embryo can turn into any of the body’s 200 cell types and, theoretically, live as long as the body does, unlike most cells. The basic idea of therapies using stem cells is simple: Inject them, for example, into a brain whose cells are dying, and replacement cells could presumably grow. The same would hold true for muscles, blood, organs and bone. In theory, stem cells can make repairs, lead to new growth and replace missing pieces.

But enthusiasm for stem cells sometimes outstrips the science. When Gov. Rick Perry of Texas had adult stem cells injected into his spine in 2011 for a back injury, his surgeon had never tried the procedure and had no data to support the experiment. A June review in The New England Journal of Medicine found that “platelet-rich plasma” stem cell therapies praised by a number of athletes worked no better than placebos.

And there’s no evidence that podiatrists promising better bunion care, dermatologists offering smoother skin or overseas medical spas peddling miracle cures are doing anything but putting patients at risk.

Such public chatter may imply that stem cell research is further advanced than it is, said Dr. Charles Murry, a co-director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Washington.

Slick websites advertising stem cell therapies leave the impression that such treatments are ready to use and that “the only problem is the evil physicians and government, who want to separate people from lifesaving therapies,” said Dr. Murry, a cardiovascular pathologist.

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There is much hope and enthusiasm behind stem cell therapy. However, the science still has catching up to do.

In fact, very few therapies beyond bone marrow transplants have been shown to be effective, he said. “Almost every one of these places are charlatans.”

Truth stretching happens in the lab, too.

This year researchers at the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, working with Japanese scientists, announced a breakthrough in the creation of powerful stem cells using a simple acid bath. But months later, amid allegations of scientific misconduct, the journal Nature retracted their papers. Questions were also raised about another Brigham stem cell researcher; the journal Circulation withdrew one of his papers, and The Lancet wrote an “expression of concern” about another paper by him.

“Nothing other than people’s skepticism can protect them” from the misuse of science, said Dr. David Scadden, a co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and an oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. “That’s true for any emerging technology of great potential; it will have its dark side.”

In 2001, President George W. Bush prohibited the use of federal funds to create new embryonic stem cell lines. At the time, destroying embryos was the only viable way to create stem cells, stimulating vigorous debate about the ethics of developing treatments with them.

In 2006, the Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka, who later won a Nobel Prize, discovered a way to turn adult cells back into stem cells. Today, scientists still use embryonic stem cells, which are considered the standard against which other stem cells are measured. But the field is much less dependent on them.

Understanding how stem cells work requires some basic biology.

Every cell in the body has the same set of DNA, although different genetic material may be active in, say, a nerve cell and a blood cell. Embryonic stem cells, derived from the first cells created after conception, can live as long as the body does, with the potential to make every other cell type in the body.

If the embryonic stem cell is at the top of every cell’s family tree, the first branches are different kinds of stem cells, like those that give rise to all blood, muscle or brain cells. Below those are even more restricted precursor cells — parents of all heart cells, for example.

Dr. Yamanaka’s cocktail allows researchers to reverse that progression, for instance turning a skin cell back into what’s called an induced pluripotent stem cell. Now, researchers can move the reverted cell forward, too, making, say, a precursor cell to inject into a beating heart.

But figuring out which type of cell best addresses a particular medical condition remains a major research challenge. For instance, injecting embryonic stem cells into a patient might solve the problem, might do nothing, or might seed a tumor called a teratoma. And it may be years before the outcome is obvious, as in the case of a paraplegic American woman who had stem cells from her nose implanted into her spine as part of a clinical trial in Portugal. The therapy failed, and eight years later, the woman had a tumorlike mass of nasal tissue surgically removed from the implant site, researchers reported this summer. Last week, cells created using Dr. Yamanaka’s method were tested in a person for the first time.

Beyond direct therapies, stem cells are also giving researchers new tools in the lab. Using cells created from patients with specific ailments, it’s possible to reproduce and study diseases in a dish.

Photo

Developing human embryos that could be used to harvest stem cells.

Kevin Eggan, also with the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, uses the technique to study amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Five years ago, he took skin cells from two women dying from the same genetic form of A.L.S. He turned these skin cells into stem cells and then into nerve cells, and noticed an electrical problem: The cells weren’t signaling to one another properly, which was probably causing the neural degeneration that characterizes A.L.S.

He replicated these nerve cells thousands of times and then tested thousands of drug compounds to see which would correct the electrical signaling problem. He found a candidate drug — an existing medication approved for epilepsy — that will be tested in A.L.S. patients as soon as the end of this year.

To be sure, a neuron in a dish is a far simpler thing than a disease in humans, with our many trillions of cells and interwoven systems.

“Part of the study is to now see whether the drug we discovered changes the same electrical problem in the intact patient” as it does in a nerve cell in a dish, Dr. Eggan said.

The whole process, he said, “is something that’s never been remotely possible before.”

Still to be determined is the most cost-effective way to deliver stem cells.

Scientists presumed, for instance, that a patient’s heart would repair itself better when injected with its own stem cells. But the study that Mr. Irastorza volunteered for at the University of Miami showed that patients fared just as well with someone else’s stem cells, and their bodies didn’t mount an immune attack against the cells. If supported by further studies, this means that future patients won’t need immune suppressants, and that stem cells can be made in large batches — and therefore more cheaply.

“That’s incredibly important, because that means off-the-shelf therapy is possible,” said Joshua Hare, founding director of the University of Miami’s Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute, who led the research trial.

Treatment for Mr. Irastorza, who received his own cells, began with the withdrawing of some of his bone marrow. Researchers took adult cells believed to be stem cells from the marrow and then inserted them through a catheter directly into Mr. Irastorza’s heart.

About a third of his left ventricle had been destroyed by his heart attack, which was attributed to a hereditary cholesterol problem. It’s impossible to know for sure whether the bone marrow cells’ descendants became heart muscle cells or if repairs were spurred some other way, but today, his doctors tell him his heart is one-third of the way back to normal.

It’s enough, Mr. Irastorza said, to allow him to dance again and to be the kind of father he wants to be: “My quality of life is like night and day to before the treatment.”

Why, then, are there not more success stories, given all the money poured into stem cell research?

“Progress comes in fits and starts,” said Dr. Scadden, of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, comparing the halting advances in the field to the “war on cancer” declared in 1971.

“No one would say it has fully delivered, but many thousands are alive today because of it and the smaller-scale, very real triumphs along the way. And those triumphs increase with every year,” he said. Using stem cells to routinely treat disease “will take time, but when we look back 20 years from now, I think medicine and human health will be transformed by it.”

Correction: September 20, 2014

An article on Tuesday about stem cell therapies misstated federal policy concerning research on embryonic stem cell lines. In 2001, President George W. Bush prohibited the use of federal research funds to create new embryonic stem cell lines. He did not prohibit all creation of new embryonic stem cell lines. (Privately funded research at the time was unaffected and President Obama lifted the ban in 2009). The article also referred imprecisely to the approach of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research toward stem cell research. While the majority of the foundation’s current funding is for research in areas besides stem cells, it has not stopped funding stem cell research entirely.

A version of this article appears in print on September 16, 2014, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Trials of Stem Cell Therapy. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Science

Taking a Health Hazard Home

By STEPHANIE STROMSEPT. 15, 2014

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A new study of a small group of workers at industrial hog farms in North Carolina has found that they continued to carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria over several days, raising new questions for public health officials struggling to contain the spread of such pathogens.

Although the bacterium, Staphylococcus aureus, is common and does not always cause illness, it can contaminate food and give rise to skin infections and respiratory diseases. Its methicillin-resistant variation, known as MRSA, has wreaked havoc on hospital systems, causing life-threatening complications.

The study focused on hog farms because previous research had found the highest incidence of S. aureus among workers in those settings.

As of 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, there were an estimated 75,309 serious infections from MRSA and an estimated 9,670 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Improved hospital procedures have helped reduce the incidence of infection, officials say, but researchers are now concerned about strains of S. aureus resistant to a variety of antibiotics like tetracycline, ampicillin and ciprofloxacin.

Among the 22 workers tested in the new study, reported in the Sept. 8 edition of the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 10 workers carried antibiotic-resistant strains of the bacteria in their noses for up to four days. Another six workers were intermittent carriers of the bacteria.

The 10 workers found to carry the bacteria persistently had strains associated with livestock that were resistant to multiple drugs, and one also carried MRSA.

Three more of the workers tested positive for strains of S. aureus that were not resistant to antibiotics. So in total, 86 percent of the workers in the study carried the S. aureus bacteria, compared with about one-third of the population at large, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One of the researchers, Christopher D. Heaney, a professor of environmental health sciences and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the study was the first in the United States to find that persistence of the bacteria in farm workers.

Previously, researchers had thought the bacteria would clear from the noses of hog workers within 24 hours. A study published last year of 29 veterinary students exposed to pig barns for just a few hours found that only 22 percent of them carried methicillin-resistant S. aureus, and none of them carried the bacteria 24 hours later.

European studies found similar patterns, leading researchers to conclude that carrying the bacteria in the nasal passage was probably a result of contamination from hand-to-nose contact or bioaerosols that passed quickly.

“This study, while small, is important because it shows the persistence of this bacteria for the first time in the U.S. setting,” Dr. Heaney said. “If workers continue to carry it over a period of days, they are going to be interacting with their families and in their communities, and the question for public health officials then is whether they pose any greater risk.”

Data for the study was collected by researchers from the University of North Carolina working with the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help, or Reach, which works to improve quality of life for low-income residents in eastern North Carolina, home to many industrial pig operations.

Correction: September 20, 2014

A picture on Tuesday with an article about workers at industrial hog farms who carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria over several days was published in error. The photograph showed workers at a pork processing plant, not at a hog farm.

A version of this article appears in print on September 16, 2014, on page D6 of the New York edition with the headline: Taking a Health Hazard Home. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Corrections

Quotation of the Day for Friday, September 19, 2014

SEPT. 18, 2014

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“The judge is brought down to the level of football players. You don’t normally see people talking about those two occupations in the same paragraph.”

ARTHUR D. HELLMAN, a judicial ethics expert, on the calls for an Alabama judge to face consequences in his career over domestic abuse allegations, as some N.F.L. players have.

Correction: September 20, 2014

The attribution for the Quotation of the Day on Friday, taken from an article about calls for a federal judge, Mark E. Fuller, to resign in the wake of his being charged last month with battery for assaulting his wife, misidentified the state where he is a district court judge. As the article correctly noted, it is Alabama, not Georgia.

A version of this quote appears in print on September 19, 2014, on page A2 of the New York edition with the headline: Quotation of the Day. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Judge Accused of Assaulting Wife Is Urged to Resign

By ALAN BLINDER and CAMPBELL ROBERTSONSEPT. 18, 2014

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Judge Mark E. Fuller, left, was charged with striking his wife last month.

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ATLANTA — The message from a furious public to the National Football League over the past few weeks has been clear: Charges of domestic violence should have serious consequences.

But in a sign that the outrage has expanded, a federal judge in Alabama on Thursday faced abrupt and potent pressure to resign after he was charged with striking his wife last month at a luxury hotel here.

Although District Court Judge Mark E. Fuller of the Middle District of Alabama was arrested and charged with battery in early August, it was only this week that several of his state’s top political figures demanded in rapid succession that he leave the bench.

Representative Terri Sewell, the sole Democrat representing Alabama in Congress, drew a direct connection between Judge Fuller’s future and the current storm over domestic violence in the N.F.L. “If an N.F.L. player can lose his job because of domestic violence,” she said in a statement, “then a federal judge should definitely not be allowed to keep his lifetime appointment to the federal bench.”

More critically, Judge Fuller, an appointee of President George W. Bush and a frequent target of Democratic ire, has also received harsh criticism from Republican members of Alabama’s congressional delegation, including the state’s two senators, who both called for him to resign.

Senator Richard C. Shelby said Wednesday that the judge had “lost the confidence of his colleagues and the people of the state of Alabama,” and Senator Jeff Sessions, of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Judge Fuller’s “unacceptable personal conduct violates the trust that has been placed in him.”

Earlier in the week, Representative Martha Roby, a Republican whose father is a senior judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which includes Alabama, raised the possibility that Judge Fuller could be vulnerable to impeachment.

The reaction was a remarkable display of how accusations of domestic violence are suddenly being viewed with new urgency far beyond the N.F.L.

“The judge is brought down to the level of football players,” said Arthur D. Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in judicial ethics.

“You don’t normally see people talking about those two occupations in the same paragraph.”

On the evening of Aug. 9, the judge’s wife, Kelli Fuller, dialed 911 from a Ritz-Carlton to report that he had assaulted her during an argument about her suspicions that he was engaged in an extramarital relationship with a law clerk. An Atlanta police officer wrote in an incident report that Mrs. Fuller had “visible lacerations to her mouth and forehead” when she opened the door of her hotel room, which the officer said smelled of alcohol.

“Mrs. Fuller stated when she confronted him about their issues, he pulled her hair and threw her to the ground and kicked her,” the police report said. “Mrs. Fuller also stated she was dragged around the room and Mr. Fuller hit her in the mouth several times with his hands.”

Judge Fuller, in his own interview with the police, said that he had reacted defensively after his wife hurled a drink glass toward him while he watched CNN.

The police reported that Judge Fuller’s stepson had told them that the episode was similar to past confrontations between Mrs. Fuller and her husband. Judge Fuller has entered a pretrial diversion program that requires counseling and could lead to an expungement of the misdemeanor charge.

“This incident has been very embarrassing to me, my family, friends and the court,” Judge Fuller said in a statement. “I deeply regret this incident and look forward to working to resolve these difficulties with my family, where they should be resolved.”

Within days of the arrest, the appeals court decided that Judge Fuller would not be assigned new cases while his was pending, and that other judges would assume his caseload.

Judge Fuller is not an obscure name in legal circles, having come under significant criticism for his handling of the trial and sentencing of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman in 2006. Mr. Siegelman, a Democrat, was convicted on seven counts, including bribery and mail fraud, in a case that many saw as politically motivated. That history, lawyers said, could be adding to the uproar Judge Fuller faces.

“People who have called for his resignation for years based on Siegelman can now join with politicians of the judge’s own political party,” said G. Douglas Jones, a former United States attorney in Birmingham. “It empowers a number of people to speak out.”

U. W. Clemon, a former federal judge in Alabama, said Judge Fuller appeared to have run afoul of his constitutional obligations.

“Judges don’t have lifetime appointments, contrary to the popular notion,” he said.

But even if a judge were to be convicted of a felony, there is no automatic removal from the bench, and removal is especially difficult for matters that do not directly relate to their legal work. Judge Fuller’s actions are subject to review by members of the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, whose options include a reprimand or a referral to the Judicial Conference of the United States, which consists of the chief justice of the Supreme Court and other federal judges.

“Judge Fuller is committed to the 11th Circuit process,” his lawyer, Barry A. Ragsdale, said on Thursday, referring to the circuit’s disciplinary procedures. “It’s ongoing; he intends to follow through with it, cooperate and provide information to them.”

In a later statement, he said that the episode had “been distorted, sensationalized and misrepresented to fit the political and personal agendas of those seeking to oust Judge Fuller.”

The judges reviewing the case, legal experts said, will be tasked with applying federal judicial conduct guidelines that allow for sanctions when behavior outside of the courthouse could have “a prejudicial effect on the administration of the business of the courts, including a substantial and widespread lowering of public confidence in the courts among reasonable people.”

Professor Hellman described the self-policing role of the judiciary as “a very difficult line to walk.” He added: “How can you maintain public confidence without yielding to the passions of the moment? There’s no formula for that.”

Congress can vote to oust judges, but such actions, like a 2010 decision to force a federal judge from Louisiana out of office, are rare.

Other incidents have led to scrutiny and shame, but not intervention by Congress. Earlier this year, for instance, a federal judge in Louisiana pleaded guilty to a drunken-driving charge.

In Alabama, lawyers wonder how Judge Fuller’s experience in the criminal justice system will reverberate through the courthouse in Montgomery if his docket is ever restored.

“Prosecutors may have just as much concern as defendants because they’re thinking, ‘I’m standing before a judge who was himself a criminal defendant,’ ” Mr. Jones said. “From a defendant’s perspective, they’re going to think, ‘Here’s a guy who spent the weekend in jail on his own problem.’ ”

Alan Blinder reported from Atlanta, and Campbell Robertson from New Orleans.

A version of this article appears in print on September 19, 2014, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Judge Pressed to Resign After Abuse Charges. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

To Save the Planet, Don’t Plant Trees

By NADINE UNGERSEPT. 19, 2014

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NEW HAVEN — AS international leaders gather in New York next week for a United Nations climate summit, they will be preoccupied with how to tackle the rising rate of carbon emissions. To mitigate the crisis, one measure they are likely to promote is reducing deforestation and planting trees.

A landmark deal to support sustainable forestry was a heralded success story of the last international climate talks, in Warsaw last year. Western nations, including the United States, Britain and Norway, handed over millions of dollars to developing countries to kick-start programs to reduce tropical deforestation. More funds are promised.

Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. The assumption is that planting trees and avoiding further deforestation provides a convenient carbon capture and storage facility on the land.

That is the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is wrong.

In reality, the cycling of carbon, energy and water between the land and the atmosphere is much more complex. Considering all the interactions, large-scale increases in forest cover can actually make global warming worse.

Of course, this is counterintuitive. We all learn in school how trees effortlessly perform the marvel of photosynthesis: They take up carbon dioxide from the air and make oxygen. This process provides us with life, food, water, shelter, fiber and soil. The earth’s forests generously mop up about a quarter of the world’s fossil-fuel carbon emissions every year.

So it’s understandable that we’d expect trees to save us from rising temperatures, but climate science tells a different story. Besides the amount of greenhouse gases in the air, another important switch on the planetary thermostat is how much of the sun’s energy is taken up by the earth’s surface, compared to how much is reflected back to space. The dark color of trees means that they absorb more of the sun’s energy and raise the planet’s surface temperature.

Climate scientists have calculated the effect of increasing forest cover on surface temperature. Their conclusion is that planting trees in the tropics would lead to cooling, but in colder regions, it would cause warming.

In order to grow food, humans have changed about 50 percent of the earth’s surface area from native forests and grasslands to crops, pasture and wood harvest. Unfortunately, there is no scientific consensus on whether this land use has caused overall global warming or cooling. Since we don’t know that, we can’t reliably predict whether large-scale forestation would help to control the earth’s rising temperatures.

Worse, trees emit reactive volatile gases that contribute to air pollution and are hazardous to human health. These emissions are crucial to trees — to protect themselves from environmental stresses like sweltering heat and bug infestations. In summer, the eastern United States is the world’s major hot spot for volatile organic compounds (V.O.C.s) from trees.

As these compounds mix with fossil-fuel pollution from cars and industry, an even more harmful cocktail of airborne toxic chemicals is created. President Ronald Reagan was widely ridiculed in 1981 when he said, “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.” He was wrong on the science — but less wrong than many assumed.

Chemical reactions involving tree V.O.C.s produce methane and ozone, two powerful greenhouse gases, and form particles that can affect the condensation of clouds. Research by my group at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and by other laboratories, suggests that changes in tree V.O.C.s affect the climate on a scale similar to changes in the earth’s surface color and carbon storage capacity.

While trees provide carbon storage, forestry is not a permanent solution because trees and soil also “breathe” — that is, burn oxygen and release carbon dioxide back into the air. Eventually, all of the carbon finds its way back into the atmosphere when trees die or burn.

Moreover, it is a myth that photosynthesis controls the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. Even if all photosynthesis on the planet were shut down, the atmosphere’s oxygen content would change by less than 1 percent.

The Amazon rain forest is often perceived as the lungs of the planet. In fact, almost all the oxygen the Amazon produces during the day remains there and is reabsorbed by the forest at night. In other words, the Amazon rain forest is a closed system that uses all its own oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Planting trees and avoiding deforestation do offer unambiguous benefits to biodiversity and many forms of life. But relying on forestry to slow or reverse global warming is another matter entirely.

The science says that spending precious dollars for climate change mitigation on forestry is high-risk: We don’t know that it would cool the planet, and we have good reason to fear it might have precisely the opposite effect. More funding for forestry might seem like a tempting easy win for the world leaders at the United Nations, but it’s a bad bet.

Nadine Unger is an assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at Yale.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: To Save the Planet, Don’t Plant Trees. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Art & Design |NYT Now

The Climax in a Tale of Green and Gritty

The High Line Opens Its Third and Final Phase

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Opening on Sunday, the High Line’s final phase, from 30th Street to 34th Street, blends eastward views of rising developments with Hudson River sunsets.

Critic’s Notebook

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

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If the newest, last stretch of the High Line doesn’t make you fall in love with New York all over again, I really don’t know what to say. Phase 3 of the elevated park, which opens on Sunday, is a heartbreaker, swinging west on 30th Street from 10th Avenue toward the Hudson River, straight into drop-dead sunset views. It spills into a feral grove of big-tooth aspen trees on 34th Street.

It’s hard to believe now that some New Yorkers once thought renovating the decrepit elevated rail line was a lousy idea. Not since Central Park opened in 1857 has a park reshaped New Yorkers’ thinking about public space and the city more profoundly. Like Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim museum in Spain, it has spread a dream, albeit largely a pipe dream, around the world: how one exceptional design — in this case, a work of landscape architecture — might miraculously alter a whole neighborhood, even a whole city’s fortunes.

Yes, at roughly $35 million, Phase 3, like the rest of the High Line, cost more per acre than probably any park in human history. With most city parks struggling to make ends meet, that kind of money is an inevitable source of resentment, notwithstanding that the High Line was, in significant measure, constructed and is almost exclusively maintained with private funds.

Photo

Urban choreography: A westward view from the third and final leg of the High Line, which opens to the public Sunday.

And, yes, nowhere is the city’s widening economic divide clearer to see than along this stretch of Manhattan’s West Side. The new phase loops around Hudson Yards, a 26-acre site becoming a multibillion-dollar architectural petting zoo, with super-tall office and apartment towers, at least one of them to rise higher than the Empire State Building.

But this third phase completes a kind of narrative, which the two earlier phases started, about 21st-century New York as a greener, sleeker metropolis, riven by wealth, with an anxious eye in the rearview mirror. It is a Rorschach test, signifying different things — about urban renewal, industry, gentrification, the environment — to different people. Occupying an in-between sort of space between buildings, neighborhoods, street and sky, the park makes a convenient receptacle for meaning. Neither an authentic ruin nor entirely built from scratch, a sign of runaway capital but also common ground, it is a modern landmark capitalizing on the romance of a bygone New York — the “real,” gritty city — a park born of the very forces that swept that city away.

Photo

A convenient receptacle for historical meaning: An eastward view of the colossi rising on Manhattan’s West Side, from a strip of the High Line that runs westward along West 30th Street.

Those new towers will make this section of the High Line very different from the earlier ones. The first two phases thread, at Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” elevation, through the meatpacking district and Chelsea; it’s the secret garden everybody knows. When Hudson Yards is finished, the development’s raised plaza, built atop the West Side rail depot, will be flush with the 30-foot height of the park, its skyscrapers forming a canyon of glass. The chaos and cranes will be catnip to kids; parents may weep to see another swath of industrial New York yield to luxury condominiums.

James Corner Field Operations designed the High Line with Diller Scofidio & Renfro. Mr. Corner calls the city around the park its “borrowed landscape.” The inimitability of those surroundings, and the park’s site-specific detailing, are major reasons the so-called High Line effect has been, like the Bilbao one, fool’s gold for so many other cities that have wanted to follow in New York’s footsteps.

Photo

The last stretch of the High Line, from 30th Street to 34th Street, will be completed and open to the public on Sunday.

Already choked by five million visitors a year, it’s a park custom-made for tourists — and for congenitally distracted New Yorkers who can’t take a walk without a destination, or sit on a bench and just stare at the sky. On the High Line you go someplace, or pretend to.

“You come up here and start looking,” is how the architect Ricardo Scofidio puts it. Toward that end, the park is choreographed to a fare-thee-well, as a varied sequence of paths, vistas, overlooks, plantings — episodes linked by an architecture of reclaimed hardwood benches, rusted rails and concrete planks.

Photo

The High Line already has five million visitors a year.

The designers avoided pressure to top themselves with the third section, and went the other way. A simple shift in orientation of the planks, where two benches crisscross, suffices to signal the High Line’s turn from north-south to east-west. The turn opens onto a wide plaza, the park’s new crossroad, with stairs connecting to Hudson Yards and what will be Hudson Park and Boulevard beyond.

A few benches have morphed into love seats, picnic tables and a seesaw. Elizabeth Diller, another of the architects, describes them as examples of tweaking the park’s “genetic code.” Beyond, a bridge over 11th Avenue supports a catwalk, flanked by low benches: a spot to see and be seen, which has always been the High Line’s raison d’être for millions of exhibitionists. From there, a section of rail bed is excavated, its girders and beams coated with silicone so children can climb them safely and crawl into nooks outfitted with periscopes. Then the path narrows, funneling into the northernmost section of Phase 3, the one skirting the Hudson River.

With more limited construction funds, the strategy in this part of the park was bare bones: Rusty tracks are filled in with bonded gravel to make a level path; timber dunnage is stacked to make a bleacher from which people can peer out at the water and over the rail yards; and nature is left to its own devices, giving visitors a glimpse of how the High Line looked before its makeover.

Less is more. I mentioned falling in love with New York all over again. The city opens up here, over the din of traffic and a helipad on 12th Avenue. Stripped bare, this section of viaduct, with its self-seeded landscape, looks scruffy, stubborn and wild. Evening primrose and Queen Anne’s lace stir in the breeze; trains creak in and out of the yard. Time suddenly reverses, and the sleek, soigné High Line evaporates.

“Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, no one will ever die,” Nabokov once wrote.

There, with the Hudson on one side and the skyline on the other, 360 degrees of New York unfold, suspended and infinite.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Climax in a Tale of Green and Gritty. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Estate Planning |NYT Now

Parents, the Children Will Be Fine. Spend Their Inheritance Now.

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Your Money

By RON LIEBER

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Once people hit retirement, they do not know how long they will live or how long their money will last. Still, the vast majority of retirees with children cling to an intention to leave something behind, even though many of those offspring have no expectation of receiving an inheritance.

This parental instinct might seem loving and generous, but there is another way to look at it. All of this devotion to the next generation may also be the height of foolishness. After a few decades of spending well into the six figures to rear and educate each child (and increasingly, years more backstopping young adults who are not quite financially independent), the parents probably ought to cease feeling this sense of obligation. Far better to spend their retirement money in the present on making meaningful memories with family members or on top-notch care that can help make aging more comfortable and graceful — in their own home if possible.

So how can we middle-aged kids convince our parents that they are officially off the hook?

First, consider the state of the generational disconnect. In an article that the journal The Gerontologist published last year, Kyungmin Kim and four colleagues took the unusual step of using polling data from both older Americans and their adult children about whether they expected to leave or receive an inheritance.

Ms. Kim, a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas, reported these results. Among the parents, ages 59 to 96, 86.2 percent expected to leave a bequest. But just 44.6 percent of the children, ages 40 to 60, thought they would get one. As for the most agonizing possible mismatch, where parents had no intention of leaving money behind but their children were expecting some, just 2.4 percent of the parent-child pairs had that disconnect.

Economists who study the motivation for inheritance intentions tend to probe two general areas. The first involves the moral obligation that parents feel toward their offspring, no matter how much support they may have given to them already. A subset of adult children seem to understand this innately. In Ms. Kim’s study, the adult children who were getting money from their aging parents while they were still alive had a higher expectation of getting more once they were dead than other adult children. Entitlement, anyone?

The other inheritance theory relates to exchanges. The assumption here is that parents wish to reward children who help them while they are still alive with an inheritance after they’ve died. They may even subtly (or not so subtly) dangle the prospect of a bequest in front of the children while they are still living to encourage the desired behavior or assistance. What Ms. Kim and her colleagues found, however, was that the adult children who were providing more support were less likely to expect an inheritance, even though their parents were indeed more likely to intend to give them one.

The message here would seem to be that aging parents are generous to a fault, if a bit manipulative on occasion. Adult children, meanwhile, accept their obligations to care for their parents with little expectation of receiving anything in return, though some who remain on the dole well into adulthood expect their parents to provide for them from the grave too.

The study’s yes-no questions, however, are relatively limiting. Many parents may be hoping to leave just a token amount, after all. Adult children might lie about their expectations to please the researchers, too. And besides, even if you expect nothing it doesn’t mean that you don’t badly want that very thing.

Photo

For more insight on this, I turned to an academic who has recently gotten into the business of trying to get older Americans to tap into their home equity during their retirement years. Christopher Mayer is an economist at Columbia Business School with an expertise in housing finance and policy. But he’s also the chief executive at a new reverse mortgage company called Longbridge Financial.

Reverse mortgages, which allow people 62 and older to tap some of the equity in their homes without having to make any loan payments until they die or move out, are roughly half as popular as they were before the housing crisis. Plenty of bad actors persuaded elderly homeowners to take lump sum loan distributions and plow them into inappropriate annuities or other financial products. As a result, protective adult children often come with their parents to discuss reverse mortgages with the person pitching the loan.

But who exactly are they protecting? “It’s hard to have more than three or four conversations with a family before the inheritance topic comes up,” Mr. Mayer said of the children who try to talk their parents out of tapping their home equity. “There are times when they say `Mom and Dad, that could be useful money for me.’”

Hoarding home equity certainly seems prudent. After all, the money tied up in a home can be awfully useful for people who suddenly need $200 a day for in-home care or to enter a nursing facility. Having that source of capital at hand means that they won’t be a financial burden to their children or have to take their chances with Medicaid. Anything left over can go toward an inheritance.

Mr. Mayer is fighting another fact, too, which is the significant percentage of people for whom real wages have not been rising much. “You can look at the next generation and wonder whether your kids will be in a position to do much better than you did,” Mr. Mayer said. So older people scrimp and save and aim to leave some money behind to try to give the younger set a boost.

Adult children who are trying to talk their parents out of a goal like this face long odds. “When people see their time horizon shrinking, they tend to focus on goals that are emotionally meaningful as opposed to more practical ones,” said Laura L. Carstensen, a psychologist who runs the Stanford Center on Longevity. “For the most part, it’s a focus on what or who matters most, and it’s family and family.”

So noted. But in the very least, the generational disconnect in expectations around inheritance need not exist. Ms. Kim chalks this up to the age-old problem of families having trouble initiating forthright conversations about money. And given that older people tend to be more old-fashioned about this sort of thing, it’s on us kids to declare our expectations and begin persuading our parents to worry less about having much of anything left over after they’re gone.

So here it goes. Mom and Dad: I expect nothing from you going forward except love, conversation, holiday meals and grandchild babysitting. Spend your money on your health and comfort and making the kinds of memories with close friends and family members that will last even as other, older ones, fade. Leave a bit aside for me or for charity if it truly makes you happy, requires no sacrifice or makes sense for tax reasons. But otherwise, spend what you have and have faith that the education and life skills you already gave me are more than enough.

I don’t want an inheritance, nor do I expect one. If any fellow adult children agree, go tell your parents the same thing this weekend.

Make the most of your money. Every Monday get articles about retirement, saving for college, investing, new online financial services and much more. Sign up for the Your Money newsletter here.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Children Will Be Fine. Spend Their Inheritance.. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Golden Opportunities

Tapping Into Homes Can Be Pitfall for the Elderly

Erika Baker says she was steered into a loan with high fees.

By CHARLES DUHIGG

Published: March 2, 2008

Erika Baker was 67 years old, divorced and worried about her job when a saleswoman showed up at her door in late 2006.

A reverse mortgage, the saleswoman explained, would give Ms. Baker instant access to hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in the value of her home. Such a loan, typically available only to homeowners in their 60s and older, would not have to be repaid until Ms. Baker moved out, the saleswoman said.

And if she never moved, the loan would be settled by selling her house after she died. “Your Home Pays You Cash!” read a brochure the saleswoman left behind.

Ms. Baker, who lives just outside San Diego, jumped at the offer, borrowing a little more than $200,000 through a company called Senior American Funding.

Then the problems began. The saleswoman pressured her to put the proceeds of the loan into complex investments that put her money out of reach, Ms. Baker said. She received only about $33,000 in cash, far less than she needed for her final years.

“I thought this was a safe way to make sure I’d never run out of money,” Ms. Baker said. “Then everything became so confusing. No matter where I turned for help, it seemed like things got worse.”

As the United States has become an older nation, reverse mortgages have grown into a $20-billion-a-year industry, with elderly homeowners taking out more than 132,000 such loans in 2007, an increase of more than 270 percent from two years earlier. In surveys, many borrowers say reverse mortgages have improved their lives and provided money they needed for retirement.

But hundreds of people who have sought reverse mortgages — in lawsuits, surveys and conversations with elder-care advocates — have complained about high-pressure or unethical sales tactics they say steered them toward loans with very high fees. Some say they were tricked into putting proceeds of their loans into unprofitable investments, while sales agents pocketed rich commissions.

“Every scam artist is getting into this business,” said Prescott Cole, an elder-care advocate who has worked with numerous reverse mortgage borrowers. “Because reverse mortgages are so complicated and give you money up front, years can pass before a senior realizes they’ve lost everything.”

Reverse mortgage lenders and brokers dispute those accusations, noting that the loans are heavily regulated and have helped hundreds of thousands of people.

“For a lot of elderly people, their only real asset is their house,” said Peter Bell, president of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association, a trade group. “A reverse mortgage is one of the few ways someone can access wealth that’s otherwise out of reach, while still living in their house for as long as they want.”

However, some borrowers find their wealth is still out of grasp, even after they have sought a reverse mortgage.

For example, Senior American Funding, the company that sold Ms. Baker her loan, has been sued three times in the last 13 months by clients who said they were misled. (Two of those cases were settled out of court for undisclosed sums. The third, filed by Ms. Baker in California state court last month, is pending.)

The company, which is licensed in 16 states, has originated mortgages worth more than $100 million since 2004.

“We never pressure clients,” said one of the company’s founders, Matthew Copley. “We just try to make sure they know about their options.”

However, a former sales agent, Hani Shenoda, and an agent who still works at the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution, said in interviews that managers at Senior American Funding encouraged them to pressure older homeowners into unwise loans and investments. The company disputes that assertion.

On Tuesday, after being contacted by a reporter, Senior American Funding announced it would no longer sell combinations of loans and investments like the one Ms. Baker had bought.

“When we make mistakes, we address them as responsibly as we can,” Mr. Copley added.

Ms. Baker owned a home worth about $600,000 but was living paycheck to paycheck, teaching child-rearing skills to low-income mothers for about $400 a week, when she was told in 2006 that her job was ending.

Months earlier, she had received a mailing from Senior American Funding, one of the hundreds of reverse mortgage companies that have emerged in the last several years. She scheduled an appointment with a saleswoman named Laurie Spencer. (Ms. Spencer no longer works at Senior American Funding, according to the company, and could not be located.)

“This saleswoman was so friendly and personable,” Ms. Baker said. “It was like God had sent me a friend to tell me how to survive.”

In the kitchen of the home, where Ms. Baker displays watercolors of dolphins and flowers she has painted, the saleswoman recommended a loan of $218,900, with a variable interest rate initially set at 6.57 percent.

Because reverse mortgages do not require borrowers to make immediate repayments, the interest charges are added to the debt every day, and the total amount owed grows over time. The saleswoman did not explain that within 10 years, Ms. Baker’s $218,900 loan could grow to as much as $400,000, Ms. Baker said. That debt would be paid by selling the house when she moved out or died.

The saleswoman also did not emphasize the high fees, Ms. Baker said. The loan’s fees cost her $17,100 — almost 8 percent of the total loan — which was paid out of the proceeds as soon as the loan closed.

To ensure that borrowers know such details, the federal government requires them to speak to an independent adviser before closing a reverse mortgage.

“We make potential borrowers talk to a counselor to make sure they understand what they are doing,” said Renée Shadel, an investigator with the Washington state attorney general’s office. “These can be great loans for some people, but only if they understand them.”

But critics say these counseling sessions are often brief and unhelpful. Some elderly borrowers, for instance, said their sessions lasted only 10 minutes, rather than the 60 to 90 minutes most counselors say they need to explain the loans.

Critics say some sessions are so brief because reverse mortgage companies are paying for the advice. One of the largest reverse mortgage counseling companies, Money Management International, often asks lenders to pay for providing advice to the lender’s clients, according to a company spokeswoman.

Money Management International, which is a nonprofit company, received $900,000 from reverse lenders last year. By regulation, counselors may not charge clients, though they are allowed to seek support from lenders.

“Anytime anyone gives a counselor a donation, they expect a quid pro quo,” said Buz Zeman, a reverse mortgage counselor with Housing Options Provided for the Elderly, a nonprofit group financed by government grants. “The point of counseling is to make people consider other options. That’s difficult if you feel like your next paycheck relies on convincing someone to get the loan.”

A spokeswoman for Money Management International says it seeks payments from lenders because government grants do not cover costs. The group’s counselors educate clients only about how loans work and do not recommend whether to proceed, she said, adding that the average time a counselor spends with a client is 58 minutes.

“There is no quid pro quo relationship with lenders,” a Money Management International spokeswoman, Catherine Williams, said in an e-mail message, adding that clients receive the same advice whether a lender pays for the session or not. “Funding is not tied to the outcome of any case.”

Even when lenders do not pay for counseling, it can still prove unhelpful. Ms. Baker’s counseling session, which was provided by an agency that does not accept money from lenders, lasted only about a half hour, and she walked away from the conversation still confused, she said.

Then the saleswoman persuaded her to sign the loan forms.

After the reverse mortgage closed, Ms. Baker used the proceeds to pay off a $68,000 traditional mortgage on her home, and she put about $33,000 into various savings accounts.

The remaining $100,000 was used to purchase, at the saleswoman’s urging, two deferred annuities — complex contracts that offer monthly income in exchange for a large lump-sum payment.

Those annuities prohibited Ms. Baker from gaining access to most of her funds for seven years unless she paid a stiff penalty.

Moreover, the annuities were likely to cost her money rather than pay her. Annuities are so complex that it is impossible to forecast precisely how much Ms. Baker will receive from them. However, based on recent payout data for similar products, she will probably earn about $520 a month from her annuities for the rest of her life. Ms. Baker’s mortgage debt is increasing by about $600 a month as the interest compounds on the money she used to purchase those annuities.

If Ms. Baker collected monthly income from her annuities for 10 years, she could receive $62,400. However, the debt she would owe over that period would likely increase by $79,000 to $300,000, depending on how her loan’s interest rate changed.

“Buying an annuity with the proceeds of a reverse mortgage is incredibly dangerous,” said Mr. Cole, a critic of reverse mortgages. Indeed, the practice is so troublesome that many annuity companies and states either tightly regulate or forbid it.

The salespeople at Senior American Funding were richly rewarded for their sales: the company received about $8,750 in commissions from Ms. Baker’s annuities, and $7,200 for processing her reverse mortgage.

Last month, Ms. Baker sued Senior American Funding, accusing it of fraud and elder abuse.

Mr. Copley, the Senior American Funding co-founder, defended the company’s actions and said Ms. Baker consented to every transaction.

However, Mr. Copley conceded that Ms. Baker was given documents with inaccurate numbers and that sales agents, including him, at the time did not fully understand the products they were selling her.

“If we made mistakes, I’m sorry,” he said.

Other lenders have also been accused of pushing older homeowners into unwise deals.

A survey released last year by AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, of more than 1,500 reverse mortgage borrowers found that almost one in 10 were urged to buy other financial products, like annuities.

Lawsuits against reverse mortgage companies, including the nation’s largest, Financial Freedom Senior Funding, contend that those firms helped pressure older Americans into bad investments.

In court filings, companies have denied those claims.

“Financial Freedom is not involved in selling annuities, does not recommend annuities, and won’t even allow borrowers to use reverse mortgage proceeds to buy an annuity at closing,” said Joel Schiffman, the company’s general counsel. “We only pursue a reverse mortgage when it is in a senior’s best interest.”

Some regulators and lawmakers, however, have said that more safeguards are needed, including giving borrowers more information about alternatives to reverse mortgages, disclosing fees more clearly and providing more government money to counselors, so that they do not seek payments from lenders.

New laws governing reverse mortgages are under consideration in Congress, though lobbyists for some lenders are mounting strong opposition, Congressional staff members say.

For Ms. Baker, now 68, such safeguards would come too late. She says she wakes up in the night, terrified there will not be enough money for food, gas or anything else. To cut her grocery bill, she stopped buying meat and fresh vegetables.

“Before, at least I knew my house was safe, and that no one would take that away from me,” she said. “Now, I don’t know if there is anything I can count on.”

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Startling Adult Friendships

There Are Social and Political Benefits to Having Friends

SEPT. 18, 2014

Inside

David Brooks

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Somebody recently asked me what I would do if I had $500 million to give away. My first thought was that I’d become a moderate version of the Koch brothers. I’d pay for independent candidates to run against Democratic or Republican members of Congress who veered too far into their party’s fever swamps.

But then I realized that if I really had that money, I’d want to affect a smaller number of people in a more personal and profound way. The big, established charities are already fighting disease and poverty as best they can, so in search of new directions I thought, oddly, of friendship.

Ancient writers from Aristotle to Cicero to Montaigne described friendship as the pre-eminent human institution. You can go without marriage, or justice, or honor, but friendship is indispensable to life. Each friendship, they continued, has positive social effects. Lovers face each other, but friends stand side-by-side, facing the world — often working on its behalf. Aristotle suggested that friendship is the cornerstone of society. Montaigne thought that it spreads universal warmth.

These writers probably romanticized friendship. One senses that they didn’t know how to have real conversations with the women in their lives, so they poured their whole emotional lives into male friendships. But I do think they were right in pointing out that friendship is a personal relationship that has radiating social and political benefits.

In the first place, friendship helps people make better judgments. So much of deep friendship is thinking through problems together: what job to take; whom to marry. Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.

Second, friends usually bring out better versions of each other. People feel unguarded and fluid with their close friends. If you’re hanging around with a friend, smarter and funnier thoughts tend to come burbling out.

Finally, people behave better if they know their friends are observing. Friendship is based, in part, on common tastes and interests, but it is also based on mutual admiration and reciprocity. People tend to want to live up to their friends’ high regard. People don’t have close friendships in any hope of selfish gain, but simply for the pleasure itself of feeling known and respected.

It’s also true that friendship is not in great shape in America today. In 1985, people tended to have about three really close friends, according to the General Social Survey. By 2004, according to research done at Duke University and the University of Arizona, they were reporting they had only two close confidants. The number of people who say they have no close confidants at all has tripled over that time.

People seem to have a harder time building friendships across class lines. As society becomes more unequal and segmented, invitations come to people on the basis of their job status. Middle-aged people have particular problems nurturing friendships and building new ones. They are so busy with work and kids that friendship gets squeezed out.

So, in the fantasy world in which I have $500 million, I’d try to set up places that would cultivate friendships. I know a lot of people who have been involved in fellowship programs. They made friends who ended up utterly transforming their lives. I’d try to take those sorts of networking programs and make them less career oriented and more profound.

To do that, you have to get people out of their normal hunting grounds where their guard is up. You also probably want to give them challenging activities to do together. Nothing inspires friendship like selflessness and cooperation in moments of difficulty. You also want to give them moments when they can share confidences, about big ideas and small worries.

So I envision a string of adult camps or retreat centers (my oldest friendships were formed at summer camp, so I think in those terms). Groups of 20 or 30 would be brought together from all social and demographic groups, and secluded for two weeks. They’d prepare and clean up all their meals together, and eating the meals would go on for a while. In the morning, they would read about and discuss big topics. In the afternoons, they’d play sports, take hikes and build something complicated together. At night, there’d be a bar and music.

You couldn’t build a close friendship in that time, but you could plant the seeds for one. As with good fellowship programs, alumni networks would grow spontaneously over time.

People these days are flocking to conferences, ideas festivals and cruises that are really about building friendships, even if they don’t admit it explicitly. The goal of these intensity retreats would be to spark bonds between disparate individuals who, in the outside world, would be completely unlikely to know each other. The benefits of that social bridging, while unplannable, would ripple out in ways long and far-reaching.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 19, 2014, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Startling Adult Friendships. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Science’s Sexual Assault Problem

By A. HOPE JAHRENSEPT. 18, 2014

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AS, Norway

I AM a scientist who studies plants. I like plants. I think about plants almost every hour of the day, and several hours of the night as well. I respect plants and I know there’s more to them than meets the eye, because I’ve been measuring their responses for 20 years. But it is rocks that were my first love and that continue to hold my heart captive. I love rocks with the unconditional love that you lavish upon a newborn baby.

I was a promising graduate student. I landed a position as a professor before I even started to write my dissertation. While I prepared to start my new job, I decided that I would begin by studying the brine that bleeds sideways within the rocks that underlie the inner Aegean region of Turkey. I dreamed of an ocean of hot water underneath Denizli Province, an ocean that occasionally sloshes out onto the surface to form ice-blue thermal springs. I had seen photographs, but I wanted to be there, to take samples and make measurements, to make it “my” field site. I was trying to find an intellectual home.

I was careful to do everything right. I started out modestly and cautiously, in the summer of 1996, with simple reconnaissance. I booked a spot within a chaperoned group tour and stayed in prearranged hotel rooms and ate bland meals with the 10 or so elderly Australian tourists who were my travel companions. We rode in an air-conditioned bus for days while I stared out the window and scribbled notes about the roads and cataloged photos of the landscape. I covered my head with a scarf and averted my eyes toward the sidewalk.

And then, one day in the Mediterranean resort town of Antalya, instead of going to the marketplace with the group, I sat in a cafe to study some maps. It was broad daylight when I began walking back to the hotel, and a stranger pulled me into a stairwell — and then did some other things. Perhaps an hour later I staggered out with his blood under my fingernails. I cannot describe what happened in a way you will understand, because I still do not understand it myself. I have been trying to understand it for almost 20 years.

My story is not unique. In July, Kathryn B. H. Clancy and her co-authors Robin G. Nelson, Julienne N. Rutherford and Katie Hinde published a survey of 666 field-based scientists in the journal PLoS One and reported that 26 percent of the female scientists surveyed had been sexually assaulted during fieldwork. Most of these women encountered this abuse very early in their careers, as trainees. The travel inherent to scientific fieldwork increases vulnerability as one struggles to work within unfamiliar and unpredictable conditions, but male respondents reported significantly less assault (6 percent).

I know several women with stories like mine, but more often it is the men of one’s own field team, one’s co-workers, who violate their female colleagues. The women surveyed by Dr. Clancy’s team stated that their “perpetrators were predominantly senior to them professionally within the research team.”

I suppose that I am writing this because I am still looking for someone to tell. It was no one’s job at my university to hear or care what had happened to me and I did not conceptualize it as a workplace issue, but rather as a personal one cloaked in fear, shame and silence. Dr. Clancy’s study also considers the availability of mechanisms by which to report incidents. The study found that only 18 percent of respondents who experienced assault said that they were aware of a way to report the assault.

I took my chances with the local police, and to be honest, I don’t know if it made matters better or worse. Each scientific field excursion needs an authority figure who has been clearly designated as someone whom women can tell.

I still love rocks and I still dream of the ancient Aegean seas, but for the better part of my career I’ve sealed myself into a locked laboratory, a small well-lit world that I can control. I still do fieldwork, but I do it in “safe” countries like Canada and Ireland — where similar things still happen. Where would I have ended up had I been the first person to report the isotope chemistry of the aquifers that underlie the ancient city of Hierapolis? I’ll never know, because I’ll never go back. I’ll take my chances elsewhere and let my male colleagues study the travertine deposits of the Menderes River Valley. I will continue to do everything right, and it will continue to keep me inadequately safe.

There is a fundamental and culturally learned power imbalance between men and women, and it follows us into the workplace. The violence born of this imbalance follows us also. We would like to believe that it stops short of following us into the laboratory and into the field — but it does not. I listen to my colleagues talk endlessly about recruiting more women into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines, and postulate what the barriers might be. Sexual assault is a pernicious and formidable barrier to women in science, partly because we have consistently gifted to it our silence. I have given it 18 years of my silence and I will not give it one day more.

In August, Lego began selling a set called “Research Institute” that features three female scientist minifigures: a paleontologist, an astronomer and a chemist. I am well qualified in two of those fields, and I am here to say that playing with a different set of dolls will not adequately prepare your daughters for a career in science. You must teach them, rather, to manage their dreams. They need to know that daring to act upon their dreams of science can be both a beautiful and a dangerous thing.

A. Hope Jahren is a professor of geobiology at the University of Hawaii and the author of a forthcoming memoir about her experience as a woman in science.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Science’s Sexual Assault Problem. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Fashion & Style |NYT Now

The Paleo Lifestyle: The Way, Way, Way Back

By ALEX WILLIAMSSEPT. 19, 2014

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Which is more primal, hard cider or a strawberry margarita?

Would a self-respecting cave man check his iPhone after 8 p.m., as long as he was wearing amber goggles?

What about that morning beauty regimen? Is coconut oil or castor oil more likely to restore that neo-Neanderthal glow to a woman’s cheek?

To the uninitiated, the much talked about Paleo diet — a nutritional regimen centered around pasture-raised meat, eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables, and nuts, in the spirit of our cave-dwelling forebears — may seem like another low-carb fad, the South Beach diet dressed up in a mammoth hide. But the time has passed when it could be written off as a fringe movement of shaggy-haired Luddites with an outsize taste for wild boar meatloaf.

Lately, Paleo has charged toward the mainstream, not only as a hugely popular diet (it was most-searched diet of 2013, according to the Google Trends Zeitgeist list), but also as a cave-man-inspired lifestyle that has spawned a fast-growing industry.

There are now glossy magazines on the Paleo lifestyle, conferences like Paleo f(x) that feature Paleo speakers and products, and vacation retreats like PrimalCon, billed as a five-day immersion into all things Paleo. There are Paleo books, action figures, beauty products, liquors, sleep masks, “barefoot” shoes and clothing, not to mention a glut of places that sell all manner of Paleo foods, including almond-flower macaroons, elk jerky and grainless granola bars.

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Michelle Tam, a Paleo lifestyle blogger and author, wears amber goggles to block the blue-spectrum light that she believes interferes with her circadian rhythms. She has adopted a primal sleep regimen and, of course, a Paleo-specific diet.

And, of course, Paleo has its celebrity followers. Actors like Megan Fox, Jessica Biel and Matthew McConaughey have reportedly taken the plunge.

“Ancestral health,” to use a term popular among Paleo followers, has gone mass. For them, Paleo is a way of life, a philosophical prism that colors everything from child rearing to sunscreen.

“It’s like taking the red pill or the blue pill in ‘The Matrix’; once you take the red pill, there’s no going back,” said Karen Phelps, a freelance writer in Ashland, Ore., referring to her conversion to the diet a few years ago, when a successful weight-loss push ended up becoming a total-life commitment. “It’s a total rabbit hole,” she said. “You start thinking, ‘Wait a minute, if I can fix my diet from ancestral health principles, what else can I fix through ancestral health principles?’ The list is endless.”

Certainly, trendy diets and quasi-religious zeal have long gone hand in hand, a point familiar to anyone who has ever endured a newcomer to, say, Atkins spinning out soliloquies on cheese omelets. Even so, such dieters tend to limit their enthusiasm to what’s on the plate. Who ever heard of an Atkins bedroom or an Atkins medicine cabinet?

But among the Paleo crowd, limiting one’s enthusiasm for Paleo to food is almost a rookie maneuver.

“Most people come to the Paleo diet thinking, ‘Hey, I can lose some weight,’ ” said Cain Credicott, the editor and publisher of Paleo Magazine, which sells at the checkout counter at Barnes & Noble, next to Bon Appétit.

“Everybody recognizes now that if you eat a squeaky clean diet but are still going to bed at 1 a.m. after watching TV, waking up at 6 a.m. with an alarm clock and slathering yourself with sunscreen, it doesn’t matter how good your diet is, you’re not going to be healthy,” Mr. Credicott said.

The basic theory of the so-called cave-man diet (which, at this point, you would virtually have to live in a cave to be unaware of) is that the modern diet, with its reliance on grains, starches, dairy and processed sugar, is not what the human body evolved to thrive on, and has contributed to widespread “diseases of civilization” like diabetes and heart disease.

That is why leaders of the movement like Loren Cordain and Robb Wolf advocate a “wild” diet that falls roughly in line with that of those Paleolithic forager ancestors who had not yet learned to cultivate and eat grain, much less pry the lid off a Pringles can.

Paleo is not without its critics. The science has been endlessly debated: Some nutritionists counter that verboten foods like grains, dairy and beans contain valuable nutrients, such as calcium, vitamins B and D, antioxidants and fiber. Elizabeth Kolbert, in a recent New Yorker road test of the diet, also pointed out that a meat-heavy diet has dire environmental implications. Still, proselytes often find that being Paleo quickly becomes a round-the-clock duty.

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A glossy magazine is dedicated to followers.

That was the experience of Michelle Tam, a former pharmacist in Palo Alto, Calif., who has adopted a primal sleep regimen.

It all started four years ago, when Ms. Tam, now 40, tried the Paleo diet to combat sluggishness and a stubborn muffin-top. But it didn’t end when she shed the extra pounds, as she sought to reorder the rest of her life along those ancestral principles. She quit her hospital job and transformed herself into something of a Martha Stewart of Paleo. Her recipe blog, Nom Nom Paleo, draws more than 100,000 page views daily. And she has a best-selling cookbook, a cooking app and action figure (though, oddly, it’s made of vinyl, not stone).

Ms. Tam also found herself altering her sleep to become more Paleo. As Mark Sisson put it in his seminal 2009 book, “The Primal Blueprint,” “our ancestors’ activity and sleep patterns were shaped by sunrise and sunset.” In the primal mind, the modern sleep ritual, interrupted by iPads and Jimmy Fallon, seems as unhealthy as a dinner of Fiddle Faddle with a Mountain Dew chaser.

That’s why Ms. Tam, a confessed television addict, decided to cut out all electronic devices after 8 p.m. If she has to check her iPhone, she wears amber goggles to block the blue-spectrum light that she believes interferes with her circadian rhythms. Next, she turned her bedroom into the equivalent of a Lascaux cave, removing all clocks (her two young sons serve as her morning alarm, she said) and installing blackout window inserts.

The move paid dividends. “I used to envy how my young two boys would fall asleep almost immediately after their heads hit the pillow,” Ms. Tam said. “At dawn, they’d bound out of bed, eager to tell us about the previous night’s dreams. Now, I sleep like them.”

She is not the only beneficiary. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported last fall, Indow Windows, the Portland, Ore.-based manufacturer of her window inserts, said traffic to its site tripled after Ms. Nam tweeted that she was “the happiest zombie on the planet” thanks to the company’s product.

But the lifestyle does not end when you roll out of bed. For many, the quest to rid one’s daily regimen of “poisonous things,” to use Mr. Sisson’s phrase, includes the morning beauty routine. Vita Pedrazzi, a former fashion manager at Harrods in London who now lives in the Canary Islands, said she used to be the sort of beauty obsessive who would slap on makeup to take out the trash, in part because of her sheepishness over her acne. But when the primal path inspired her to rid her bathroom of any product containing creepy-sounding chemicals, she adopted a zero-tolerance policy to any store-bought beauty product or cleanser — even soap.

As she proudly related on her blog, Vita Lives Free, Ms. Pedrazzi, 30, now makes her own beauty products, including a “no-poo” shampoo method (baking soda and apple cider vinegar, with a few drops of jojoba oil for the tips as a leave-in conditioner), body scrub made from olive oil and brown sugar, and toothpaste made with coconut oil and baking soda, with activated charcoal tablets for whitening. Although houseguests are shocked to find not so much as a canister of Ajax in her house — her horrified father-in-law recently raced out to the drugstore to buy toilet cleaner, instead of her white vinegar solution — she feels transformed.

“The new natural beauty routine totally transformed my skin, and I finally defeated my acne,” she said. “I was finally free.”

As the Paleo day continues, many find a way to keep at least a toe in the primal world at the office. A writer for Paleo Lifestyle Magazine recommends keeping a jar of virgin coconut oil in a desk drawer. (“If I end up getting an afternoon sugar craving, or just feel like I’m in need of a quick snack, I just take out my spoon and eat a glob.”)

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Michelle Tam's Paleo-specific diet.

That may be one reason so many are looking to blow off some primal steam at the gym after work.

The preferred form of exercise for the Paleo tribe is CrossFit, a high-intensity workout that stresses Cybex-equipment-free motions like lunges and burpees, and the high-protein, low-carb diet of neo-cave men. As John Durant, a founder of Paleo NYC and Barefoot Runners NYC, put it in his 2013 book, “The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health,” “other animals don’t ‘exercise’ so much as they either play or just do what is required to survive. Birds fly. Fish swim.”

In that spirit, humans are just supposed to do what humans naturally do — or did, 10,000 years ago — to stay fit: Climb. Run around. Hoist things. And never for unnaturally long stretches.

“Evolutionary fitness” die-hards can also partake in back-to-nature workout retreats like MoveNat started by a French exercise guru named Erwan Le Corre, where participants crawl up hillsides on all fours, play catch with rocks and balance on logs over creeks.

For those who spend their day rearing children, the primal impulse has made major inroads into parenting, too. Websites like The Primal Parent extol corn-syrup-free trick-or-treating, baby slings for “attachment parenting” and placenta-eating for new mothers.

Unstructured play, in particular, has become a cherished concept among Paleo-minded parents like Ms. Phelps, the Oregon devotee, who argued that “play is the method by which all mammals learn.”

Primal parents are the polar opposite of the hyper-achievement-oriented “Tiger Mom” model. Instead of overscheduling her 5-year-old daughter with cello lessons and science fairs, Ms. Phelps prefers to spend hours with her after school playing in a muddy creek near their house. “She loves bugs,” Ms. Phelps said. “She loves dirt. I think she’s going to be an entomologist.”

Mud. Rocks. Olive oil showers. From the outside, it may be easy to conclude that the Paleo lifestyle is all about hair shirts and self-denial. But Paleos, too, know how to rage after the workday is done, even though liquor, logically speaking, should be off limits. (It’s not as if hunter-gatherers were slugging back highballs). Dr. Cordain’s 85/15 rule of compliance allows for wiggle room, after all.

For those looking to raise a glass, anything grain-forward, like beer, is typically out. But Paleos tend to look the other way on vodka (particularly potato vodka, which is free from all associations with gluten) and 100 percent agave tequila (hey, it’s cactus).

Pinterest, in fact, is brimming with Paleo cocktail recipes, like the Paleo Strawberry Daiquiri, courtesy of Paleo Girl’s Kitchen. It is made with organic strawberries, ice, fresh-squeezed orange juice, rum and honey. It sounds pretty much like a regular daiquiri.

In movements that require at least a dash of faith, however, sometimes it’s the spirit that counts.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Way, Way, Way Back. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Fashion & Style |NYT Now

CrossFit Flirting: Talk Burpee to Me

By COURTNEY RUBINAUG. 8, 2014

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On a recent Saturday night at the Promenade Bar and Grill in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, the gym buddies Festa Radoni, 26, and Ellen Gerlach, 29, flexed their biceps, comparing muscles as a male friend snapped photos.

“She’s much better at pull-ups,” Ms. Gerlach said, laughing as she elbowed Ms. Radoni.

Over in the corner, Caley Crawford, 25, in five-inch green heels and polka-dot shorts, hung out in a squat position while sipping her drink and chatting. Nearby, two women in strappy dresses discussed how much weight they could snatch — move quickly from ground to overhead — with two men who, like everyone else at the evening’s event, do CrossFit, a popular high-intensity strength and conditioning program that involves lifting very heavy weights.

“Her grip strength is unreal,” one of the men said later of one of the women. He sounded awed.

It was a fairly tame evening out with Team Dangerous, a kind of interfraternity council for CrossFit gyms in the five boroughs, whose other events — among them a prom (dress code: “gym flair”) — have been known to devolve into tequila-fueled handstand push-ups in the street or a penalty of 10 burpees (an explosive squat-push-up-leap combination) for whoever stopped drinking beer. The two-year-old group’s stated mission is to combine fitness and social activities with charity, but it mostly functions to widen the dating pool for CrossFitters. “I don’t want to jinx myself, but that’s very true,” admitted a co-founder, Jason Lucking, 27, who is British, tall and flirtatious (he was, by several accounts, a credible copy of the Australian actor Chris Hemsworth at a CrossFit Halloween party).

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After all, at any one box — that’s CrossFit-speak for gym — there is a finite number of datable options and a point at which it gets embarrassing. Exactly how large a percentage of people in one class do you want wishing they could accidentally-on-purpose drop a stack of 25-pound plates on your foot?

Joshua Newman, until last month a co-owner of CrossFit NYC, which says it is the world’s largest box, recalled a member in the gym’s early days who was nicknamed “Welcoming Committee.”

“He’d put the moves on every single attractive female who walked through the door,” Mr. Newman said. “He basically got drummed out after the point where the first dozen women he dated would warn off the next bunch of arrivals.” He added: “I think probably the birth of Team Dangerous at some core level does come from this idea of not dating people you’re going to have to see all the time — like not dating someone in your apartment building. Every New Yorker knows not to do that.”

Perhaps more than disciples of any other type of exercise, people who participate in CrossFit can’t help being drawn to people who do the same. This is partly because the exercise regimen inspires near-religious devotion, along with in-jokes (Q: How do CrossFitters do aerobics? A: They lift weights faster.); partly because the program has so many types of moves and workouts that it can be discussed for hours (“You need someone who understands the pain,” said Sharifa Dunn, 26, a Reebok CrossFit Fifth Avenue member who was at the bar night); and partly because so many adherents follow the Paleo diet, which forbids grains and dairy.

At a beach share last summer, “two guys went to Costco and bought the equivalent of a cow, a pig, 50 fish and a lot of tequila, and we knew everybody would be happy with that,” said Julie Clow, 39, who frequently attends Team Dangerous events. (Tequila is considered the most Paleo-friendly of all alcohol.) Then there’s aesthetics.

Ms. Radoni explained: “I go out, and regular guys will be like, ‘You’re big.’ They think I look muscular next to them. But CrossFit guys enjoy that.” As a photographer took a group picture after a special July 4 Team Dangerous workout, a petite CrossFitter named Stacey Pearson, 34, called out, “Are my traps in the picture?” She jokingly adjusted her tank top to show the muscles, and the group laughed.

Kasey Heil, 26, a coach at CrossFit NYC whose boyfriend is another CrossFitter, added: “We look good from the outside, but then you have to touch our callused and ripped hands, look at our constantly bruised collarbones, and deal with the ab mat butt raspberry.” The aforementioned raspberry is from where the tailbone hits the mat during situps. As for the calluses, some CrossFitters discreetly check for those (earned by gripping pull-up bars, barbells and kettlebells) the way other single people may look for wedding rings.

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From left, Kyna Chang, Fran Fontan and Evander Holyfield Jr. at a Team Dangerous event.

Being social is in CrossFit’s DNA. Classes begin with introductions and sometimes include goofy icebreaker questions and exercises that require partners. In timed workouts, of which there are many, an unwritten rule is that those who have finished encourage those who are still sweating.

At the bar night, Carolyn Rebeck, 31, told of a particularly grueling workout CrossFitters usually do on Memorial Day for charity: a mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats (no typos on the numbers here), followed by another mile run. This year, Ms. Rebeck finished dead last.

“The entire gym came out and cheered for me when I was running,” she said, getting a little choked up. “Why wouldn’t I want to hang out with these people?”

At the July 4 workout, participants were randomly assigned to groups of four: two men, two women. “For single guys, it’s great,” said Steve Mosier, 35, who is dating someone who works at his gym. “If you can sweat around someone, and they’ve got chalk all over their clothes” — chalk helps when gripping the bar — “and still think that they’re attractive, when they clean up, you’re like, ‘Wow.’ ” The event was sold out, so people elbowed one another for space during the warm-up: high knees, push-ups, planks, squats. (A popular CrossFit T-shirt slogan: “Our warm-up is other people’s workout.”)

James Quigley, head coach of EVF Performance, an Upper East Side gym that offers CrossFit, yelled, “If you’re sweating on a stranger today, that’s how we get comfortable and we make friends!”

Team Dangerous has no membership fee, but a co-founder, David Blair, 41, who works in finance, said that may change with plans — still sketchy — to expand beyond New York. “We have a goal and a belief that people who do fitness are very likely to be like-minded,” he said. “Why wouldn’t they fit in with us?”

The group is popular enough that it now has a competitor, the two-month-old Barbells & Boroughs. And with the success of Team Dangerous, in exercise and matchmaking, comes with new challenges.

“A lot of these guys are young, and so they break up and then you have to deal with that,” Mr. Blair said. “We’re bringing people together, so obviously relationships are going to happen.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 10, 2014, on page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: Talk Burpee to Me. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Case for Delayed Adulthood

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Gray Matter

By LAURENCE STEINBERG

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ONE of the most notable demographic trends of the last two decades has been the delayed entry of young people into adulthood. According to a large-scale national study conducted since the late 1970s, it has taken longer for each successive generation to finish school, establish financial independence, marry and have children. Today’s 25-year-olds, compared with their parents’ generation at the same age, are twice as likely to still be students, only half as likely to be married and 50 percent more likely to be receiving financial assistance from their parents.

People tend to react to this trend in one of two ways, either castigating today’s young people for their idleness or acknowledging delayed adulthood as a rational, if regrettable, response to a variety of social changes, like poor job prospects. Either way, postponing the settled, responsible patterns of adulthood is seen as a bad thing.

This is too pessimistic. Prolonged adolescence, in the right circumstances, is actually a good thing, for it fosters novelty-seeking and the acquisition of new skills.

Studies reveal adolescence to be a period of heightened “plasticity” during which the brain is highly influenced by experience. As a result, adolescence is both a time of opportunity and vulnerability, a time when much is learned, especially about the social world, but when exposure to stressful events can be particularly devastating. As we leave adolescence, a series of neurochemical changes make the brain increasingly less plastic and less sensitive to environmental influences. Once we reach adulthood, existing brain circuits can be tweaked, but they can’t be overhauled.

You might assume that this is a strictly biological phenomenon. But whether the timing of the change from adolescence to adulthood is genetically preprogrammed from birth or set by experience (or some combination of the two) is not known. Many studies find a marked decline in novelty-seeking as we move through our 20s, which may be a cause of this neurochemical shift, not just a consequence. If this is true — that a decline in novelty-seeking helps cause the brain to harden — it raises intriguing questions about whether the window of adolescent brain plasticity can be kept open a little longer by deliberate exposure to stimulating experiences that signal the brain that it isn’t quite ready for the fixity of adulthood.

Evolution no doubt placed a biological upper limit on how long the brain can retain the malleability of adolescence. But people who can prolong adolescent brain plasticity for even a short time enjoy intellectual advantages over their more fixed counterparts. Studies have found that those with higher I.Q.s, for example, enjoy a longer stretch of time during which new synapses continue to proliferate and their intellectual development remains especially sensitive to experience. It’s important to be exposed to novelty and challenge when the brain is plastic not only because this is how we acquire and strengthen skills, but also because this is how the brain enhances its ability to profit from future enriching experiences.

With this in mind, the lengthy passage into adulthood that characterizes the early 20s for so many people today starts to look less regrettable. Indeed, those who can prolong adolescence actually have an advantage, as long as their environment gives them continued stimulation and increasing challenges.

What do I mean by stimulation and challenges? The most obvious example is higher education, which has been shown to stimulate brain development in ways that simply getting older does not. College attendance pays neural as well as economic dividends.

Naturally, it is possible for people to go to college without exposing themselves to challenge, or, conversely, to surround themselves with novel and intellectually demanding experiences in the workplace. But generally, this is more difficult to accomplish on the job than in school, especially in entry-level positions, which typically have a learning curve that hits a plateau early on.

Alas, something similar is true of marriage. For many, after its initial novelty has worn off, marriage fosters a lifestyle that is more routine and predictable than being single does. Husbands and wives both report a sharp drop in marital satisfaction during the first few years after their wedding, in part because life becomes repetitive. A longer period of dating, with all the unpredictability and change that come with a cast of new partners, may be better for your brain than marriage.

If brain plasticity is maintained by staying engaged in new, demanding and cognitively stimulating activity, and if entering into the repetitive and less exciting roles of worker and spouse helps close the window of plasticity, delaying adulthood is not only O.K.; it can be a boon.

Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University, is the author of “Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page SR12 of the New York edition with the headline: The Case for Delayed Adulthood. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Fashion & Style |NYT Now

Amy Cuddy Takes a Stand

By DAVID HOCHMANSEPT. 19, 2014

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Amy Cuddy strikes a winning pose outside her Harvard office.

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The TED conference has made a star of many unlikely people, but perhaps no one more so than Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist and associate professor at Harvard Business School, whose talk promises personal transformation with nary a pill, cleanse or therapy bill.

Her rousing presentation in 2012 at TED Global on what she calls “power poses” is among the most viewed TED Talks of all time (it is No. 2; Sir Ken Robinson’s “How Schools Kill Creativity” is No. 1). In its wake, Ms. Cuddy, 42, has attracted lucrative speaking invitations from around the world, a contract from Little, Brown & Co. for a book to be published next year, and an eclectic army of posture-conscious followers.

Elementary school students, retirees, elite athletes, surgeons, politicians, victims of bullying and sexual assault, beleaguered refugees, people dealing with mental illness or physical limitations (including a quadriplegic): they have all written to say that adopting a confident pose — or simply visualizing one, as in that last case — delivers almost instant self-assurance.

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Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are

Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, who calls herself “a huge fan,” invited Ms. Cuddy to develop teaching materials for her Lean In initiatives. David Gergen, a director of the Kennedy School for Public Leadership at Harvard, says her technique “gives people a taste of what it feels like to be the president striding into the cabinet room.”

Power posing showed up twice in Dilbert comic strips, and Planters nuts and Secret deodorant have developed ad campaigns around it.

Lauren Bush Lauren had Ms. Cuddy speak to the staff of Feed, her nonprofit organization. “Power posing is the physical answer to mindfulness,” Ms. Lauren said.

The actress Allison Williams credited Ms. Cuddy’s research with guiding her portrayal of Marnie on “Girls,” albeit via reverse power posing. “Marnie generally has her shoulders forward, inched slightly up, and her arms folded as a line of defense,” Ms. Williams said.

People tend to do curious things after hearing Ms. Cuddy speak. Last May in Las Vegas, she told an auditorium of 1,500 Zappos employees that “making yourself big” for just two minutes before a meeting changes the brain in ways that build courage, reduce anxiety and inspire leadership. “We tested it in the lab — it really works,” she said on stage. In the lobby afterward, clusters of men and women in blue Zappos T-shirts stretched out like starfish and stood like Wonder Woman (hands on hips, legs wide) to try out the effects.

The next night at a downtown youth shelter, Ms. Cuddy clicked through images of Oprah, Freddie Mercury and Usain Bolt in expansive mode. “Let your body tell you you’re powerful and deserving, and you become more present, enthusiastic and authentically yourself,” she said to young people gathered on shabby couches. Once again, limbs lengthened, spines straightened, shoulders drew back. A guy in board shorts and an arm cast pounded his chest like King Kong.

At 5-foot-6, Ms. Cuddy, who is slender and blonde with sky-blue eyes, isn’t very big herself, even in heels. A classically trained ballet dancer and former Deadhead who once worked as a roller-skating waitress, she might come across as fragile were it not for her tendency to keep her arms away from her sides and a hand on her hip or a chair.

Women in particular often shrink in public settings, she said. The men in her Harvard classes shoot their arms straight up to answer questions, while the women tend toward a bent-elbow wave. Along with touching the face or neck or crossing the ankles tightly while sitting, “these postures are associated with powerlessness and intimidation and keep people back from expressing who they really are,” Ms. Cuddy said.

Photo

“Let your body tell you you’re powerful and deserving, and you become more present, enthusiastic and authentically yourself,” Amy Cuddy said.

Ms. Cuddy is fortunate to be expressing anything at all, which is partly why this research is so meaningful to her. Her origin story, now familiar to the 20-million-plus viewers of her TED Talk, begins in earnest after she was thrown from a car during an accident at age 19. She was a student at University of Colorado and doctors told her she would never walk again. The brain injury she sustained caused her I.Q. to drop by two standard deviations, and though she worked her way back to academic excellence at graduate school at Princeton, she suffered acutely from impostor syndrome.

She was so afraid to give her first-year talk as a Ph.D. student, she told her adviser she was quitting. Instead, she feigned confidence all the way to the faculty of Harvard Business School. “Fake it till you become it” is her rallying cry.

Ms. Cuddy’s research on stereotyping focused on how people’s snap judgments about warmth, competence and trustworthiness affect whom they date, hire, envy and disparage. She once wrote a Harvard Business Review article titled, “Just Because I’m Nice, Don’t Assume I’m Dumb.” More recent work considers what body language signals to our own brains.

She developed the idea for power posing in 2009 after hearing the former F.B.I. agent Joe Navarro describe how police investigators would sometimes make themselves feel imposing by using a bigger chair during interrogations. She decided to test the science behind it.

A paper that she wrote in 2010 with the researchers Dana R. Carney and Andy J. Yap found that lab participants who spent two minutes in a room alone doing high-power poses (feet on the desk with fingers laced behind the head, let’s say) increased testosterone levels by about 20 percent and lowered the stress hormone cortisol by about 25 percent.

Numerous well-documented follow-up studies by other prominent scholars showed significant effects on behavior outcomes. In one, students assigned to adopt upright, open postures were more likely to pick seats at the front of a classroom and saw themselves as better leaders than their slouched counterparts. In another, baseball pitchers who evinced more submissive postures were perceived by competitors to be less competent.

Preliminary findings in a new study by Ms. Cuddy and Maarten Bos show that stretching out comfortably in a desk chair at a large monitor causes subjects to act far more assertively than those hunched up over tablets and smartphones.

To scroll through the email Ms. Cuddy has received since TED — and preferably on a sizable desktop computer — is to understand how much impact a simple idea, well delivered, can make: Nervous test-takers say they’re now getting A’s; coaches have turned Bad News Bears teams into champions.

Mac McGill watched Ms. Cuddy’s talk in a homeless shelter in Santa Barbara, Calif., and started to “do the Wonder Woman” for two minutes every morning. On the way to a job interview, he “took over the whole bench” at a bus stop, helping him gain confidence, he said.

Mr. McGill got the telemarketing gig (“a terrible job but it’s work,” he said) and continued with daily poses. “The first day after training, I made sales on two out of three calls — literally in my first 15 minutes,” Mr. McGill said. “My boss told me he worked half a week before his first sale.”

Ms. Cuddy has more than 20 fieldwork studies and collaborations in development. At the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering, computer scientists at the Game Innovation Lab are developing video games to see if power posing before exams reduces math anxiety. Ms. Cuddy’s team is collaborating with a Tufts Medical School professor to see whether the technique can prevent new surgeons from becoming too anxious and “choking” during ophthalmology procedures. An economist is assessing power posing as a tool to help impoverished women in Nairobi make better financial decisions.

Ms. Cuddy, who recently remarried, occasionally struggles to maintain the buoyancy she advises is merely a tweak away. When her TED Talk began going viral, she wanted to “go and hide,” she said, particularly after her then 10-year-old son, Jonah, discovered nasty comments posted under her video. “I bet she made good money to say sit up straight,” one said.

She told Jonah, “YouTube is now dead to us.” But the trolls could not keep her down. “I don’t care if some people view this research as stupid,” she said. “I feel like it’s my duty to share it.”

Her work never rests. Lately, she has been examining the differences between subjects who sleep sprawled out versus those who curl up. Early results show that people who arise with arms and legs extended feel brighter and more optimistic than the 40 percent who start the day in a fetal position.

But there’s hope. “If you wake in fetal pose,” Ms. Cuddy said, “open yourself up like the guy on the subway taking up too much space, and soon enough you’ll feel like a happy warrior.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Vote of Confidence for Her Stance. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Travel |NYT Now

36 Hours: Central Park, New York

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOMSEPT. 17, 2014

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36 Hours in Central Park, New York

36 Hours in Central Park, New York With its endless trails, hidden nooks, museums and nearby night spots, Central Park is that rare tourist destination that is also a pleasure ground for locals. Video Credit By Fritzie Andrade, One Glass Video, Kriston Lewis, Will Lloyd and Oresti Tsonopoulos on Publish Date September 17, 2014. Image CreditPiotr Redlinski for The New York Times

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In 1859, the sanctuary of undulating hills, bridges and lakes taking shape in the heart of Manhattan was described in The New York Times as a “noble work, which is so clearly destined to be the honor and delight of New York.” Neglect and decline in the 1970s threatened to snuff out that utopian vision of Central Park, but today, after years of restoration, it is verdant and flourishing — the rare tourist destination that is also a pleasure ground for locals. Depending on the season and cycle of life, one might be sunbathing or ice skating, sailing a toy boat or rowing a real one, listening to Shakespeare, rock music or the call of one of 230 species of birds.

Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, Central Park’s more than 840 acres are dappled with sculptures, monuments and fountains that tell of the nation’s explorers, artists and heroes, both real and imaginary: Columbus, Beethoven, Duke Ellington, John Lennon, Alice in Wonderland. The park is also home to tennis and handball courts, croquet greens, a carousel, a castle, a marionette theater, a zoo and more than a dozen playgrounds. It is crisscrossed by horse-drawn carriages and ringed by astronomically priced apartments, luxury hotels and world-class museums. Yet despite its being a kind of three-ring circus, there are quiet trails and hidden nooks, museums and bars within and around the park where one can find a more tranquil, timeless Manhattan.

FRIDAY

1. Boldface Names | 2 p.m.

Download the free Central Park app to your smartphone. Its map allows you to pinpoint where you are, but more interesting, the app has audio clips of celebrities like Jerry Seinfeld welcoming you to the Mall and Literary Walk, or Whoopi Goldberg discussing Wollman Rink (where she learned to ice skate). Then, pretend you’re an aristocrat in a Merchant Ivory film and step through one of the iron gates near 105th Street and Fifth Avenue into the formal, six-acre Conservatory Garden (an official quiet zone), which is divided into three garden styles: French, Italian and English (don’t miss the Frances Hodgson Burnett Memorial Fountain with its sculptures of a boy and a girl, created in honor of the author of “The Secret Garden”). In the Italian garden, climb the stairs to the tall wisteria pergola, sit on a shady bench and observe the 12-foot-tall jet fountain below. Now is a good time to press play on the app and listen to Candice Bergen discuss the gardens. Before leaving, look down. At your feet, medallions etched into the ground carry the names of the original 13 states, including New York.

2. Museum Mile | 3:30 p.m.

Exit the gardens onto Fifth Avenue through the soaring wrought-iron Vanderbilt Gate, made in Paris in 1894 and once part of Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s mansion at 58th Street. Walk south. You’re on the aptly named Museum Mile. Already been to heavyweights like the Guggenheim? Stop by less-trafficked spots like the Museum of the City of New York, where you’ll find vestiges of the city’s younger days, including handwritten manuscripts by Eugene O’Neill. And Neue Galerie celebrates 20th-century German and Austrian art and design with works by Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann, Vasily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Then enjoy a lobster roll ($18) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s self-service roof garden cafe and martini bar (open May through late fall) as the sun sets.

Photo

A view of the park from One57, looking north.

3. A Southern Crawl | 7:30 p.m.

Begin at the Plaza. Skip the buzzy Champagne Bar in the lobby and climb the stairs to the more-intimate Rose Club, where plush chairs are ideal for tête-à-têtes. A Bloody Mary costs $23, but, hey, you can almost make a meal of free nuts and popcorn. (The Plaza Food Hall is a great place to pick up pastries and other treats to eat in the park.) Then walk west along Central Park South, peeking into the windows of bars to see what pulls you in, from Whiskey Park to the bar at South Gate restaurant in the J W Marriott Essex House. When you reach the Museum of Arts and Design, go to the ninth floor, where you’ll find Robert, a restaurant and lounge with live piano music and views of Columbus Circle. Across the street at the Time Warner Center, there are several bars (as well as upscale shops), including the lovely Center Bar, where you’ll also find live piano music, and Landmarc, which serves casual bistro fare. For something fancier, there’s the Stone Rose Lounge.

SATURDAY

4. Early Birds | 7:30 a.m.

Bird lovers know that daybreak is magical. In the Ramble, a more-than-30-acre maze of boulders and trees, birding is especially rewarding because, according to the Central Park website, it is on the Atlantic Flyway, a migration route that birds follow in the spring and fall. Walking its shady arteries, it’s easy to forget that this section of the park is almost entirely man-made: The running water in the stream can be turned on and off as if it were coming from a kitchen faucet. (For those who get a later start, the Central Park Conservancy offers kits with binoculars, maps, a guidebook and sketching materials that you can borrow at no charge at Belvedere Castle.)

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36 Hours

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5. Into the Woods | 10 a.m.

On sunny days, Central Park’s vast lawns are littered with people. If you want a little peace — and a hint of the Adirondacks — head to the North Woods. Be cautious, though, as this is a dense, somewhat isolated area. That said, the 90 acres of wildflowers, trees, a ravine and a waterfall will transport you to the country. These woodlands (another bird-watching hot spot) were designed to block out the skyline and drown out the noise of the city with babbling water. And do they ever. Little wonder that the magician David Copperfield has said that this is the place he comes to when he longs to disappear. Look, too, for the nearby Pool, where ducks nestle on the banks beneath weeping willows. Farther north, at the Harlem Meer, you can try catch-and-release fishing.

6. Tasting Menu | 1 p.m.

When you’re in the mood for lunch, walk over to Trump Hotel Central Park and into Nougatine, the elegant yet “casual sister” of Jean-Georges. Here Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s prix fixe lunch menu ($38) changes with the seasons but includes an appetizer, main course like seared salmon with corn pudding and cherry tomato salad or organic chicken with ricotta gnocchi, market carrots and Roma beans, and dessert (the warm chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice cream is a must).

7. Star Gazing | 3 p.m.

Next door to the American Museum of Natural History is a giant orb in a glass box: the Rose Center for Earth and Space. There are few better ways to spend a rainy day than gazing at star clusters and galaxies during a show at the Hayden Planetarium, or watching an Imax nature film at the museum. Speaking of the museum, stop by to marvel at dinosaur fossils and to lie down (go ahead, it’s O.K.) beneath the 94-foot-long, 21,000-pound fiberglass model of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling.

8. All That Jazz | 7:30 p.m.

In the warmer months you can catch a concert or play in Central Park or at nearby Lincoln Center, but any time of year is right for listening to jazz while eating finger-licking fare like a catfish po’boy ($16) or bourbon-glazed barbecued baby back ribs ($24) at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. Part of Jazz at Lincoln Center, this intimate club has table and bar seating, all facing a vertiginous wall of windows behind the performers — almost close enough to touch — that lets in Central Park and the twinkling city lights.

9. Nightcap in the Park | 10 p.m.

The recently reopened, more rustic (think hunting lodge) Tavern on the Green at 67th Street and Central Park West has an oval indoor bar and fireplace to take the chill out of fall nights. For something more romantic, visit the outdoor bar where, beneath glowing lanterns, you can sip drinks with unromantic names inspired by boroughs, including the Staten Island (Cacao Prieto rum, coconut water, pineapple and lime juice; $14).

Photo

Rowing near the Loeb Boathouse.

SUNDAY

10. Waffles and Row Boats | 9:30 a.m.

Yes, it’s rife with tourists. But do visit the Loeb Boathouse, which opened in 1954. How often can one tuck into maple waffles with warm berry compote ($16) and watch rowboats glide by on a lake — in the middle of Manhattan? After brunch, go for a row (boats are $15 an hour; $20 cash deposit required).

11. Walk on the Wild Side | 11:30 a.m.

Tigers, red pandas, and an emerald tree boa are a few of the creatures you may encounter at the Central Park Zoo. There are penguin and sea lion feedings, a children’s zoo with a nature trail, and a 4-D theater. The zoo is tiny compared with the Bronx Zoo, but it is a delightful way to end a weekend in an urban jungle.

w. 110th St.

Harlem Meer

North Woods

5

Conservatory Garden

1

french garden

italian garden

english garden

The

Pool

Vanderbilt Gate

The Loch

2

Museum of the

City of New York

north

meadow

w. 96th St.

Jacqueline

Kennedy

Onassis

Reservoir

Neue Galerie

w. 86th St.

Central Park

Metropolitan

Museum of Art

great

lawn

Rose Center

for Earth & Space

7

Belvedere Castle

American Museum

of Natural History

The Ramble

w. 77th St.

4

Loeb

Boathouse

The

Lake

10

literary

walk

Tavern on

the Green

9

Central Park Zoo

11

W. 66th st.

e. 66th st.

Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola

Time Warner Center/

Landmarc/

Stone Rose Lounge/Per Se

Nougatine/

Trump Hotel

Central Park

6

8

Plaza Hotel/

Rose Club

3

Robert/

Museum of

Arts & Design

South Gate/

Essex House

Whiskey Park/

Trump Parc

THE DETAILS

1. Conservatory Garden, Central Park.

2. Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue; mcny.org. Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue, neuegalerie.org. Metropolitan Museum of Art Roof Garden Café and Martini Bar, 1000 Fifth Avenue; metmuseum.org/visit.

3. The Rose Club, The Plaza, Fifth Avenue at Central Park South; theplazany.com. Robert, 2 Columbus Circle; robertnyc.com. Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, theshopsatcolumbuscircle.com.

4. The Ramble, Central Park.

5. North Woods, Central Park.

6. Nougatine, Trump Hotel Central Park, 1 Central Park West; jean-georges.com.

7. American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street; amnh.org. Rose Center for Earth and Space, 81st Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions.

8. Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, 10 Columbus Circle; jazz.org/dizzys.php.

9. Tavern on the Green, Central Park West and 67th Street; tavernonthegreen.com.

10. Loeb Boathouse, Central Park; enter at East 72nd Street and Fifth Avenue; thecentralparkboathouse.com.

11. Central Park Zoo, between East 63rd and 66th Streets; centralparkzoo.com.

LODGING

The Mark (Madison Avenue at 77th Street; themarkhotel.com), in a 1920s landmark building, has one of the slickest lobbies around: with a bold black-and-white-stripe floor and modern art, you’ll feel like you’re checking into a gallery; from $725.

The Excelsior Hotel (45 West 81st Street; excelsiorhotelny.com), steps from the park, the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and the American Museum of Natural History, is in the midst of the action — yet still feels like a low-key, local apartment building; from $159.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page TR10 of the New York edition with the headline: 36 Hours in Central Park, New York. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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SundayReview | Opinion

Too Young to Die, Too Old to Worry

By JASON KARLAWISHSEPT. 20, 2014

Inside

Photo

Leonard Cohen, 1988. Last year he announced he would start smoking again when he turned 80.

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THIS weekend, the singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen is celebrating his 80th birthday — with a cigarette. Last year he announced that he would resume smoking when he turned 80. “It’s the right age to recommence,” he explained.

At any age, taking up smoking is not sensible. Both the smoker and those who breathe his secondhand smoke can suffer not only long-term but acute health problems, including infections and asthma. And yet, Mr. Cohen’s plan presents a provocative question: When should we set aside a life lived for the future and, instead, embrace the pleasures of the present?

At the start of the 20th century, only one-half of 1 percent of the United States population was over the age of 80. Industrialized nations were preoccupied with infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and polio. Many of the common diseases of aging, such as osteoporosis, were not even thought of as diseases.

Today, 3.6 percent of the population is over 80, and life is heavily prescribed not only with the behaviors we should avoid, but the medications we ought to take. More than half of adults age 65 and older are taking five or more prescription medications, over-the-counter medications or dietary supplements, many of them designed not to treat acute suffering, but instead, to reduce the chances of future suffering. Stroke, heart attacks, heart failure, kidney failure, hip fracture — the list is long, and with the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ plan to prevent Alzheimer’s disease by 2025, it grows ever more ambitious.

Aging in the 21st century is all about risk and its reduction. Insurers reward customers for regular attendance at a gym or punish them if they smoke. Physicians are warned by pharmaceutical companies that even after they have prescribed drugs to reduce their patients’ risk of heart disease, a “residual risk” remains — more drugs are often prescribed. One fitness product tagline captures the zeitgeist: “Your health account is your wealth account! Long live living long!”

But when is it time to stop saving and spend some of our principal? If you thought you were going to die soon, you just might light up, as well as stop taking your daily aspirin, statin and blood pressure pill. You would spend more time and money on present pleasures, like a dinner out with friends, than on future anxieties.

When it comes to prevention, there can be too much of a good thing. Groups like the United States Preventive Services Task Force regularly review the evidence that supports prevention guidelines, and find that after certain ages, the benefits of prevention are not worth the risks and hassles of testing, surgeries and medications. Recent guidelines for cholesterol treatment from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, for example, set 79 years as the upper limit for calculating the 10-year risk of developing or dying from heart attack, stroke or heart disease. They also suggest that, after 75, it may not be beneficial for a person without heart disease to start taking statins. But that doesn’t mean everyone follows this advice.

Besides, isn’t 75 the new 65? Age seems a blunt criterion to decide when to stop. Is Mr. Cohen at 80 really 80? In his mid-70s, he maintained a rigorous touring schedule, often skipping off the stage. Maybe 80 is too young for him to start smoking again.

Advances in the science of forecasting are held out as the answers to these questions. Physician researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and at Harvard, have developed ePrognosis, a website that collates 19 risk calculators that an older adult can use to calculate her likelihood of dying in the next six months to 10 years. The developers of ePrognosis report that frail older adults want to know their life expectancy so they can not only plan their health care but also make financial choices, such as giving away some of their savings.

Even more revolutionary is RealAge, a product of Sharecare Inc. that has quantified our impression that as we age, some of us are really older, while others are younger than the count of their years. It uses an algorithm that assesses a variety of habits and medical data to calculate how old you “really” are.

Websites like these can be a convenient vehicle to disseminate information (and marketing materials) to patients. But complex actuarial data — including its uncertainties and limitations — is best conveyed during a face-to-face, doctor-patient conversation.

We are becoming a nation of planners living quantified lives. But life accumulates competing risks. By preventing heart disease and cancer, we live longer and so increase our risk of suffering cognitive losses so disabling that our caregivers then have to decide not just how, but how long, we will live. The bioethicist Dena Davis has argued that emerging biomarkers that may someday predict whether one is developing the earliest pathology of Alzheimer’s disease (like brain amyloid, measured with a PET scan) are an opportunity for people to schedule their suicide. Or at least start smoking.

Our culture of aging is one of extremes. You are either healthy and executing vigorous efforts to build your health account, or you are dying. And yet, as we start to “ache in the places where [we] used to play,” as one of Mr. Cohen’s songs puts it, we want to focus on the present. Many of my older patients and their caregivers complain that they spend their days going from one doctor visit to the next, and data from the National Health Interview Survey suggests one reason. Among older adults whose nine-year mortality risk is 75 percent or greater, from one-third to as many as one-half are still receiving cancer-screening tests that are no longer recommended.

I don’t plan to celebrate my 80th birthday with a cigarette or a colonoscopy, and I don’t want my aging experience reduced to an online, actuarial accounting exercise. I recently gave a talk about Alzheimer’s disease to a community group. During the question and answer session, one man exclaimed, “Why doesn’t Medicare pay us all to have dinner and two glasses of wine once a week with friends?” What he was getting at is that we desire not simply to pursue life, but happiness, and that medicine is important, but it’s not the only means to this happiness. A national investment in communities and services that improve the quality of our aging lives might help us to achieve this. Perhaps, instead of Death Panels, we can start talking about Pleasure Panels.

Jason Karlawish is a professor of medicine, medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page SR5 of the New York edition with the headline: Too Young to Die, Too Old to Worry. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Exercising the Right to Rant

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Gail Collins

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Congress is gone. But not forgotten.

O.K., to be honest, they’re totally forgotten. The members of the House and Senate have been out of session for about a day and the nation has already totally wiped them from the memory bank.

Oh, America’s Legislature, we hardly knew ye.

Before decamping to go home and run for re-election, our elected representatives voted to fund the government and go to war. Pretty much ran the table on their constitutional responsibilities. Normally, that sort of thing would draw attention. “Before I came here I imagined that when war was discussed, everybody would be at their desk,” complained Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, to a rather vacant chamber.

To be fair, Congress actually just gave a vague grunt of acceptance to one part of President Obama’s strategy to combat ISIS. (It could have gone further, but you know how much these guys like leaving everything up to the president.) And it averted a government shutdown by decreeing that we will keep on spending whatever it is we’ve been spending for a couple more months.

“You don’t get perfect,” said Representative Steny Hoyer, the House minority whip.

We were all actually aware of that.

On the plus side — bipartisan! Republicans and Democrats joined together in what was the legislative version of a deep, depressive sigh.

“The bill before us is an imperfect bill.”

“I don’t think we have a better option.”

They were very possibly right. In theory, Congress is supposed to figure out how much money every federal department needs, and then pass some spending bills. However, the system’s been collapsing under partisan pressures for years. The last time it was normal to start every fiscal year with the money plan totally under control, air travel was glamorous.

And when it came to the Obama plans for Syria and Iraq, the members were faced with a rather distressing series of options: A) Give up on the whole idea of doing something about ISIS. B) Come up with their own idea for doing something about ISIS. Or C) Just stay in Washington and keep talking.

While the stay-and-talk option might have been the most honorable path, I think I speak for many Americans in saying that I cannot imagine them coming up with anything helpful. But we should at least reserve the right to rant. They went home! Early!

Let’s discuss, just for the heck of it, a couple of the things Congress did not feel constrained to do before they went back to meet the voters.

What about corporate inversion — the growing tendency of American companies to magically transform themselves into foreign entities in order to avoid paying American taxes? The White House asked Congress to pass a fairly simple plan to deal with that. No dice. Defending his members on Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner said that fixing inversion is way too low a bar and what they should really do is reform “the whole tax code.”

People, how many of you think Congress is going to fix the whole tax code? It’s like saying you aren’t going to open a door because the public really deserves to see the house levitated.

Speaking of the House, its Ways and Means Committee, which is run by Boehner’s very own party, did come up with a sweeping plan for tax reform this year. The speaker promptly made fun of it. (“Blah, blah, blah, blah.”) Having completely and thoroughly slammed the door on any discussion of the bill, he told reporters this week that he was “shocked at how little I have heard about it.”

Then there’s political intelligence. (I know, I know. Stop snickering.) Reformers want to avert the possibility that congressional insiders might pass on insider information to research firms that counsel investors. For instance, imagine there’s a change coming in government payment rates for health insurers. If, say, a Senate staffer leaked that information, it might cause the stock in said firms to soar before the world is informed of the new policy. Which actually happened last year.

Congress had tackled the problem as part of a bill barring members from insider trading that passed in 2012. The House majority leader, Eric Cantor, stripped the provision out at the last minute. Perhaps you remember Eric Cantor. He was the guy who got tossed out of office in a primary in which his totally unknown opponent claimed Cantor was a creature of crony capitalism.

A bipartisan trio of House members is now trying to revive the idea. Louise Slaughter of New York, one of the sponsors, says a bill’s been introduced. But although there is no end to the marvelous achievements people are predicting for the after-election lame-duck session. Congress reforming itself is not one of them.

“Not a snowball’s chance in hell,” said Slaughter.

Cantor is now a brand-new member of the investment banking industry. With $1.4 million in signing bonuses.

O.K., that was the rant. I feel much better.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Exercising the Right to Rant. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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U.S. |NYT Now

Pope Sets Tone in U.S. by Naming Inclusive Prelate as Chicago Archbishop

By LAURIE GOODSTEINSEPT. 20, 2014

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Bishop Blase J. Cupich, left, will succeed the conservative Cardinal Francis George, who is ill with cancer, as archbishop of Chicago on Nov. 18.

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In his first major appointment in the United States, Pope Francis named Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Spokane, Wash., on Saturday to be the next archbishop of Chicago, replacing a combative conservative with a prelate whose pastoral approach to upholding church doctrine is more in keeping with the pope’s inclusive tone.

Bishop Cupich, 65, will be installed on Nov. 18 as the ninth archbishop of Chicago, succeeding Cardinal Francis George, 77, who is ill with cancer. Two years ago, at 75, Cardinal George offered his resignation, as is the church tradition at that age.

Pope Francis’ choice of prelate for Chicago was highly anticipated as a sign of the direction he intends to set for the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. Chicago is the nation’s third-largest Roman Catholic diocese, with 2.3 million members, and its archbishops have often taken leading roles in the American hierarchy.

Bishop Cupich appeared at ease in a news conference on Saturday morning in Chicago, deftly handling questions about whether he would call himself a “moderate” and what message Francis may be trying to send with the selection.

“His priority is not to send a message but a bishop, and that’s what he’s sending you, someone to serve the needs of people,” Bishop Cupich said. “I think he sent a pastor, not a messenger.”

Very early into his prepared remarks he shifted into Spanish, the language of a growing percentage of Chicago’s Catholics, saying they should think of him as “your brother” and relating that his relatives were immigrants. He gave a strong push, in English, for immigration reform, saying, “It’s time for political leaders to put aside their own agendas and to take up this issue.”

Bishop Cupich (pronounced SOO-pitch) has been chairman of the bishops’ committee responding to the sexual abuse crisis, and has at times been unusually forthright in criticizing the church’s record on abuse. He took over the Spokane Diocese in 2010 after it was sued by abuse victims and declared bankruptcy, and it is still embroiled in a legal case over how the bankruptcy was handled.

He spoke out against a referendum on same-sex marriage in Washington State in 2012. But even before Francis became pope, Bishop Cupich and he sounded much alike. Bishop Cupich emphasized care for the poor and dispossessed, and on hot-button moral issues he employed a tone that emphasized respect and dignity for gays and dialogue with those who disagreed with church teaching.

In a pastoral letter before the vote on same-sex marriage, Bishop Cupich wrote that “the Catholic Church has no tolerance for the misuse of this moment to incite hostility towards homosexual persons or promote an agenda that is hateful and disrespectful of their human dignity.”

Some liberal Catholic commentators and groups, like Call to Action, which is based in Chicago, praised the appointment, while some conservatives were a bit wary. They recalled an experience in 2011 when priests and seminarians said Bishop Cupich had urged them not to join protesters planning to hold prayer vigils outside clinics that perform abortions.

In a brief interview on Saturday immediately after the news conference, Bishop Cupich was asked whether his approach to ministry is to emphasize dialogue over confrontation. He said the church should be willing to confront social issues head-on, but also to listen to opponents.

“I’ve learned from people on both sides of any issue,” he said. “So both are needed: dialogue and, I think, confrontation at times. I’m not afraid of that.”

The Rev. John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement, “Having first met Bishop Blase Cupich when I was an 18-year-old backpacker in Europe and he was a seminarian in Rome, I can say with confidence that, as archbishop of Chicago, he will be a pastorally dedicated, theologically astute and visionary leader in line with Francis’ transformative papacy.”

Cardinal George, who has served in Chicago since 1997, led the American bishops’ conference in confrontations with the Obama administration over abortion, same-sex marriage and religious liberty. His immediate predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, a prominent liberal, was also elected president of the American bishops’ conference and galvanized a generation of church leaders to take stands on such issues as economic justice, nuclear weapons and the environment.

As the bishops were gearing up to sue the Obama administration over the contraception mandate in the health care overhaul, Bishop Cupich called for a “return to civility” in an essay he wrote in the Jesuit magazine America.

He wrote that “outrage” over the mandate was “understandable,” and that religious freedom truly was at risk, but warned against letting the situation escalate lest it “bring lasting harm to both the church and the nation, and even worse, disproportionately affect the least among us.”

Blase (pronounced BLAZE) Joseph Cupich was born in Omaha on March 19, 1949, one of nine children and a grandson of Croatian immigrants.

He has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, studied in Rome and holds a doctorate in sacred theology from The Catholic University of America in Washington.

He was ordained to the priesthood in 1975 for the Archdiocese of Omaha and worked in parishes and a Catholic high school in Omaha; served as rector of a Catholic college in Columbus, Ohio; and in 1998 was made bishop of Rapid City, S.D., by Pope John Paul II.

After 12 years, Pope Benedict appointed him bishop of the Diocese of Spokane, and he was installed on Sept. 3, 2010.

Bishop Cupich said in the news conference that he was “overwhelmed and very surprised” when he learned of the appointment during a phone call about 10 days ago from the pope’s ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Bishop Cupich told reporters that the populous Chicago Archdiocese was an “enormous upgrade, so to speak,” from Spokane, which has about 100,000 Catholics.

He said the Spokane Diocese bankruptcy, which was initiated by his predecessor, had left “some issues that need to be resolved.” The diocese has filed a malpractice suit against the law firm that handled the bankruptcy, accusing the firm of failing to use a strategy that would have prevented more sexual abuse claims from being filed. So far, about 230 claims have been filed, according to The Spokesman-Review newspaper.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said it had been disappointed by Bishop Cupich’s record on sexual abuse in Spokane and his role as chairman of the bishops’ committee on child protection.

In an interview with The New York Times in June, Bishop Cupich said he had been reading Francis’ writings on redistribution of wealth, collaborative leadership and leading by listening.

“I’ve always believed in collaboration and consultation, but I guess I’m listening more intently to the voices of people who might not have had the kind of hearing that they should have — people of diverse backgrounds, people with differing opinions,” Bishop Cupich said.

His lifestyle is in keeping with the frugal example that Francis has been setting for bishops. Bishop Cupich said that in Spokane he lives in a room at the seminary and does not own any furniture.

At the news conference on Saturday, Cardinal George, who is undergoing an experimental cancer treatment and is a survivor of polio, expressed confidence in his successor and “relief” that Francis is allowing him to step down.

But the famously intellectual cardinal also shared his mixed feelings. “At one moment you’re the center of everything, and at the next moment,” he said, “you’re not.”

Mitch Smith contributed reporting from Chicago.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Pope Sets Tone in U.S. by Naming Inclusive Prelate as Chicago Archbishop. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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U.S. Bishops Seek to Match Vatican in Shifting Tone

By MICHAEL PAULSONJUNE 12, 2014

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Catholic Bishops chatted during a coffee break at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on Thursday in New Orleans.

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NEW ORLEANS — They are rethinking what kinds of houses they live in, and what kinds of cars they drive. They are wondering whether, in anticipation of the 2016 presidential election, they need to rewrite their advice to parishioners to make sure that poverty, and not just abortion, is discussed as a high-priority issue. And they are trying to get better about returning phone calls, reaching out to the disenchanted and the disenfranchised, and showing up at events.

Fifteen months into the pontificate of Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States find themselves unsettled in ways large and small, revisiting both how they live and what they talk about in light of the new pope’s emphasis on personal humility and economic justice.

Over the last several days as the bishops gathered here for their semiannual meeting, they grappled with the substantive and stylistic implications of a still-new papacy.

After several of their colleagues faced recent criticism for lavish houses, several bishops said in interviews that they were paying new attention to their own spending, mindful of the pope’s decision to eschew the apostolic palace for a small suite in a Vatican guesthouse, and aware that their parishioners are concerned about how the church uses its money.

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From left, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Houston; Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky.; and Msgr. Ronny Jenkins.

“They have a justifiable demand that we not spend extravagantly on ourselves, but that we share those goods with others, and he’s really forced that issue,” said Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Spokane, Wash. Bishop Cupich noted that he owns no furniture and lives in a room at a seminary, and he said he is re-evaluating his diocesan budget to make sure it emphasizes assisting the poor.

Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson said he, too, thinks about Francis as he shapes his agenda, which, he said, now focuses on poverty, homelessness, addiction, violence and immigration. And, he said, he is mindful of his own spending.

“We have to have a home, have to have a car that’s not going to fall apart in the middle of the desert, but within reason we have to live simply,” he said. “The Holy Father is such a model of trying to live with simplicity, and that is working its way into the lives of bishops.”

Spending was clearly on the minds of the church’s leaders, some of whom live in grand homes and preach in landmark churches built decades ago as testaments to Catholicism’s acceptance and success after a period of discrimination in the United States. Asked a general question about the pope’s impact on bishops, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, responded with a defense of the upscale hotel where the bishops were meeting, the Hyatt Regency New Orleans.

“We have to meet at a hotel that’s big enough to hold us,” he said. “We have to meet at a hotel that’s big enough to allow media to attend.”

The shift in tone at the Vatican has been disquieting for some bishops. The archbishop of Indianapolis, Joseph W. Tobin, recently told a group of theologians, “What I’ve seen is how disruptive Pope Francis has been within the hierarchy of the United States,” according to The National Catholic Reporter. “I was talking to a couple of brother bishops a while back and they were saying that bishops and priests were very discouraged by Pope Francis because he was challenging them.”

But the bishops are clearly watching with interest. “Priests and bishops are paying close attention to what he’s saying, and reading it,” John Garvey, the president of the Catholic University of America, said in a telephone interview. Mr. Garvey said he was struck by how often church officials mentioned to him something the pope had only just said. “I don’t remember hearing that in the past about Benedict and John Paul.”

The business of the bishops’ meeting — presentations about clergy sexual abuse and assistance to victims of flooding in the Philippines, as well as about the church’s battles against same-sex marriage and in favor of religious freedom — was planned months ago.

But on Thursday morning, the bishops also spent several hours discussing poverty and the relationship between marriage and economic well-being, both topics chosen to reflect the pope’s priorities. Helen M. Alvaré, a law professor at George Mason University, told the bishops that the Francis papacy was “an inflection point in the life of the church.”

The bishops’ willingness to adapt their agenda to reflect that of Francis will most likely be tested next year, when they must decide how to update their quadrennial guide for Catholic voters. The American bishops, almost all of them appointed by Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict, are a conservative group who have emphasized opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion in recent years and have been unable to reach a consensus on economic issues. On Wednesday, they began a discussion, which will continue through next year, about whether and how to incorporate the priorities of Francis in the 2016 version of the guide, which is called “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.”

“We need to keep talking about the hot-button issues that we’ve been talking about for a long time, but not just those issues,” Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond of New Orleans said in an interview. He added, “We don’t, perhaps, at times talk enough about the poor, about the economy, and we don’t perhaps talk enough about reaching out to those with disabilities, those whose voices are not heard.”

Archbishop Aymond said he has tried to address this in one small way himself, by returning phone calls and letters, and by reminding himself, “people shouldn’t always have to go through several others to get to us.”

Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the gathering that, if the voters’ guide is not revised, “it will not include anything of the teachings of Pope Francis.” And Bishop Robert W. McElroy, an auxiliary bishop in San Francisco, suggested that the document’s discussion of evil, now focused on abortion and racism, should be revisited in light of the pope’s description of economic inequality as a social evil.

Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Houston, who has been leading the bishops’ effort to consider reworking “Faithful Citizenship,” said the document would not shy away from the abortion issue, which he called “very important, crucial, significant, one of the chief issues” and “nonnegotiable.” But, he said, to reflect Francis’ agenda, the bishops would also “want to make sure we speak very insistently about the role of poverty, about the role of the economy.”

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia is leading the bishops’ most Francis-friendly effort — to persuade the pope to visit that city next year, when a large gathering of Catholic families is planned there. Archbishop Chaput said he already had “good reasons to believe” the pope would come to the event. But just in case, the entire bishops’ conference agreed to send a letter to Francis, inviting him to attend, and, in the process, to make what would be his first trip to the United States as pope.

A version of this article appears in print on June 13, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Bishops Seek to Match Vatican in Shifting Tone. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Travel |NYT Now

In the Cascades, a Trifecta for Outdoor Enthusiasts

SEPT. 17, 2014

Inside

Photo

A view from the ferry leaving Stehekin, Wash., heading for Chelan.

Explorer

By ETHAN TODRAS-WHITEHILL

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It is the outdoor enthusiast’s trifecta: spectacular scenery, great lodging and food, and no crowds. Two out of three is easy enough to come by. National Park jewels like the Yosemite Valley have iconic views and great places to stay and eat, but also trails so crowded you wish they’d install passing lanes. Backpacking is a great way to access mind-blowing scenery without the traffic jams, but the quality of your lodging and food will be limited to what you’re willing to carry.

An outdoorsy guy myself, I recently learned from friends about one spot that seemed to have a shot at all these: the Stehekin (pronounced steh-HEE-kin) Valley of Washington State. A small settlement wedged between fjord-like Lake Chelan and the jagged eastern slopes of the Cascades, Stehekin has several comfortable lodges, an excellent bakery and, best of all, relatively few visitors. My wife, Jen, and I visited for three days and two nights last summer, and I can confirm: Stehekin hits the trifecta.

The roads are the key. Twenty-two miles of them run up and down the valley — including four miles paved — connecting the boat landing to the edge of North Cascades National Park and the valley landmarks in between. Stehekin’s roads will take you to the famous Stehekin Pastry Company, trailheads and the old log cabin schoolhouse. But what matters most is what they don’t reach: the outside world. The only way in and out of Stehekin is by boat, seaplane or hiking trail. It is an old-school frontier community, the kind that these days is found only in rural Alaska. And it makes a pretty great weekend trip from almost anywhere in Washington State.

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North cascades

National Park

UPPER

STEHEKIN

VALLEY

trail

McGregor Mountain

mcgregor mountain trail

Coon Lake

lake chelan

national

recreation

area

STEHEKIN

VALLEY RD.

Stehekin R.

Rainbow

Falls

wenatchee

national

forest

Stehekin Pastry Company

Stehekin

2 miles

Lake Chelan

okanogan

national

forest

North cascades

National Park

Sahale Glacier

20

20

cascade pass

20

20

Stehekin

mount baker-

snoqualmie

national

forest

Lake Chelan

5

Glacier Peak

wenatchee

national

forest

Chelan

2

Seattle

washington

30 mileS

Our original plan was to hike into Stehekin via 5,400-foot Cascade Pass — one of the most popular hikes in the Cascades for its easy access to the Sahale Glacier via a ridge blazing with wildflowers. It’s a popular way into Stehekin as well, as a couple of Stehekin outfits now offer a “tent-to-tent” camping service that will leave hikers’ gear at the midway point between the Cascade Pass trailhead and the end of the Stehekin road, allowing them to complete the two-day, 19-mile hike carrying only daypacks. But we didn’t have the four extra days to hike both in and out, and a trailhead shuttle that might have allowed us to do it one way was prohibitively expensive.

So instead, we decided to take the ferry in, then set our sights higher: a summit of 8,122-foot McGregor Mountain, the big black peak that looms over Stehekin Valley. The route is a 6,400-foot climb and descent over 15.4 miles with a scree and ridge scramble for the last 1,000 vertical feet — probably too much for us, but we were determined to try.

First, of course, we had to get to this little Shangri-La. On a Friday afternoon, we drove east out of Seattle. Crossing through the Cascades is a remarkable lesson in the relationship between geology and weather: West of the Cascades is lush and cool, but by the time we got to the town of Chelan (pronounced shuh-LAN) in the eastern foothills, the parched landscape looked more appropriate to Arizona than famously wet Washington. It was also about 20 degrees hotter.

Chelan and Stehekin lie on opposite sides of Lake Chelan. They share a history as well. When explorers first penetrated the mountains of the American West in the 19th century, they were mainly looking to extract the resources the mountains held: fur and timber, silver and gold. But by the time Lake Chelan was settled in the late 1880s, the success of Yosemite Park and the recently completed Transcontinental Railroad had people looking at the beauty of the mountains as an end in itself. Hotels were among the first structures built on the shores of Lake Chelan.

Photo

Trays of treats cool at Stehekin Pastry Company.

Campbell’s Resort was among these, a 170-room lakefront lodge with five generations of family ownership. We stayed there, spending the early evening cooling ourselves in a lake that, unlike most bodies of water near Seattle, was warm enough to swim in.

The next morning, we boarded the Lady of the Lake ferry for Stehekin. Begun almost as soon as Chelan was settled, the ferry route from Chelan used to require two days and at least 10 cords of wood to power the engine. Today it takes four hours via the slower, more comfortable boat, and two and a half via the bare-bones express. We opted for the express, marveling at how, as we progressed west into the heart of the range, the mountainsides went from a dead tan to pine green.

With ridges and peaks dominating the horizon 7,000 feet above you on all sides, the Stehekin Valley feels cozy, but it’s actually quite spread out. After checking into our hotel just above the boat landing, the first thing we did was walk down the road and rent bikes from Ron Scutt, who teaches in the Stehekin school in the off-season. He gave us helmets and seat packs, but — curiously to a city dweller — nothing to secure the bikes with.

“We can just leave our bikes by the side of the road?” I asked. “No locks or anything?”

Photo

Coon Lake.

“Where’s somebody going to take them?” Ron said with a laugh. “I haven’t lost a bike in 30 years.”

From there, we went to the Stehekin Pastry Company, known around the Valley as simply “the Bakery.” Put it down: Any day in Stehekin that does not involve at least two visits to the Bakery is a day wasted. Its cinnamon rolls don’t just roll around your taste buds. They gambol; they frolic. The ice cream is fresh, and the coffee worthy of Seattle.

With full stomachs, we headed up valley. We left our bikes at a trailhead to see if we could find an unpublished hike some locals had told us about, to a place called Emerald Pool. We couldn’t, but we did spend a pleasant couple of hours bushwhacking along a brook. Afterward, we biked up to the Stehekin River and washed our feet and hands, looking up at the snow still lingering on the southern face of McGregor Mountain, our destination for the following day. Then we continued, stopping to read about the valley’s history at the log cabin schoolhouse, admire the prismatic spray at Rainbow Falls, and poke around an apple orchard. All day, we saw only a handful of people. Jen and I do a lot of backpacking, and we agreed: It was a strange thing to have a valley like this all to ourselves on a midsummer Saturday. After all, we hadn’t paid for the beauty and solitude as we normally do, with blisters, sweat and bug bites. Instead, the locals had paid for that solitude, and continue to pay — with the inconvenience of reaching the place.

So why doesn’t Stehekin have roads to the outside world? Well, it almost did. From 1896 through 1940, the proposed route of the North Cascades Highway (Route 20, the northernmost route through the Washington Cascades) passed through Stehekin Valley. But as the history of that highway shows (it took almost 80 years to be built), putting a road through the blade-sharp ridges and snowy passes of the North Cascades is hard.

Photo

At the Stehekin Valley Ranch, preparing for some fishing, horses and a cabin bed.

When we arrived in Stehekin, the first thing we did was make plans for our hike. “That’s two days,” said the ranger when we told him what we were planning. Fortunately, Nick Davis of Stehekin Reservations in the log cabin down the road offered to save us some time and drive us to the trailhead. “I’m up anyways,” he said.

So just before dawn the next day, we piled into Nick’s burgundy pickup with our daypacks and trekking poles. We stopped, of course, at the Bakery, which was not yet open for regular business, but we were able to pull the employees away from a giant slab of cinnamon-covered dough to sell us day-old rolls that tasted fresher than most “fresh” pastries.

Nick let us off just inside North Cascades National Park, and in the early morning shadow of the mountain we began to climb. Just above lilypad-laden Coon Lake the switchbacks started — there would be over 120 by the time we were done. The trail was long and unrelenting, but never boring. It almost felt as if the mountain had an incentive system to keep us moving upward. Every 500 vertical feet, we’d be awarded a new prize. A bird’s-eye view of Coon Lake! Lime green lichen on the pine boughs! The tree line! And, of course, the best reward for last: Glacier Peak, Washington’s most remote volcano, its glacier-cloaked summit rising above the ridge that hid it from our eyes for so long.

We hit the end of the trail close to noon. Above us lay a thousand-foot scree and boulder scramble to McGregor’s summit. Below us lay the vertical mile we had just climbed, and — crucially — the shuttle that would take us from the edge of the park back to civilization. We were having dinner that night at the Stehekin Valley Ranch, where they were serving baked chicken, potatoes au gratin and at least five different homemade pies. If we pushed on, we might still catch the last shuttle down valley and make it to the Ranch on time, covered in trail dust. But if we turned around now, we could catch an earlier shuttle and have time to clean up before dinner, even stop in at the Bakery for ice cream.

Jen looked at me, then said what we were both thinking. “I could really use a shower.” So we waved at Glacier Peak, cinched our boots and started back down. After all, we had dinner reservations.

HOW EXTREME?

Rankings are from 1 (not at all) to 4 (very)

Remoteness 3

It all depends on how you get there. Hiking 19 miles in makes Stehekin feel like a lost Western camp, but arriving via floatplane makes it no different from any other tourist town on a lake. The ferry is a good compromise, but does require an early morning departure from Chelan, three hours from Seattle.

Creature Discomforts 1

The lodging in Stehekin can be as rustic or as fancy as you’d like. Everything from campsites to hotel rooms to private cabins are available. Dinner at the Stehekin Valley Ranch is a smorgasbord of comfort food, but make reservations if you’re not staying there. The Stehekin Pastry Company is a legitimate reason to come to Stehekin in its own right. But snack options are limited, so bring your favorite trail mix (and alcohol).

Physical Difficulty 1 or 4

Cycling up and down the Stehekin Valley wouldn’t overtax a decently fit septuagenarian. On the other hand, attempting to hike McGregor in a day can rock even a rubber-kneed 20-something. A number of other hikes in the valley offer lesser thrills; there’s a National Park Service station at Stehekin Landing to give you more information about each.

Information

Cellphones do not work in Stehekin, nor are there phone lines. Residents communicate via satellite phone and email, so if you want to make reservations for activities during your stay, it’s best to call or email ahead. Nick and Nancy Davis run Stehekin Reservations (509-682-7742; stehekinreservations@gmail.com) out of a tiny log cabin on the edge of the Landing; they can make bookings for dinner at Stehekin Valley Ranch and other activities. The Stehekin Pastry Company (stehekinpastry.com) is open every day through Sept. 28, and then Friday to Sunday through Oct. 12.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page TR9 of the New York edition with the headline: A Shangri-La Deep in the Cascades. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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U.S. | Paying Till It Hurts

After Surgery, Surprise $117,000 Medical Bill From Doctor He Didn’t Know

By ELISABETH ROSENTHALSEPT. 20, 2014

Inside

Photo

Peter Drier was billed by an assistant surgeon he did not know was on his case.

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Before his three-hour neck surgery for herniated disks in December, Peter Drier, 37, signed a pile of consent forms. A bank technology manager who had researched his insurance coverage, Mr. Drier was prepared when the bills started arriving: $56,000 from Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, $4,300 from the anesthesiologist and even $133,000 from his orthopedist, who he knew would accept a fraction of that fee.

He was blindsided, though, by a bill of about $117,000 from an “assistant surgeon,” a Queens-based neurosurgeon whom Mr. Drier did not recall meeting.

“I thought I understood the risks,” Mr. Drier, who lives in New York City, said later. “But this was just so wrong — I had no choice and no negotiating power.”

In operating rooms and on hospital wards across the country, physicians and other health providers typically help one another in patient care. But in an increasingly common practice that some medical experts call drive-by doctoring, assistants, consultants and other hospital employees are charging patients or their insurers hefty fees. They may be called in when the need for them is questionable. And patients usually do not realize they have been involved or are charging until the bill arrives.

The practice increases revenue for physicians and other health care workers at a time when insurers are cutting down reimbursement for many services. The surprise charges can be especially significant because, as in Mr. Drier’s case, they may involve out-of-network providers who bill 20 to 40 times the usual local rates and often collect the full amount, or a substantial portion.

Photo

Peter Drier, a bank technology manager in New York City, was blindsided after neck surgery by a $117,000 bill from a doctor he did not recall meeting.

“The notion is you can make end runs around price controls by increasing the number of things you do and bill for,” said Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, a health policy expert at the Brookings Institution until recently. This contributes to the nation’s $2.8 trillion in annual health costs.

Insurers, saying the surprise charges have proliferated, have filed lawsuits challenging them. In recent years, unexpected out-of-network charges have become the top complaint to the New York State agency that regulates insurance companies. Multiple state health insurance commissioners have tried to limit patients’ liability, but lobbying by the health care industry sometimes stymies their efforts.

“This has gotten really bad, and it’s wrong,” said James J. Donelon, the Republican insurance commissioner of Louisiana. “But when you try to address it as a policy maker, you run into a hornet’s nest of financial interests.”

In Mr. Drier’s case, the primary surgeon, Dr. Nathaniel L. Tindel, had said he would accept a negotiated fee determined through Mr. Drier’s insurance company, which ended up being about $6,200. (Mr. Drier had to pay $3,000 of that to meet his deductible.) But the assistant, Dr. Harrison T. Mu, was out of network and sent the $117,000 bill. Insurance experts say surgeons and assistants sometimes share proceeds from operations, but Dr. Tindel’s office says he and Dr. Mu do not. Dr. Mu’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

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Readers’ Perspectives

As you read this article, please share your experiences by responding to the questions that will appear. Your responses will inspire future articles in this series.

— Elisabeth Rosenthal, Reporter

The phenomenon can take many forms. In some instances, a patient may be lying on a gurney in the emergency room or in a hospital bed, unaware that all of the people in white coats or scrubs who turn up at the bedside will charge for their services. At times, a fully trained physician is called in when a resident or a nurse, who would not charge, would have sufficed. Services that were once included in the daily hospital rate are now often provided by contractors, and even many emergency rooms are staffed by out-of-network physicians who bill separately.

Patricia Kaufman’s bills after a recent back operation at a Long Island hospital were rife with such charges, said her husband, Alan, who spent days sorting them out. Two plastic surgeons billed more than $250,000 to sew up the incision, a task done by a resident during previous operations for Ms. Kaufman’s chronic neurological condition.

In the days after the operation, “a parade of doctors came by saying, ‘How are you,’ and they could be out of network or in network,” Mr. Kaufman said. “And then you get their bills. Who called them? Who are they?”

Photo

Patricia Kaufman, at home in Highland Park, N.J., with her husband, Alan, was charged $250,000 by two plastic surgeons who sewed up an incision after her back surgery.

Doctors’ offices often pursue patients for payment. Ms. Kaufman’s insurer paid about $10,000 to the plastic surgeons, who then sent a bill for the remainder. The couple, of Highland Park, N.J., refused to pay.

When insurers intervene in a particular case, they say they have limited ability to fight back. Insurance examiners “are not in the room on the day of surgery to see the second surgeon walk into the room or why they were needed,” said Clare Krusing, a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group. And current laws do not require hospitals that join an insurance network to provide in-network doctors, labs or X-rays, for example.

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Out-of-Network Rates Drive Unexpected Medical Costs

When out-of-network physicians perform hospital procedures, hefty charges can be added to medical bills. Insurers often pay the full amount or large portions, which provides an incentive for doctors to include out-of-network colleagues.

Muscle and skin graft

Spinal fusion

Gallbladder removal

Breast lesion removal

Potential

out-of-network doctor bill

$150,500

$115,625

$44,000

$18,500

Average paid to in-network doctors

$1,781

$5,893

$1,892

$688

Potentail

out-of-

network doctor bill

Muscle and skin graft

Spinal fusion

$150,500

$115,625

Average paid to in-network doctors

$1,781

$5,893

Potential out-of-

network doctor bill

Gallbladder removal

Breast lesion removal

$44,000

$18,500

Average paid to in-network doctors

$1,892

$688

Sources: America’s Health Insurance Plans; Healthcare Bluebook

SEPT. 19, 2014

Illustrations by Jennifer Daniel/The New York Times

So sometimes insurers just pay — to protect their customers, they say — which encourages the practice. When Mr. Drier complained to his insurer, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, that he should not have to pay the out-of-network assistant surgeon, Anthem agreed it was not his responsibility. Instead, the company cut a check to Dr. Mu for $116,862, the full amount.

Unexpected Fees

When Mr. Drier agreed to surgery in December, he was not in a good position to bargain or shop around. Several weeks earlier, he had woken up to excruciating pain in his upper back and numbness and weakness in two fingers of his left hand, which persisted. A scan showed that one of the disks that normally serve as cushions between vertebrae was herniated and pushing on a nerve. With a busy job and social life, he was living on painkillers.

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Play Video|0:29

Peter Drier

Peter Drier “There was a chapter on here’s why you would need surgery for certain people, and mine was that case.” Publish Date September 20, 2014.

The rate of spinal surgery in the United States is about twice that in Europe and Canada, and five times that in Britain, said Dr. Richard A. Deyo of Oregon Health and Science University, who studies international comparisons. Studies are limited but have generally concluded that after two years, patients who have surgery for disk problems do no better than those treated with painkillers and physical therapy — although the pain, which can be debilitating, resolves far more rapidly with surgery.

The United States has more neurosurgeons per capita than almost any other developed country, and they compete with orthopedists for spinal surgery. At the same time, Medicare and private insurers have reduced payments to surgeons. The average base salary for neurosurgeons decreased to $590,000 in 2014 from $630,000 in 2010, according to Merritt Hawkins, a physician staffing firm.

To counter that trend, some spinal surgeons have turned to consultants — including a Long Island company called Business Dynamics RCM and a subsidiary, the Business of Spine — that offer advice on how to increase revenue through “innovative” coding, claim generation and collection services.

Some strategies used by surgeons, including billing large amounts for a second surgeon in the room or declaring an operation an emergency, raise serious questions. The indications for immediate spinal surgery, such as loss of bladder function or rapidly progressive paralysis, are rare. But insurers are more likely to reimburse a hospital or surgeon with whom they do not have a contract if a case is labeled an emergency.

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Mark Sullivan, 46, of New Jersey, went to an emergency room last year with excruciating lower back pain and leg weakness. He was in the operating room less than 24 hours later. “The surgeon stood at the foot of my bed and said, ‘You need surgery; you won’t walk out of the hospital,’ ” he recalled.

Mr. Sullivan’s emergency admission made it easier for an out-of-network surgeon to perform the operation and bill $29,000. The insurer paid $9,500, and Mr. Sullivan paid about $580, as required by his plan. When the doctor’s billing office pursued Mr. Sullivan for the balance of the bill and even threatened to turn his account over to collection, he agreed to file an appeal with his insurer for additional payment, but he refused to pay more himself.

A Last-Minute Surprise

Mr. Drier’s concern about extra charges began even during his preoperative physical. The hospital sent his blood tests to an out-of-network lab and required him to have an echocardiogram (eventually billed for $950), even though he had no cardiac history. (The American Society of Echocardiography discourages such testing for patients with no known heart problems.)

His worries escalated as he lay prepped for the operating room on the morning of his surgery. A technician from a company called Intraoperative Monitoring Service L.L.C. asked him to sign a financial consent form, noting that the company did not accept Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, so he would be required to pay the bill himself. The monitoring had been ordered by his surgeon and is considered essential for the type of neurosurgery he was having, to make sure delicate nerves are not damaged as they are manipulated.

“I demanded to know the price, and when he said he didn’t know, I made him call,” Mr. Drier recalled. When the technician said it would be $500 plus an hourly rate, Mr. Drier negotiated it down to $300.

In the operating room, he underwent a procedure called spinal fusion, in which the surgeons removed two herniated disks that were impinging on nerves, and inserted some bone graft as well as plates and screws to stabilize the spine. On his hospital bill, Mr. Drier noted charges for three implants, a total of about $10,400, as well as for two surgical screws billed at $2,470 and $3,990 — expensive for hardware, he thought, but his insurer paid the full amount.

The biggest surprise was the bill from Dr. Mu, the assistant surgeon. Fusions generally require a second trained pair of hands, but those can be provided by a resident or a neurosurgical nurse or physician assistant employed by the hospital, for whom there is no additional charge. The operative record for Mr. Drier’s surgery states that no qualified resident was available.

Dr. Mu is the chief of neurosurgery at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, though he sometimes operates at other hospitals. According to a database that tracks hospital admissions in New York State, most operations he performs at Jamaica involve emergency surgery on Medicaid patients, often victims of trauma — a challenging but probably not very lucrative practice.

One insurer, Aetna, is in court with Dr. Mu’s private-practice group, NeuroAxis Neurosurgical Associates of Kew Gardens, Queens. NeuroAxis sued to recover higher payments for its out-of-network assistant surgeons; Aetna says the practice’s fees for those surgeons are excessive. J. Edward Neugebauer, chief litigation officer at Aetna, said the company had also sued an in-network neurosurgeon on Long Island who always called in an out-of-network partner to assist, resulting in huge charges. The surgeons shared a business address.

Photo

Insurers have gone to court with NeuroAxis Neurosurgical Associates, a private practice in Queens, over what they call excessive fees for surgical assistants.

Surgeons from other specialties also team up: After Gunther Steinberg of Portola Valley, Calif., had a needle biopsy of an eye lesion in 2010, he discovered that his insurer had paid about $10,000 to the eye surgeon who performed the outpatient procedure and $10,700 to a second ophthalmologist in the room.

“The idea of having an assistant in the O.R. has become an opportunity to make up for surgical fees that have been slashed,” said Dr. Abeel A. Mangi, a professor of cardiac surgery at Yale, who said the practice had become commonplace. “There’s now a whole cadre of people out there who do not have meaningful appointments as attending surgeons, so they do assistant work.”

In Mr. Drier’s case, each surgeon billed for each step of the procedure. Dr. Tindel billed $74,000 for removing two disks and an additional $50,000 for placing the hardware that stabilized Mr. Drier’s spine. Dr. Mu billed $67,000 and $50,000 for those tasks.

If the surgery had been for a Medicare patient, the assistant would have been permitted to bill only 16 percent of the primary surgeon’s fee. With current Medicare rates, that would have been about $800, less than 1 percent of what Dr. Mu was paid.

Visitors Who Bill

Unexpected fees are routinely generated outside the operating room as well. On the wards, a dermatologist may be called in to examine a rash and perform an expensive biopsy. The person in scrubs who walks a patient to a bathroom for the first time after hip surgery may turn out to be a physical therapist billing $400.

Mr. Sullivan, who had the emergency back surgery, discovered charges from more than 10 providers in the 48 hours after his operation. (The surgery involved simply trimming a herniated disk in his lower back.) He wrote to various doctors to dispute bills, saying, “I was admitted to Overlook Hospital from Nov. 26-27, 2013, and I have received numerous invoices for procedures that were never done, by physicians that never treated me.”

He was puzzled by $679 in occupational therapy charges involving the delivery of a device to help him put on his socks, which he never used. He was irate about charges from a group of hospital-based primary care physicians from Inpatient Medical Associates, who visited him briefly once a day and billed close to $1,000 in out-of-network costs.

Photo

Mark Sullivan, 46, of New Jersey, received a hospital bill that included charges for occupational therapy, which he did not realize had occurred.

Healthy surgical patients typically do not need a general doctor; an anesthesiologist clears them for surgery. Mr. Sullivan noted that if he had needed an internist, he would have called his own, who is in his insurance network and whose office is just down the block.

Dr. Mangi, the Yale cardiac surgeon, said hospitals often encouraged extra visits for both billing and legal reasons. He said he was required to request a physical therapy consult before each discharge, for example, even if he felt there was no need.

“You can cut fees, but institutions find ways” to make the money back, he said. “There’s been a mushrooming industry of mandatory consultants for services that neither doctors nor patients want.”

A Possible Remedy

For months, Mr. Drier stewed over what to do with the $117,000 check Anthem Blue Cross had sent him to pass on to Dr. Mu, refusing to sign over a payment he considered “outrageous and immoral.” He worried that such payments could drive up premiums at his employer.

In the past few years, some insurers have filed lawsuits and sought injunctions to prevent providers from going after their clients for payment of unexpected medical bills. Dr. Scott Breidbart, chief medical officer at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, part of the same parent company that covers Mr. Drier, said that it had not taken that route, but that in some situations it had refused to do further business with in-network surgeons who repeatedly called in out-of-network assistants.

A New York State law that will take effect in March — one of a few nationally — will offer some protection against many surprise charges and require more advance disclosure from doctors and hospitals on whether their services are covered by insurance. It states, for example, that patients are not responsible for unforeseen out-of-network charges beyond what they would have paid in-network. It directs insurers and hospitals to negotiate any further payment or enter mediation.

In many other countries, such as Australia — where, as in the United States, people often rely on private insurance — it is seen as a patient’s right to be informed of out-of-pocket costs before hospitalization, said Mark Hall, a law professor at Wake Forest University.

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Peter Drier

Peter Drier “I couldn’t beat the medical billing administrators that knew how to say the right things and never said anything wrong and knew the laws backwards.” Publish Date September 20, 2014.

Mr. Drier tried to negotiate with the surgeons to divvy up the $117,000 payment in a way he believed was more fair; he liked Dr. Tindel and felt he was being underpaid. Mr. Drier’s idea, he wrote in an email, was to settle on “a reasonable fee for both the surgeon and assistant and return the rest of the check to the insurance company/employees” of his company.

But in July, he received a threatening letter from Dr. Mu’s lawyer noting that he had failed to forward the $117,000 check. So he sent it along, with regret.

For a continuing conversation about health care costs and pricing in the United States, please join our Facebook group, Paying Till It Hurts.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: After Surgery, $117,000 Bill From Doctor He Never Saw. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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N.Y. / Region

New York Curbs Medical Bills Containing Surprises

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLISMARCH 30, 2014

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Every year, thousands of New Yorkers find themselves responsible for a surprise medical bill from a doctor, like an anesthesiologist, who becomes involved in their care but, unbeknown to the patient, is not covered by their insurance.

Now a provision in the state budget agreement announced Saturday is intended to protect consumers by requiring that they be given a reasonable amount of notice when an out-of-network doctor will be treating them.

If they are stuck with a surprise bill, patients will be responsible only for whatever their co-pay would be if the doctor were in-network. The out-of-network doctor and the insurance company will have to hash out the bill using what is known as baseball arbitration, with each proposing a price and an arbitrator choosing one of them. The law will go into effect in one year.

“The heart of the bill came out of the fact that the No. 1 complaint on health insurance issues we receive year after year is people who get stuck with surprise balance bills,” Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the state’s Financial Services Department, which regulates insurance, said on Sunday.

Usually the doctors involved are not the primary physician whom the patient has come to know but a radiologist, pathologist or anesthesiologist involved in a procedure, like surgery or colonoscopy. Sometimes, patients make it to the operating table before they learn that the out-of-network doctor is involved in the operation.

Insurance plans typically either do not permit patients to go to doctors out of their prescribed network, or charge more when they do. Mr. Lawsky said that patients with plans restricting them to in-network doctors tend to be the patients who are most cost-conscious and can least afford surprise bills.

He said his department got several thousand complaints a year but suggested that many more people had the problem but did not complain.

“We think this is potentially a national model,” Mr. Lawsky said. “These surprise balance bills are very prevalent around the country.”

The bill was widely supported by consumer advocates and organizations like the American Cancer Society, as cancer patients are often saddled with such bills.

“It’s a huge cause of credit problems and consumer bankruptcy,” Mark Scherzer, a consumer advocate, said.

The law would be the toughest in the nation, said Chuck Bell, program director of Consumers Union, the nonprofit that publishes Consumer Reports.

One patient affected by the old system was Claudia Knafo, a concert pianist from the Upper West Side of Manhattan who needed spinal surgery. Ms. Knafo said she carefully researched which surgeon to choose, and chose one at her usual hospital. He listed her insurance plan on the hospital website and a patient coordinator confirmed the coverage, she said. After the surgery, the insurance company told her that the doctor had dropped her plan in 1997. She received a bill for $101,000, and her insurance paid only $3,500, leaving her with a $97,000 surprise balance.

Ms. Knafo considered bankruptcy and divorce before the state attorney general and Mr. Lawsky interceded and she was let off the hook.

“Our lives were really consumed by this,” she said on Sunday. Two years later, she added, “I still sometimes have nightmares that it’s not resolved.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 31, 2014, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: State Curbs Medical Bills Containing Surprises. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Magazine |NYT Now

Will Portland Always Be a Retirement Community for the Young?

SEPT. 16, 2014

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It’s the Economy

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

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Like many residents of Northwest Portland, Matthew Hale doesn’t own a car. Instead, he prefers to walk or ride the bus to the city’s innumerable coffee shops and breweries and live-music spots. On weekends, he and his wife have no problem hitching rides to the Pacific Coast or the Cascade mountain range. Everywhere he looks, Hale told me, there are people just like him — bearded, on skateboards, brewing kombucha. “It’s really chill,” he says.

Portland has taken hold of the cultural imagination as, to borrow the tag line from “Portlandia,” the place where young people go to retire. And for good reason: The city has nearly all the perks that economists suggest lead to a high quality of life — coastlines, mountains, mild winters and summers, restaurants, cultural institutions and clean air. (Fortunately, college-educated people don’t value sunshine as much as they used to.) Portland also has qualities that are less tangible but still likely to attract young people these days, like a politically open culture that supports gay rights and the legalization of marijuana — in addition to the right of way for unicyclists or the ability to marry in a 24/7 doughnut shop. “It’s really captured the zeitgeist of the age in a way that no other small city in America ever has,” said Aaron Renn, an urban-affairs analyst who writes the Urbanophile blog. According to professors from Portland State University, the city has been able to attract and retain young college-educated people at the second-highest rate in the nation. (Louisville, Ky., is No. 1.)

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Deep Thoughts This Week

1. Portland has a surplus of college-educated workers.

2. So why is that a bad thing?

3. The question is whether they’ll stick around.

City dwelling is generally considered a good thing for the overall economy. Proximity and serendipity offer employers a better chance to hire the perfect person for a job as opposed to someone whose skills just sort of match, according to the work of Enrico Moretti, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. Chance encounters in dense cities, Moretti has argued, lead to innovation, which subsequently leads to income. And as the baby boomers retire, the pressure is on the young and highly educated to spur urban economies. As a result, many American cities are remaking themselves to lure human capital, offering various perks, like cheap housing and tax breaks, in the hope that smart young people can attract others like them. The Greater Houston area has added more than a million residents since 2000, in large part through generous tax breaks and the growth of the energy sector. Las Vegas is in the middle of a privately funded $350 million project to transform its derelict downtown into a tech incubator. Parts of Detroit have more or less been turned over to the online-mortgage billionaire Dan Gilbert. Other cities like Austin, Tex.; Boulder, Colo.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Nashville have tried, in some way or other, to spark their own little Silicon Valleys.

Portland, meanwhile, has the opposite problem. It has more highly educated people than it knows what to do with. Portland is not a corporate town, as its neighbors Seattle and San Francisco have become. While there are employment opportunities in the outdoor-apparel business (Nike, Adidas and Columbia Sportswear are all nearby) or the semiconductor industry (Intel has a large presence in Hillsboro), most workers have far fewer opportunities. According to Renn, personal income per capita in the city grew by a mere 31 percent between 2000 and 2012, slower than 42 other cities, including Grand Rapids, Mich., and Rochester. And yet people still keep showing up. “People move to New York to be in media or finance; they move to L.A. to be in show business,” Renn said. “People move to Portland to move to Portland.” Matthew Hale may have all the kombucha he can drink, but he doesn’t have a job.

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‘People move to New York to be in media or finance; they move to L.A. to be in show business. People move to Portland to move to Portland.’

Hale, who is 35, told me he is actively looking for work in the field of graphic design. In the meantime, he is getting by, he said, through various freelance gigs and his wife’s income as a barista. This is typical of many Portlanders. (I, too, am originally from there.) David Albouy, an economics professor at the University of Illinois, has created a metric, the sacrifice measure, which essentially charts how poor a person is willing to be in order to live in a particular city. Portland, he discovered, is near the top of the list. Even when college-educated residents get jobs there, they earn 84 cents for the average dollar earned in other cities, according to Greg Schrock and Jason Jurjevich, professors of urban studies at Portland State University. In 41 of the country’s 50 largest cities, young, educated people earn more than they do in Portland. “It’s a buyer’s market for labor,” Schrock says.

Portland’s residents may, as the saying goes, want to keep their city weird. But do they want to keep it broke too?

Photo

As America has segued from a manufacturing economy to a largely service-based one, its cities have been undergoing a steady metamorphosis. Access to ports and blue-collar workers are no longer the key to thriving urban economies. Now it’s educated people with desk jobs who drive the growth. Of the 10 largest cities in 1950, eight of them currently have smaller populations, according to Edward Glaeser, the Harvard economist and the author of “Triumph of the City.” The exceptions are Los Angeles and New York. And though Hollywood remains the country’s entertainment capital, New York has succeeded in large part on its ability to transform itself from a sugar, meatpacking and garment-manufacturing center to the financial capital of the world.

Since 1950, the disparity between incomes and home prices has steadily widened to the point that many urban areas have become largely unaffordable to the middle-class workers who once inhabited them. Economists at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia have coined the term “superstar cities” to refer to the likes of New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston. “Even large metropolitan areas might evolve into communities that are affordable only by the rich, just [like] exclusive resort areas,” wrote the economists Joseph Gyourko, Christopher Mayer and Todd Sinai in a 2013 article.

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‘As our culture and expectations grow, decadence rises. We’re not the hungry immigrant nation we used to be. We’re more into meaning, into jobs that find fulfillment.’

As the superstar cities have become unattainable, the middle class is increasingly finding refuge in places like Philadelphia or Nashville, Denver or Charlotte, N.C. An example of “the people who are getting killed,” Renn said, “is the old traditional blue-collar Queens person who’s now getting squeezed with taxes and with housing costs. It’s clear they don’t fit into the vision of the city. They’re basically realizing, Hey, I can go to Charlotte and live like a king on a truck driver’s salary.”

Portland’s story is slightly different in that many of its immigrants have come in search of a different kind of wealth. Most people, after all, can’t willingly up and move to a new city for — rather than a job opportunity — some ephemeral or lofty ideals about homesteading and locally grown kale. But quite a few Portlanders have done so. “As our culture and expectations grow, decadence rises,” Albouy said. “We’re not the hungry immigrant nation we used to be. We’re more into meaning, into jobs that find fulfillment. And at least some people are willing to accept lower pay to go somewhere they care about.” According to Joe Cortright, the president of Impresa, a Portland-based consulting firm on regional economies, young people are increasingly telling themselves, “I’m going to move somewhere and pursue my career,” rather than, “I’m going to pursue my career and go wherever it takes me.” For “the beer, bikes and Birkenstocks people,” as Cortright put it, that means Portland. Hale, for instance, had planned to move to New York, where he found plenty of listings for graphic-design jobs. Then, by chance, he and his wife visited a friend in Portland and fell in love. “Jobs are thinner here,” he said. “But the intelligent urban planning makes my heart sing.”

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Heartwarming planning, however, can only go so far. Portland’s paradox is that it attracts so many of “the young and the restless,” as demographers call them, that it has become a city of the overeducated and underemployed — a place where young people are, in many cases, forced into their semiretirement. A July report by the Oregon Employment Department fretted about the state’s low personal income and employment-to-population ratio. The average income of Oregonians in recent years “may have been a ‘victim’ of the state’s attractiveness, and a resulting population influx” by new residents who don’t earn much, the report said.

Yet Portland is hardly immune from larger economic forces. The vast majority of its migrants hail from the West Coast, including many who have been priced out of Seattle or San Francisco. And as more of these newcomers flood the city, they threaten to remake its slacker image. Surreptitiously, this process is already underway. Between 2001 and 2012, gross domestic product per person grew 50 percent, more than any other city, even those in Silicon Valley. Accordingly, employment is climbing, as are housing prices and the overall cost of living.

Affordability has long been one of Portland’s most attractive features. What happens when that disappears? Schrock and Jurjevich, the economists at Portland State, have coined a term, the amenity paradox, that refers to cities where the same amenities that attract people end up eroding what made a city desirable in the first place. Portland seems likely to fall into this historical cycle. Just as some New Yorkers may decamp for Charlotte to live like kings, it’s likely that Portland’s designers and baristas, the very people who have made the city what it is, will one day no longer be able to afford the houses they live in, either. “We could have told a similar story about retiring Midwestern farmers moving to Los Angeles at the end of the 19th century,” Glaeser says.

Albouy told me that he has always wondered why Portland doesn’t invest more in its institutions of higher education. If you took Portland’s quality of life and citizens, he said, and added Pittsburgh’s universities, you would come out with a world-class city. But the answer, perhaps, is that Portland’s best chance for retaining its culture is to make sure other people don’t want to live there. (Unless, of course, it is those nine months of constant rain.) At some point, though, the economic forces may be beyond their control.

Another solution for keeping Portland weird, at least temporarily, may come from within the city itself. In the wake of the financial crisis, many young college graduates have delayed their lives, put off worries about jobs and houses and families and instead moved to cool cities to wait out the recession, says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. During that time, the young and educated abandoned cities like Phoenix and Atlanta in large numbers for places like Austin and Portland. But as job prospects improve, and unemployment shrinks to its lowest levels since the crash, it’s likely that many of the young people who fled to Portland will soon chase their ambitions to less cool places — the ones that people move to when it’s time to become an adult. Then Portland will find out who the true believers really are.

The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page MM22 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Keep Portland Broke. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Magazine |NYT Now

Derek Jeter, a Yankee Before the Pinstripes

Text by JON KELLYSEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

Jeter in 1993, during his first spring-training camp.

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One summer morning in 1991, Dick Groch was driving to a baseball game in Battle Creek, Mich., when he made an unplanned detour to a high-school field in Mount Morris, somewhere between the state’s thumb and forefinger. Groch, a scout who covered the Midwest for the New York Yankees, decided he’d stop by a “talent identification” camp there. He didn’t expect to see anything special; the event, he figured, was just a way for some local coach to make a little extra money. Besides, the Yankees were considering Jeffrey Hammonds, an outfielder from Stanford, and Jim Pittsley, a hard-throwing right-hander, as possible picks in the next draft. But Groch thought, why not break up the day?

At the high school, a coach was conducting infield drills when he fungoed a ball into the hole between third and short. It looked as if it was going to dribble through to left field, when a wispy shortstop sprinted to his right, backhanded it, leapt into the air and, while leaning backward, contorted his body into a single, fluid throwing motion that culminated with the ball’s whistling into the first baseman’s mitt. “I said, ‘My God, that’s a major-league play,’ ” Groch recalled recently.

Baseball players are perennially judged against the so-called five tools of the game — fielding aptitude, arm strength, speed and the ability to hit for average and for power. Those with a surplus of talent in any of these areas are, in the vocabulary of scouts, said to have a “plus” arm or bat. “Within less than a 45-minute period,” Groch told me, “I saw someone flash three plus plus tools.”

In his subsequent evaluation for the team, Groch described this 159-pound high-school junior named Derek Jeter as a five-tool prospect. He also noted a sixth attribute: Jeter was “a Yankee.” This wasn’t intended as a brown-nosing observation. There was a sang-froid about the young man, Groch thought — an attitude that would be valuable in New York, because in those days, the Yankees were a mess. The team had not made the playoffs in more than a decade; during one five-year span, its roster of managers went like this: Billy Martin, Yogi Berra, Billy Martin, Lou Piniella, Billy Martin, Lou Piniella. At one point, the team’s owner, George Steinbrenner, paid a gambler $40,000 to spy on his best player, Dave Winfield. The environment, in other words, put a premium on having a thick skin. As Groch put it, “You’re playing in the toughest venue, you have to have an emotional constitution.” Jeter was good, but perhaps just as important, he didn’t seem like the wilting type.

Continue reading the main story

Document

Notes on a Shortstop

A scout’s musings on the teenage Derek Jeter — provided by The New York Yankees, from Steiner Sports — notes his “active feet” and “long lean sinewy body.”

OPEN Document

That self-possession never wavered. In 1993, the fine-art photographer Andrea Modica visited the Yankees’ spring-training camp in Tampa for her project on young ballplayers. She was working with an 8-by-10 camera, which required a collaboration between artist and subject: each sitting lasted for about 15 minutes, a pretty long time to hold any expression. Modica was captivated by the anxieties in her young and athletic subjects, particularly the minor leaguers hoping to make the team for the first time. “But Derek didn’t have that tension,” she says. “He was elegant.” Modica’s photograph of the 18-year-old — note the early-’90s fade! — did not make it into her book and exhibition. It has never been published until now.

Over the 19 seasons he has played in the major leagues since this picture was taken, Jeter, who will retire this fall, has led the Yankees to 16 postseason appearances and five World Series titles. He has hit better than .400 in 10 different playoff series and is the all-time playoff leader in singles and doubles and is tied for the lead in triples (he is third in home runs and fourth in R.B.I.). Even if he was never the best player in the league during any given year — he never won an M.V.P. award, like the shortstops Alex Rodriguez, Miguel Tejada and Cal Ripken Jr. — he was almost certainly the best shortstop of his generation. His prime lasted until his late 30s, and he played his entire career at the game’s most difficult position, after catcher. His ultimate plus tool might have been the surreal equilibrium on display from the start.

Scouting is an inexact science, especially when its subjects are teenagers. The Yankees’ top pick the year before they drafted Jeter was a pitcher named Brien Taylor, a can’t-miss phenom — who got in a bar fight and never pitched in the majors. In the end, though, Groch got this one right. The five players drafted before Jeter (including Jeffrey Hammonds) made a combined total of two All-Star appearances. Jim Pittsley played 81 games in the majors. “The report I wrote,” Groch said, “it’s exactly what he became.”

Andrea Modica is an associate professor of photography at Drexel University. Her work is in many collections, including the Museum of Modern Art.

Editor: Dean Robinson

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page MM43 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Boy of Summer. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Magazine

Notes on a Shortstop

A scout’s musings on the teenage Derek Jeter notes his “active feet” and “long lean sinewy body.” SEPT. 19, 2014 Related Article

The New York Yankees, from Steiner Sports

- © 2014 The New York Times Company

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The Opinion Pages | Contributing Op-Ed Writer

Jeter’s Real Gift

SEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Doug Glanville

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During the chaos and excitement of awaiting our firstborn child, my wife and I were decorating the nursery. Our son was due to arrive in late June of 2008 and we planned to put his crib in a baseball-themed room. So, in a rare act of handiwork, I tapped my inner do-it-yourself to paint the vaulted ceiling, and helped my wife pinstripe the walls.

When it came time to adorn those walls, we splashed them with old Glanville jerseys mixed in with some historical baseball artifacts, and then my wife’s designer eye determined that there was a void in a vertical section. We needed a bat.

I had played almost 15 years professionally, and I made sure that I collected memorabilia in my final few seasons. Cal Ripken Jr.’s spikes, a ball signed by the newly minted Hall of Famer Tom Glavine, my longtime teammate Sammy Sosa’s bat and items that were more personal, like an autographed bat from the man I was traded for in 1997, Mickey Morandini.

So I had quite a few bats. But when I went to look for the perfect one for the room, it dawned on me that my time with the Yankees in 2005 presented a void in my collectibles. That year I had spring training as a teammate of Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, A-Rod … and, of course, Derek Jeter.

Photo

The bat Derek Jeter autographed for the author's son.

Given the performance-enhancing drugs cloud hovering over the game, I knew there was only one thing to do. Text Jeter. I asked him if he would sign a bat to my son, and send it to my home in Chicago. He replied in the affirmative.

The next morning, a box was on my doorstep. He had overnighted it.

His career, however, did not happen overnight. He scrapped, he battled, he fielded his way around the performance-enhancing drugs standard that began to expect even shortstops to hit 30 home runs a season. He said little, spoke with his bat, and toppled his opponents through sheer consistency.

As a center fielder, I found him extremely difficult to defend against. He was like Andre Agassi or any great tennis player who can wait until the last possible moment and then hit a ball in any direction. His “inside-out” signature swing neutralized your ability to get a good jump on the ball. He could hit a pitch to left field, then three innings later hit that same pitch down the right-field line. A master of disguise. Just as you never knew when he was sweating, you could never tell what he was going to do with the ball, and so you spent your defensive life flat-footed against Derek Jeter.

That was his game, and soon his body of work will be over, to be interpreted and picked apart in historical context till eternity. But even though baseball is in love with numbers, numbers don’t really tell you what he meant.

My son wasn’t yet born when the bat was signed for him, but Jeter’s signature endorsed his future, personalized as if he were a sure arrival. In a way, Jeter has been a father to the youth of baseball, even as he lived the life of a bachelor. He set an indelible example of how to approach the game with calm, focus, confidence and purpose. He ran every ball out, knowing that one at-bat can change the trajectory of a career. He understood (much as Satchel Paige did) that someone is always gaining on you, even if that someone is time. In many ways, he made a father’s job a lot easier by performing with excellence. The kind of excellence that allowed me, and countless other parents, to point to him and say, “Even when you achieve greatness, it is important how you have done so.”

While Jeter was hitting his way into Monument Park, my son kept growing. Whenever I called a Yankee game for ESPN, where I am an analyst, I would see Derek on the field and update him on my family. It was my way of thanking him for that grand gesture years ago. This season, I was able to tell him that my son was playing baseball and was a left-handed hitting and throwing ballplayer. I showed him pictures of my now three kids to demonstrate how gifts can be paid forward.

Not long ago, after I had watched Derek Jeter Day on TV, my son lay in bed and I told him that baseball had just honored a great player, one I’d played with and against, one who I hoped he would always remember had signed a bat for him. He told me that hearing about the celebration of Jeter’s career inspired him to play baseball when he grew up. He then asked me how many home runs I had hit. I told him 59.

“Wow! That is a lot of home runs.”

“Not really, the record-holder has over 700.”

Of course, 700 sounded like 18 million to him, so he was quiet for a while, as if I’d lost some sort of competition. I filled in the silence by explaining why Jeter was so special. I told him that he wasn’t a big home run hitter either, but he beat everyone by working hard, getting hits, hustling, rising to challenges during the most important games, and most important, playing without performance-enhancing drugs.

Then I realized that the fact that 700 sounded like 18 million to him was a gift. While my son is highly competitive, he still values what cannot be counted; his understanding is still open to the qualitative. Whether Jeter had 3,500 hits or 28,700 did not matter to him, only that Jeter was great, that he respected people and the game, cared about his father and found unforgettable ways to win with honor.

It is telling when you are forced to explain to a child the significance of a baseball career — or a life — without being able to use numbers to make your case. Some of the greatest players, stripped of their numbers, leave you little with which to work. But Derek Jeter still gives me plenty to say and, I get the sense, always will.

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Technology |NYT Now

Ex-Employees Say Home Depot Left Data Vulnerable

By JULIE CRESWELL and NICOLE PERLROTHSEPT. 19, 2014

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The data breach at Home Depot compromised the credit cards of 56 million of its customers. Above, a store in Seminole, Fla.

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The risks were clear to computer experts inside Home Depot: The home improvement chain, they warned for years, might be easy prey for hackers.

But despite alarms as far back as 2008, Home Depot was slow to raise its defenses, according to former employees. On Thursday, the company confirmed what many had feared: The biggest data breach in retailing history had compromised 56 million of its customers’ credit cards. The data has popped up on black markets and, by one estimate, could be used to make $3 billion in illegal purchases.

Yet long before the attack came to light this month, Home Depot’s handling of its computer security was a record of missteps, the former employees said. Interviews with former members of the company’s cybersecurity team — who spoke on the condition they not be named, because they still work in the industry — suggest the company was slow to respond to early threats and only belatedly took action.

In recent years, Home Depot relied on outdated software to protect its network and scanned systems that handled customer information irregularly, those people said. Some members of its security team left as managers dismissed their concerns. Others wondered how Home Depot met industry standards for protecting customer data. One went so far as to warn friends to use cash, rather than credit cards, at the company’s stores.

Then, in 2012, Home Depot hired a computer engineer to help oversee security at its 2,200 stores. But this year, as hacks struck other retailers, that engineer was sentenced to four years in prison for deliberately disabling computers at the company where he previously worked.

Company officials said the malware used against Home Depot had not been seen before and would have been difficult to detect. Home Depot said on Thursday that it had patched any holes and that it is now safe for customers to shop there.

Any card used there between April and Sept. 2 might be vulnerable to being used fraudulently. Stephen Holmes, a Home Depot spokesman, said the company improved its security this year by encrypting register systems and switching to a new smart-chip-based payment standard in all stores.

“Our guiding principle is to do what’s right by our customers,” Mr. Holmes said. The company maintains “robust security systems,” he said.

Thefts like the one that hit Home Depot — and an ever-growing list of merchants including Albertsons, UPS, Goodwill Industries and Neiman Marcus — are the “new normal,” according to security experts. These people say retailers have not only been complacent about security, they have also been reluctant to share information with one another.

Government officials estimate that as many as 1,000 retailers have been infiltrated by variations of the malware that first struck another big retailer, Target, late last year, and then Home Depot this year. They say many companies do not even know they have been breached.

“This is happening to so many companies now, it is getting hard to keep track,” said Paul Kocher, the founder and chief scientist at the Cryptography Research division of Rambus.

Still, security experts were flabbergasted that Home Depot, one of the world’s largest retailers, was caught so flat-footed after the breach at Target, which resulted in the theft of data on more than 40 million cards before the holiday season.

After the Target theft, Home Depot’s chief executive, Frank Blake, assembled a team to determine how to protect the company’s network from a similar attack, said one person briefed on the project. In January, Home Depot brought experts in from Voltage Security, a data security company in California, these people said. By April, the company started introducing in some of its stores enhanced encryption that scrambled payment information the moment a card was swiped.

But criminals were already deep in Home Depot’s systems. By the time the company learned on Sept. 2 from banks and law enforcement that it had been breached, hackers had been stealing millions of customers’ card information, unnoticed for months. The rollout of the company’s new encryption was not completed until last week.

The retail industry is rushing to respond by forming threat-sharing associations — Home Depot was a founding member of one such group created earlier this year — and adopting new encryption and payment system they hope will thwart hackers.

But getting those efforts up and running could take months.

Several people who have worked in Home Depot’s security group in recent years said managers failed to take such threats as seriously as they should have. They said managers relied on outdated Symantec antivirus software from 2007 and did not continuously monitor the network for unusual behavior, such as a strange server talking to its checkout registers.

Also, the company performed vulnerability scans irregularly on the dozen or so computer systems inside its stores and often scanned only a small number of stores. Credit card industry security rules require large retailers like Home Depot to conduct such scans at least once a quarter, using technologies approved by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, which develops technical requirements for its members’ data security programs. The P.C.I. Council requires that approved, third-party quality security assessors perform routine tests to ensure that merchants are compliant.

And yet, two former employees said, while Home Depot data centers in Austin, Tex., and Atlanta were scanned, more than a dozen systems handling customer information were not assessed and were off limits to much of the security staff. A spokeswoman for the P.C.I. Council in Wakefield, Mass., declined to comment on Home Depot specifically.

“Scanning is the easiest part of compliance,” said Avivah Litan, a cybersecurity analyst at Gartner, a research firm. “There are a lot of services that do this. They hardly cost any money. And they can be run cheaply from the cloud.”

Home Depot said the industry standards included an exception from scanning store systems that are separated from larger corporate networks, and it said the company had complied with P.C.I. standards since 2009.

In 2012, Home Depot hired Ricky Joe Mitchell, a security engineer, who was swiftly promoted under Jeff Mitchell, a senior director of information technology security, to a job in which he oversaw security systems at Home Depot’s stores. (The men are not related.)

But Ricky Joe Mitchell did not last long at Home Depot. Before joining the company, he was fired by EnerVest Operating, an oil and gas company, and, before he left, he disabled EnerVest’s computers for a month. He was sentenced to four years in federal prison in April.

Several former Home Depot employees said they were not surprised the company had been hacked. They said that over the years, when they sought new software and training, managers came back with the same response: “We sell hammers.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Ex-Employees Say Home Depot Left Data Vulnerable. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Soccer |NYT Now

In Hope Solo Case, Soccer Turns a Blind Eye Toward Domestic Violence

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Hope Solo extended her shutout record to 73 in the United States national women’s soccer team’s 4-0 victory over Mexico in Rochester.

Sports of The Times

By JULIET MACUR

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There were smiles all around Thursday night when Hope Solo extended her shutout record to 73 in the United States national women’s soccer team’s 4-0 victory over Mexico in Rochester.

Fans cheered, and the players, as they often do, posed for photos and signed autographs with the young girls who revere them. Ah, to be a strong and successful role model, especially for the next generation, and to have the honor to represent your country.

But look past the patina of glee and here’s what you will see: a team and a league — not named the N.F.L. this time — that are tone-deaf when it comes to domestic violence and how they handle players who have been accused of it.

It takes a lot to match the N.F.L. these days when it comes to missteps in the handling of players charged with assaulting family members and loved ones. But Thursday, at a time when domestic violence in sports is dominating the national conversation, U.S. Soccer did just that — again — by keeping Solo in goal when she shouldn’t have been anywhere near it.

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Hope Solo appeared in Kirkland Municipal Court on June 23 in connection with her arrest on domestic violence charges.

Solo, one of the biggest and most marketable stars in women’s sports, is facing domestic violence charges from an episode over the summer in which she is accused of punching her sister and her 17-year-old nephew at a late-night party.

According to a police account of the episode, Solo was the primary aggressor and instigator of an assault at a family party that left her sister and nephew with noticeable injuries to their heads and faces. She has pleaded not guilty; her trial is set for November.

One can argue the differences between an N.F.L. player punching his soon-to-be wife and a soccer star brawling with her family, but it is indisputable that both qualify as domestic violence.

The glaring contrast in Solo’s case is that while several football players recently accused of assaults have been removed from the field, she has been held up for praise by the national team. On Thursday she was even given the honor of wearing the captain’s armband in celebration of her setting the team’s career record for shutouts in its previous game.

The question is why. Celebrating Solo’s achievement right now is like allowing running back Adrian Peterson, who has been accused of child abuse, to continue to play for the Minnesota Vikings — and then awarding him the game ball for his next 100-yard game.

If that wouldn’t happen in the N.F.L., it shouldn’t happen in women’s sports, either.

Yet U.S. Soccer, showing that it has no sense regarding this issue, went ahead and gave Solo a very public pat on the back.

Every case involving domestic violence charges has its own circumstances, including the one in 2012 in which Solo’s boyfriend at the time was accused of assaulting her. (Those charges were later dropped.) When Ray Rice, Greg Hardy and Adrian Peterson were arrested, there were loud calls for those players to be suspended. The response to Solo’s case? The sound of crickets — except on game days, when it changes to applause. And that’s inexcusable.

Maybe everyone is just too busy calling out the N.F.L. for its ineptitude, but a light needs to shine on Solo’s legal problems, too. It shows that domestic violence isn’t committed only by men, even if Solo is eventually cleared of the charges against her.

The court has ordered Solo to stay away from her sister and nephew and to refrain from drinking alcohol. At the same time, U.S. Soccer and the Seattle Reign, her team in the National Women’s Soccer League, have put on blinders. Solo played on as Seattle advanced to the league’s title game last month, and she played on this week as the national team continued preparations for next month’s qualifiers for the 2015 Women’s World Cup.

The Reign rationalized their decision to keep her on the field by saying they were gathering evidence on the case. U.S. Soccer is apparently following suit.

How convenient for Solo, and for them, that her trial will not start until after the United States has claimed its place in the World Cup. If she were a marginal player, though, I bet both organizations would have benched her without a second thought.

It’s possible to understand the team’s cowardice: A league trying to sustain itself has an incentive to protect its stars.

But how does U.S. Soccer rationalize giving Solo the honor of playing for the national team, or of then making her its captain?

Before Solo set the shutout record, Neil Buethe, a spokesman for U.S. Soccer, told USA Today that the organization knew Solo was dealing with “a personal situation,” which played down the gravity of the accusations against her.

“At the same time,” he said, justifying the celebration of Solo’s impending record, “she has an opportunity to set a significant record that speaks to her hard work and dedication over the years with the national team. While considering all factors involved, we believe that we should recognize that in the proper way.”

Buethe did not immediately respond to emails and voice mail messages Friday. Solo has apologized on Facebook for what she characterized as “a highly unfortunate incident.” She said she looked forward to getting back on the field, “where I belong.”

But actually she doesn’t. Not in a world in which female and male athletes are ever to be treated equally.

Email: juliet@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: Women’s Soccer Turns a Blind Eye to Domestic Violence. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

In Domestic Violence Cases, N.F.L. Has a History of Lenience

By BILL PENNINGTON and STEVE EDERSEPT. 19, 2014

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On April 10, 2007, after more than 50 National Football League players had been arrested in the previous football season, Commissioner Roger Goodell was widely hailed for instituting a newly stringent personal conduct policy. Mr. Goodell threatened to banish players for off-the-field transgressions and installed himself as the judge and jury presiding over every case.

Mr. Goodell insisted that he would mete out discipline without waiting for the judicial system.

“It is my job — not law enforcement’s job — to protect the National Football League,” he said at the time.

But in his role as the N.F.L.’s hard-bitten sheriff, Mr. Goodell appears to have had a major blind spot: domestic violence cases. Players charged with domestic violence routinely received considerably lighter punishments than players accused of other offenses, like drug use or drunken driving. Often, they were not punished at all. On Friday, seven years after he implemented the personal conduct policy, Mr. Goodell acknowledged publicly that it had failed and would be overhauled.

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On Friday, seven years after he implemented the personal conduct policy, Roger Goodell acknowledged publicly that it had failed and would be overhauled.

“We should have had the personal conduct policy reviewed more frequently, to make the changes necessary to deal with the issues that have changed,” he said at a news conference in which he announced that outside experts would help the league devise a new system for handling domestic violence cases.

An examination of dozens of arrests of N.F.L. players since Mr. Goodell established his personal conduct policy in 2007 — and the fines and penalties doled out by the league — shows that suspensions of two to four games, and sometimes more, were far more likely for players arrested on drunken driving, marijuana possession or weapon charges. A vast majority of players charged with domestic violence crimes, if they were disciplined by the league at all, received one-game suspensions even after pleading guilty to lesser related charges or entering pretrial intervention programs.

The disparity in punishments within the league is illustrated in numerous cases. On Nov. 25, 2011, for example, Green Bay Packers linebacker Erik Walden was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his live-in girlfriend. The charge was reduced to disorderly conduct and then dismissed after Walden agreed to perform 50 hours of community service and receive counseling.

The N.F.L. suspended Walden for one game.

Less than two months earlier, the police seized two and a half pounds of marijuana sent to the home of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Jerome Simpson. The league suspended Simpson for three games.

“I don’t think the N.F.L. did anything more than give lip service to the notion that they were taking domestic abuse seriously,” said Ann DeLaney, an advocate for victims of domestic violence and the former executive director of the Julian Center in Indianapolis, a victim support group.

Referring to the Ray Rice case, Ms. DeLaney continued, “That’s what they did this time until it was caught on video.”

Mr. Rice, then a Baltimore Ravens running back, was suspended for only two games after being accused of assaulting his fiancée, Janay Palmer, in February; Ms. Palmer is now married to Mr. Rice. After a firestorm of criticism that the punishment was inadequate, Mr. Goodell increased the league’s minimum suspension for a first-time domestic violence offense to six games. After a video surfaced of Mr. Rice knocking out Ms. Palmer in a hotel elevator, Mr. Goodell suspended Mr. Rice indefinitely.

Some of the cases drew criticism at the time, but the recent high-profile episodes have led to a firestorm of protest from inside and outside football.

Tyrone Thomas, a Washington lawyer who advises on sports cases, said the N.F.L. had always had the power to take a tougher tack in instances in which there were accusations of domestic violence, but had chosen not to. Mr. Thomas said that the N.F.L. had treated domestic violence as a back-burner concern, and that punishing players caught doping or driving under the influence had been a higher priority.

“There certainly could have been a harsher interpretation of certain standards,” Mr. Thomas said.

In multiple cases since 2007, the N.F.L.’s response to domestic violence arrests appeared arbitrary.

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Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L.

Roger Goodell Vows to Change N.F.L. N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for his role in poor decision-making surrounding domestic violence cases and promised a revamped personal conduct policy to address future cases. Publish Date September 19, 2014. Image CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

Within the first year of the personal conduct policy, the contrast in the handling of different cases was on display when three members of the Pittsburgh Steelers — running back Najeh Davenport, linebacker James Harrison and wide receiver Cedrick Wilson — were accused in domestic violence cases, according to news reports at the time.

Mr. Davenport, who was accused during the season, was never suspended and was acquitted after a trial that took place after the season. Mr. Harrison, a star and an important player during the Steelers’ run to the Super Bowl after the 2008 season, also was not suspended. But Mr. Wilson, a lesser-known player, was dropped from the team within hours of his arrest, and he never played in the N.F.L. again.

During the last seven years, when a domestic abuse arrest involved a player who was not a starter or a major contributor to the team, the player was sometimes released by his team. In those cases, the league would not have had to consider a suspension.

Mr. Harrison’s agent, William Parise, said the league had made the right call with Mr. Harrison. “There was never anything there,” Mr. Parise said. “He did not strike her or do anything like that. He didn’t press charges. She didn’t press charges. And the league dropped the whole thing.”

In one of the higher-profile cases, Brandon Marshall, a wide receiver with the Denver Broncos at the time, was initially suspended for three games over events that included his being arrested on charges of assaulting his girlfriend. But his suspension was later reduced to one game.

In 2010, Tony McDaniel, a defensive lineman for the Miami Dolphins, was suspended for one game for violating the league’s personal conduct policy after he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct after a domestic dispute with his live-in girlfriend, according to The Sun-Sentinel newspaper in South Florida. He was sentenced to probation and ordered to attend counseling.

In another case in 2008, Michael Boley, a linebacker with the Atlanta Falcons at the time, was suspended by the league for a game after he was charged with battery. His wife at the time had told the police that he “became physical with her.” The case did not go to trial.

His lawyer, Randall Kessler of Atlanta, said it was troubling that Mr. Boley had been punished by the N.F.L.

“I was not happy that he was suspended based on an allegation, but I’m glad it ended there,” Mr. Kessler said.

Later, the police investigated Mr. Boley on child abuse allegations, which were raised amid a child-custody dispute. The outcome of that investigation is unclear.

Besides the Rice case, the N.F.L. has also been harshly criticized for its handling of three other recent abuse cases — those of Adrian Peterson, a star running back for the Minnesota Vikings, who has been accused of injuring one of his children; Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy, who was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend; and San Francisco 49ers defensive end Ray McDonald, who was arrested last month on suspicion of domestic violence.

Mr. Peterson was kept of out one game and then reinstated before an outcry led to his being suspended indefinitely. Mr. Hardy played in one game, but is being kept out while still being paid. Mr. McDonald has continued to play for the team, which has said it is waiting for his case to be resolved judicially.

Nita Chaudhary, a founder of UltraViolet, a women’s rights advocacy group, remained critical of the N.F.L. on Friday despite Goodell’s pledge to revamp the league’s personal conduct policy and penalties.

“This press circus did nothing to change Goodell’s long history of inaction on and blatant mishandling of domestic violence in the N.F.L.,” Ms. Chaudhary said in a statement. “We call on all of the N.F.L.’s sponsors to take a stand against domestic violence by withdrawing their support for the N.F.L. until Goodell is out of office.”

Elisa Choi contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In N.F.L. Get-Tough Policy, Blind Spot for Abuse. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

A Punch Is Seen, and a Player Is Out

Ray Rice Cut by Ravens and Suspended by N.F.L.

By KEN BELSONSEPT. 8, 2014

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Ray Rice at a news conference with his wife, Janay, on May 23. Rice was initially suspended for two games by the N.F.L. before the Ravens terminated his contract on Monday.

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The National Football League’s handling of a domestic violence case is under renewed scrutiny after a graphic video emerged Monday, leading to the termination of the Baltimore Ravens star running back Ray Rice’s contract and his suspension from the league.

The video shows Rice punching his fiancée, who is now his wife, in the face, leaving her motionless on the floor of a hotel elevator in Atlantic City in February. He then dragged her unconscious body from the elevator.

Rice was charged with felony assault in March, but his wife, Janay Palmer, declined to testify. The charges were dropped and court-supervised counseling was ordered. Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, disciplined Rice in July with a two-game suspension, a penalty that was widely criticized as too lenient.

Previously published video of the altercation was taken from a camera outside the elevator and showed only the moments after Rice hit Palmer. But the emergence of the new video, published by the website TMZ, raised questions about what the N.F.L. knew, and when. A league spokesman said “no one in our office has seen it until today,” but he did not respond to inquiries about whether any of the league’s investigators who do not work in the office had previously seen the video.

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Surveillance video obtained by TMZ (warning: graphic).

“What makes the N.F.L. look especially bad in this case is the sense that the only reason they suspended Ray Rice indefinitely was to save face, rather than to actually address or punish the problem at hand,” said S. Adam Brasel, a professor of marketing at Boston College. “Do people think the N.F.L. would have done the same if they got the footage internally rather than having the whole world see it on TMZ?”

The league enjoys unmatched popularity, with soaring TV ratings and billions of dollars in revenue. But it has been tarnished by several embarrassing issues in recent years, including homophobic and racist bullying.

Late last month, after an uproar over his handling of the Rice case, Goodell admitted that he had mishandled the case and announced new, tougher standards for players and league employees who are found to have committed domestic violence.

After saying for weeks that he had acted appropriately by suspending Rice for two games, Goodell said that in the future, any N.F.L. employee, including nonplayers, would be suspended for six games for a first offense of domestic violence and a minimum of a year for a second offense.

In a letter to team owners, he said he took responsibility “both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values. I didn’t get it right.”

He did not, however, revisit Rice’s suspension — until the video was posted Monday.

The Ravens had not previously disciplined Rice in any public way, and after the episode, the team said on Twitter: “Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.” The post was deleted Monday afternoon.

Rice, with his wife at his side, apologized publicly in May. The Ravens’ coach, John Harbaugh, said he stood by Rice, his star running back, and Ravens fans gave Rice a loud ovation during a preseason game.

However, Harbaugh said Monday that the new video, which he said he was seeing for the first time, made things different.

“It changed things, of course,” Harbaugh said.

He added, “When someone you care about does wrong, and is faced with the consequences of doing wrong, and rightfully so, it is tough, it is hurtful.”

Goodell, who has wide discretion to penalize players for violating the league’s personal conduct policy, was condemned for giving Rice what many considered a light suspension, especially compared with harsher penalties for players who take performance-enhancing drugs. The N.F.L. received hundreds of phone calls in protest, and petitions with tens of thousands of signatures were collected.

The new video led to calls Monday from advocates for victims of domestic violence for Goodell to penalize Rice retroactively. Hours later, the Ravens announced Rice’s release on their Twitter account. Soon after, the league said it had indefinitely suspended Rice.

“Commissioner Roger Goodell has announced that based on the new video evidence that became available today, he has imposed an indefinite suspension on Ray Rice,” the N.F.L. said in a statement. Rice will have to apply to be reinstated.

Advocates applauded the actions taken Monday. “The Ravens have sent a strong message against domestic violence,” said Judy Harris Kluger, executive director for Sanctuary for Families, a nonprofit agency in New York that helps victims of domestic violence. “It was impossible to ignore or explain away.”

Over the next three years, Rice, the Ravens’ second career leading rusher and a three-time Pro Bowl player, was to receive $9.5 million in salary, $9 million in signing bonuses and an additional $5.2 million in performance bonuses, according to the website Spotrac.com. Contracts often include terms that allow teams to terminate a deal with a player if he acts in a way that is detrimental to the team.

The N.F.L. Players Association did not return calls for comment.

The league may have to overhaul the way it investigates player malfeasance, sports lawyers said Monday. A spokesman for the N.F.L. said in July that Goodell took his cue in the investigation in part from law enforcement officials who had access to more information than the league.

But Goodell has also said that the N.F.L. should be held to a higher standard.

“The N.F.L. is going to have to review its due diligence in this case,” said Mark Conrad, who teaches sports law at Fordham University. “Some have said the league should treat it as a criminal matter, but it’s a very public league, and if they want to keep their many constituents happy, they are going to have to find a new way of doing it.”

Rutgers University, where Rice played, also distanced itself from him on Monday, removing a video on the team’s website.

The university’s athletic director, Julie Hermann, called the TMZ.com video “very disturbing” and said it “serves to reinforce the ongoing need to educate and bring awareness to the issue of domestic violence.”

Zach Schonbrun contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 9, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: After Punch Is Seen, Rice Is Out. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Assault Charges Add to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil

Cardinals’ Jonathan Dwyer Arrested as Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy Leave Teams

By PAT BORZI and STEVE EDERSEPT. 17, 2014

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Arizona’s Jonathan Dwyer was arrested Wednesday in a case the authorities said involved two July episodes at his home.

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EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — Jonathan Dwyer of the Arizona Cardinals was arrested in a domestic violence investigation Wednesday as the N.F.L. continued to find itself under siege for its handling of such cases.

Before Dwyer’s arrest, the Minnesota Vikings reversed course, placing Adrian Peterson, a star running back facing child abuse charges, on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list. The Carolina Panthers did the same with Greg Hardy, a defensive end appealing a domestic violence case.

The Phoenix police, in a statement, said detectives arrested Dwyer, a running back, in Tempe on charges of aggravated assault in a domestic violence case stemming from two separate episodes at his home in southeast Phoenix in late July.

Dwyer, who was deactivated by the Cardinals on Wednesday night, denied that any physical assaults took place, the police said. They said he was being booked at the Maricopa County Jail on a count of aggravated assault causing a fracture, a count of aggravated assault involving a minor, two counts of criminal damage and a count of preventing the use of a phone in an emergency.

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The Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson signed autographs last month in Kansas City.

The victims were said to be a 27-year-old woman and an 18-month-old child. The police said the woman left the state with the child after the episodes. Police then received the complaint in the case on Sept. 11.

The Cardinals said they learned of the allegations Wednesday when notified by the police. “We will continue to closely monitor this as it develops and evaluate additional information as it becomes available,” the team’s statement said.

An N.F.L. spokesman said Dwyer’s case would be reviewed under the N.F.L.’s personal conduct policy.

Earlier Wednesday, mounting pressure from sponsors and the public forced the Vikings to bar Peterson from practices and games while he deals with his arrest in Texas on charges that he beat his 4-year-old son.

The decision, announced in an email at 12:47 a.m. Central time, came 38 hours after the Vikings said Peterson would rejoin the team. His reinstatement drew criticism from fans, women’s groups and sponsors, who said the team was insensitive to domestic violence and child abuse.

“We made a mistake, and we needed to get this right,” Zygi Wilf, a Vikings co-owner, said at a news conference Wednesday. “It’s important to listen to our fans, the community and our sponsors.”

After consulting with Peterson, the N.F.L. and Peterson’s agent, Peterson was placed on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list, where he will remain until his legal situation is resolved. Peterson will receive his full $11.75 million base salary but cannot take part in team activities.

Wilf’s brother Mark, a co-owner and the team president, denied that the league pressured the Vikings to make the move.

“This is our decision 100 percent,” he said. “We were aiming to get it right, and we feel we got it right.”

Nike said Wednesday it had suspended its contract with Peterson and made his jerseys unavailable online.

“Nike in no way condones child abuse or domestic violence of any kind and has shared our concerns with the N.F.L.,” the company said in a statement.

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Greg Hardy, a Carolina Panthers defensive end, was found guilty of assaulting his girlfriend — a verdict that he is appealing.

The Panthers’ Hardy agreed to go on the same exempt list Wednesday as he appeals his domestic violence conviction. He was found guilty in July of assaulting and threatening to kill his girlfriend. His trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 17. Hardy played in Week 1, was deactivated last Sunday and had continued to practice with the team. He will also receive his full $13.12 million base salary.

“It’s been handled as well as we could,” Panthers Coach Ron Rivera said at a news conference Wednesday.

Peterson is accused of injuring his son while disciplining him with a tree branch, commonly known as a switch, last May in Spring, Tex. Peterson turned himself in to Montgomery County authorities early Saturday morning and was inactive Sunday for Minnesota’s 30-7 loss to New England. Free on $15,000 bail, he is scheduled to make his first court appearance Oct. 8.

In response to Peterson’s reinstatement Monday, fans who ran a Vikings online message board shut it down. And the Radisson hotel chain, based in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, suspended its Vikings sponsorship. Marilyn Carlson Nelson, the former chairman of Carlson Inc., which owns Radisson, was a co-chairwoman of the bid committee that landed the 2018 Super Bowl for Minneapolis.

The backlash accelerated Tuesday. Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat who helped the Vikings receive public financing for their new stadium, and Senator Al Franken, also a Democrat, criticized the decision. Dayton called Peterson’s actions “a public embarrassment” and demanded the team suspend him.

Fran Tarkenton, a Hall of Fame quarterback who led the Vikings to three Super Bowls, told Fox News that he was embarrassed by the team’s original decision to let Peterson play.

Castrol Motor Oil terminated a sponsorship contract with Peterson. A spokesman for U.S. Bank, whose president, Richard Davis, a co-chairman of the Super Bowl bid committee with Carlson Nelson, said the company was monitoring the situation closely. An appearance by Vikings players at a Minneapolis orphanage was canceled.

Mark Wilf declined to address whether the team underestimated the backlash from the decision to reinstate Peterson. “I don’t want to Monday morning quarterback what it was,” he said.

A Radisson spokesman, Benjamin Gardeen, said in an email Wednesday that the company’s sponsorship remained suspended. On Monday, the Radisson logo appeared on a banner behind Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman as he discussed Peterson’s reinstatement. A different banner at Wednesday’s news conference had no such logos.

Vikings cornerback Captain Munnerlyn, one of the few players willing to comment Wednesday, said the club’s reversal surprised him. Munnerlyn said Peterson did nothing wrong, and his own mother disciplined him the same way.

“I don’t think it’s fair at all,” Munnerlyn said. “I think he should be able to play. He hasn’t been convicted of anything. All these allegations, or this and that, pictures out, but he hasn’t been convicted of nothing.”

The Vikings’ handling of the situation inflamed a national debate about domestic violence in the N.F.L. Last week, a graphic video showing Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancée led Commissioner Roger Goodell to indefinitely suspend the former Baltimore Ravens running back.

Late Tuesday, Rice appealed that penalty, arguing that he should not have been suspended twice for the same episode. In July, Goodell said Rice would have to sit out the first two games of the regular season.

Steve Eder reported from New York, and Ken Belson contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Arrest Adds to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Pro Football |NYT Now

Assault Charges Add to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil

Cardinals’ Jonathan Dwyer Arrested as Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy Leave Teams

By PAT BORZI and STEVE EDERSEPT. 17, 2014

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Arizona’s Jonathan Dwyer was arrested Wednesday in a case the authorities said involved two July episodes at his home.

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EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — Jonathan Dwyer of the Arizona Cardinals was arrested in a domestic violence investigation Wednesday as the N.F.L. continued to find itself under siege for its handling of such cases.

Before Dwyer’s arrest, the Minnesota Vikings reversed course, placing Adrian Peterson, a star running back facing child abuse charges, on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list. The Carolina Panthers did the same with Greg Hardy, a defensive end appealing a domestic violence case.

The Phoenix police, in a statement, said detectives arrested Dwyer, a running back, in Tempe on charges of aggravated assault in a domestic violence case stemming from two separate episodes at his home in southeast Phoenix in late July.

Dwyer, who was deactivated by the Cardinals on Wednesday night, denied that any physical assaults took place, the police said. They said he was being booked at the Maricopa County Jail on a count of aggravated assault causing a fracture, a count of aggravated assault involving a minor, two counts of criminal damage and a count of preventing the use of a phone in an emergency.

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The Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson signed autographs last month in Kansas City.

The victims were said to be a 27-year-old woman and an 18-month-old child. The police said the woman left the state with the child after the episodes. Police then received the complaint in the case on Sept. 11.

The Cardinals said they learned of the allegations Wednesday when notified by the police. “We will continue to closely monitor this as it develops and evaluate additional information as it becomes available,” the team’s statement said.

An N.F.L. spokesman said Dwyer’s case would be reviewed under the N.F.L.’s personal conduct policy.

Earlier Wednesday, mounting pressure from sponsors and the public forced the Vikings to bar Peterson from practices and games while he deals with his arrest in Texas on charges that he beat his 4-year-old son.

The decision, announced in an email at 12:47 a.m. Central time, came 38 hours after the Vikings said Peterson would rejoin the team. His reinstatement drew criticism from fans, women’s groups and sponsors, who said the team was insensitive to domestic violence and child abuse.

“We made a mistake, and we needed to get this right,” Zygi Wilf, a Vikings co-owner, said at a news conference Wednesday. “It’s important to listen to our fans, the community and our sponsors.”

After consulting with Peterson, the N.F.L. and Peterson’s agent, Peterson was placed on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list, where he will remain until his legal situation is resolved. Peterson will receive his full $11.75 million base salary but cannot take part in team activities.

Wilf’s brother Mark, a co-owner and the team president, denied that the league pressured the Vikings to make the move.

“This is our decision 100 percent,” he said. “We were aiming to get it right, and we feel we got it right.”

Nike said Wednesday it had suspended its contract with Peterson and made his jerseys unavailable online.

“Nike in no way condones child abuse or domestic violence of any kind and has shared our concerns with the N.F.L.,” the company said in a statement.

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Greg Hardy, a Carolina Panthers defensive end, was found guilty of assaulting his girlfriend — a verdict that he is appealing.

The Panthers’ Hardy agreed to go on the same exempt list Wednesday as he appeals his domestic violence conviction. He was found guilty in July of assaulting and threatening to kill his girlfriend. His trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 17. Hardy played in Week 1, was deactivated last Sunday and had continued to practice with the team. He will also receive his full $13.12 million base salary.

“It’s been handled as well as we could,” Panthers Coach Ron Rivera said at a news conference Wednesday.

Peterson is accused of injuring his son while disciplining him with a tree branch, commonly known as a switch, last May in Spring, Tex. Peterson turned himself in to Montgomery County authorities early Saturday morning and was inactive Sunday for Minnesota’s 30-7 loss to New England. Free on $15,000 bail, he is scheduled to make his first court appearance Oct. 8.

In response to Peterson’s reinstatement Monday, fans who ran a Vikings online message board shut it down. And the Radisson hotel chain, based in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, suspended its Vikings sponsorship. Marilyn Carlson Nelson, the former chairman of Carlson Inc., which owns Radisson, was a co-chairwoman of the bid committee that landed the 2018 Super Bowl for Minneapolis.

The backlash accelerated Tuesday. Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat who helped the Vikings receive public financing for their new stadium, and Senator Al Franken, also a Democrat, criticized the decision. Dayton called Peterson’s actions “a public embarrassment” and demanded the team suspend him.

Fran Tarkenton, a Hall of Fame quarterback who led the Vikings to three Super Bowls, told Fox News that he was embarrassed by the team’s original decision to let Peterson play.

Castrol Motor Oil terminated a sponsorship contract with Peterson. A spokesman for U.S. Bank, whose president, Richard Davis, a co-chairman of the Super Bowl bid committee with Carlson Nelson, said the company was monitoring the situation closely. An appearance by Vikings players at a Minneapolis orphanage was canceled.

Mark Wilf declined to address whether the team underestimated the backlash from the decision to reinstate Peterson. “I don’t want to Monday morning quarterback what it was,” he said.

A Radisson spokesman, Benjamin Gardeen, said in an email Wednesday that the company’s sponsorship remained suspended. On Monday, the Radisson logo appeared on a banner behind Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman as he discussed Peterson’s reinstatement. A different banner at Wednesday’s news conference had no such logos.

Vikings cornerback Captain Munnerlyn, one of the few players willing to comment Wednesday, said the club’s reversal surprised him. Munnerlyn said Peterson did nothing wrong, and his own mother disciplined him the same way.

“I don’t think it’s fair at all,” Munnerlyn said. “I think he should be able to play. He hasn’t been convicted of anything. All these allegations, or this and that, pictures out, but he hasn’t been convicted of nothing.”

The Vikings’ handling of the situation inflamed a national debate about domestic violence in the N.F.L. Last week, a graphic video showing Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancée led Commissioner Roger Goodell to indefinitely suspend the former Baltimore Ravens running back.

Late Tuesday, Rice appealed that penalty, arguing that he should not have been suspended twice for the same episode. In July, Goodell said Rice would have to sit out the first two games of the regular season.

Steve Eder reported from New York, and Ken Belson contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Arrest Adds to N.F.L.’s Off-Field Turmoil. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Art & Design |NYT Now

The Climax in a Tale of Green and Gritty

The High Line Opens Its Third and Final Phase

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Opening on Sunday, the High Line’s final phase, from 30th Street to 34th Street, blends eastward views of rising developments with Hudson River sunsets.

Critic’s Notebook

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

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If the newest, last stretch of the High Line doesn’t make you fall in love with New York all over again, I really don’t know what to say. Phase 3 of the elevated park, which opens on Sunday, is a heartbreaker, swinging west on 30th Street from 10th Avenue toward the Hudson River, straight into drop-dead sunset views. It spills into a feral grove of big-tooth aspen trees on 34th Street.

It’s hard to believe now that some New Yorkers once thought renovating the decrepit elevated rail line was a lousy idea. Not since Central Park opened in 1857 has a park reshaped New Yorkers’ thinking about public space and the city more profoundly. Like Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim museum in Spain, it has spread a dream, albeit largely a pipe dream, around the world: how one exceptional design — in this case, a work of landscape architecture — might miraculously alter a whole neighborhood, even a whole city’s fortunes.

Yes, at roughly $35 million, Phase 3, like the rest of the High Line, cost more per acre than probably any park in human history. With most city parks struggling to make ends meet, that kind of money is an inevitable source of resentment, notwithstanding that the High Line was, in significant measure, constructed and is almost exclusively maintained with private funds.

Photo

Urban choreography: A westward view from the third and final leg of the High Line, which opens to the public Sunday.

And, yes, nowhere is the city’s widening economic divide clearer to see than along this stretch of Manhattan’s West Side. The new phase loops around Hudson Yards, a 26-acre site becoming a multibillion-dollar architectural petting zoo, with super-tall office and apartment towers, at least one of them to rise higher than the Empire State Building.

But this third phase completes a kind of narrative, which the two earlier phases started, about 21st-century New York as a greener, sleeker metropolis, riven by wealth, with an anxious eye in the rearview mirror. It is a Rorschach test, signifying different things — about urban renewal, industry, gentrification, the environment — to different people. Occupying an in-between sort of space between buildings, neighborhoods, street and sky, the park makes a convenient receptacle for meaning. Neither an authentic ruin nor entirely built from scratch, a sign of runaway capital but also common ground, it is a modern landmark capitalizing on the romance of a bygone New York — the “real,” gritty city — a park born of the very forces that swept that city away.

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A convenient receptacle for historical meaning: An eastward view of the colossi rising on Manhattan’s West Side, from a strip of the High Line that runs westward along West 30th Street.

Those new towers will make this section of the High Line very different from the earlier ones. The first two phases thread, at Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” elevation, through the meatpacking district and Chelsea; it’s the secret garden everybody knows. When Hudson Yards is finished, the development’s raised plaza, built atop the West Side rail depot, will be flush with the 30-foot height of the park, its skyscrapers forming a canyon of glass. The chaos and cranes will be catnip to kids; parents may weep to see another swath of industrial New York yield to luxury condominiums.

James Corner Field Operations designed the High Line with Diller Scofidio & Renfro. Mr. Corner calls the city around the park its “borrowed landscape.” The inimitability of those surroundings, and the park’s site-specific detailing, are major reasons the so-called High Line effect has been, like the Bilbao one, fool’s gold for so many other cities that have wanted to follow in New York’s footsteps.

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The last stretch of the High Line, from 30th Street to 34th Street, will be completed and open to the public on Sunday.

Already choked by five million visitors a year, it’s a park custom-made for tourists — and for congenitally distracted New Yorkers who can’t take a walk without a destination, or sit on a bench and just stare at the sky. On the High Line you go someplace, or pretend to.

“You come up here and start looking,” is how the architect Ricardo Scofidio puts it. Toward that end, the park is choreographed to a fare-thee-well, as a varied sequence of paths, vistas, overlooks, plantings — episodes linked by an architecture of reclaimed hardwood benches, rusted rails and concrete planks.

Photo

The High Line already has five million visitors a year.

The designers avoided pressure to top themselves with the third section, and went the other way. A simple shift in orientation of the planks, where two benches crisscross, suffices to signal the High Line’s turn from north-south to east-west. The turn opens onto a wide plaza, the park’s new crossroad, with stairs connecting to Hudson Yards and what will be Hudson Park and Boulevard beyond.

A few benches have morphed into love seats, picnic tables and a seesaw. Elizabeth Diller, another of the architects, describes them as examples of tweaking the park’s “genetic code.” Beyond, a bridge over 11th Avenue supports a catwalk, flanked by low benches: a spot to see and be seen, which has always been the High Line’s raison d’être for millions of exhibitionists. From there, a section of rail bed is excavated, its girders and beams coated with silicone so children can climb them safely and crawl into nooks outfitted with periscopes. Then the path narrows, funneling into the northernmost section of Phase 3, the one skirting the Hudson River.

With more limited construction funds, the strategy in this part of the park was bare bones: Rusty tracks are filled in with bonded gravel to make a level path; timber dunnage is stacked to make a bleacher from which people can peer out at the water and over the rail yards; and nature is left to its own devices, giving visitors a glimpse of how the High Line looked before its makeover.

Less is more. I mentioned falling in love with New York all over again. The city opens up here, over the din of traffic and a helipad on 12th Avenue. Stripped bare, this section of viaduct, with its self-seeded landscape, looks scruffy, stubborn and wild. Evening primrose and Queen Anne’s lace stir in the breeze; trains creak in and out of the yard. Time suddenly reverses, and the sleek, soigné High Line evaporates.

“Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, no one will ever die,” Nabokov once wrote.

There, with the Hudson on one side and the skyline on the other, 360 degrees of New York unfold, suspended and infinite.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Climax in a Tale of Green and Gritty. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Europe |NYT Now

Turkey Obtains Release of Hostages Held in Iraq

By BEN HUBBARD, SEBNEM ARSU and CEYLAN YEGINSUSEPT. 20, 2014

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Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, center, in suit, welcomed freed hostages Saturday as they arrived at Esenboga Airport in Ankara on Saturday.

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ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey secured the release of 49 hostages who had been held for more than three months in Iraq by the jihadists of the Islamic State on Saturday, marking a moment of joy for Turkey while raising questions about how it had managed to set them free.

Turkey said its intelligence agency had led a covert operation to bring home the hostages, who included diplomats and their families, but insisted that no military actions had been taken and that no ransoms were paid.

But Turkish officials provided no information on why or how the captives were transported from Mosul in Iraq to Raqqa in Syria before being brought to the Turkish border. Nor did they explain how they extracted such a large group, which included women and children, from Raqqa, the de facto capital of the world’s strongest jihadist group, without facing significant resistance.

“Right now, the government is on top of things because they got the release of the hostages, and they should be congratulated for that, but a lot of people will be asking how this happened,” said Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.

Photo

An employee of the Turkish Consulate in Mosul was greeted by family members at Esenboga Airport in Ankara on Saturday.

“I still don’t understand what ISIS got out of this,” he said, using an alternative name for the Islamic State.

The release of the hostages will most likely give a boost to the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the former prime minister, and could affect Turkey’s participation in the international coalition that the United States is seeking to build to fight the Islamic State.

Turkey, a predominantly Sunni Muslim country and a NATO ally, declined to sign a communiqué calling for a military campaign against the Islamic State, saying that it feared repercussions for the hostages.

Some analysts said the end of the hostage crisis would give Turkey more strategic flexibility, although the fear of reactions could still keep it from getting involved militarily.

“One of the main hurdles for Turkey’s strategy was the hostage crisis and, therefore, the release of the hostages will no doubt give Turkey more freedom with respect to its own strategy to resist the Islamic State,” said Mensur Akgun, director of the Global Political Trends Center in Istanbul. “This doesn’t mean that Turkey will forget about its other reservations regarding national security when giving the green light to the demands from partners.”

Turkey has agreed to contribute to an international alliance against the group, which has seized territory in Syria and Iraq for its self-declared caliphate near Turkey’s southern border.

Ankara also agreed to open its Incirlik air base in southern Adana Province for logistical and humanitarian support, and pledged to strengthen border security, especially in the south.

Its goal there is to stop the transport of foreign fighters who have long used Turkey’s porous borders to join the militant group’s front lines.

The hostages had been seized in June from the Turkish Consulate in Mosul, in northern Iraq, and included Consul General Ozturk Yilmaz, other diplomats, children and three Iraqis.

While the freed hostages were advised not to speak to the news media, some details about their ordeal emerged, suggesting a harrowing affair made worse by the raging conflicts on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border.

Mr. Yilmaz, the consul general, said that airstrikes aimed at the Islamic State in Iraq had killed two of the men guarding the hostages and that some in the group were wounded when the blast showered them with glass.

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The Iraq-ISIS Conflict in Maps, Photos and Video

A visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria.

OPEN Graphic

In an interview with Turkey’s NTV television station, Mr. Yilmaz said the militants had put a gun to his head so they could take propaganda photos of him and the others, but he had refused to cooperate.

“We would prefer to be killed if anything bad happens to women, children and our flag,” he said.

He also said the captives had been moved eight times and were forced to watch propaganda videos, including that of the beheading of the American journalist James Foley, to weaken their morale.

The semiofficial Anadolu news agency said that Turkey had used drones to track the captives as they were moved. It said that Turkish intelligence teams had tried five times to rescue the hostages, but that each attempt had been thwarted by clashes near where they were held.

Another hostage, asked whether he and the others had been tortured, said, “Surely, we went through certain things.”

“The Turkish intelligence agency has followed the situation very sensitively and patiently since the beginning, and as a result, conducted a successful rescue operation,” Mr. Erdogan said in a statement.

One senior American official, who asked not to be identified, said Saturday that Turkey had not notified the United States before securing the return of the hostages, or made a specific request for American military help in connection with their release.

Turkey fears Islamic militants not just over its borders, but also inside of them. It has a no-entry list of 6,000 potential jihadist suspects, and last year it deported 1,000 foreigners on the basis of suspected links to jihadist groups, a government official said in a recent interview.

Though Ankara will no doubt remain concerned about the Islamic State’s possible retaliation throughout Turkey if it contributes to a military operation against it, analysts said, the hostages’ release still might change the situation.

After crossing the border from Syria, the freed hostages boarded a plane in the Turkish city of Urfa to Ankara to be reunited with their families. Hundreds of people showed up at Esenboga Airport in Ankara, waving flags, to greet them, television reports showed.

“We as a strong state brought our nationals back home, but how about millions of others that expect to return home?” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, addressing the cheerful crowd and underlining the growing refugee crisis along Turkey’s southern borders. More than one million Syrian refugees have fled to Turkey, including more than 200,000 at more than 20 camps built in several border towns.

Adding to those numbers, more than 60,000 Kurdish refugees from the Kobani area of northern Syria have crossed into Turkey since Friday, Turkish officials said, fleeing an assault by Islamic State fighters. Several hundred Kurdish fighters crossed the border in the other direction on Saturday to help defend the area, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Ben Hubbard reported from Ankara, Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul, and Ceylan Yeginsu from London. Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkey Obtains Release Of Hostages Held in Iraq . Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Middle East |NYT Now

The Iraq-ISIS Conflict in Maps, Photos and Video

A visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria. UPDATED September 9, 2014

Areas Under ISIS Control

Updated September 9

Having occupied crucial sections of Syria over the past year and more recently seizing vast areas of Iraq, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria controls territory greater than many countries and now rivals Al Qaeda as the world’s most powerful jihadist group. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

ISIS-controlled

places

Areas under

full control

Areas of

recurring attacks

Sparsely populated

areas

ISIS-controlled places

Areas under full control

Areas of recurring attacks

Sparsely populated areas

Sources: Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

Strikes in Northern Iraq

Published August 19

American fighter jets and drones attacked 68 targets in northern Iraq in the first week and a half of airstrikes, according to the U.S. Central Command. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Note: Strikes were not reported comprehensively day by day, so some may be missing from daily tallies.

Strikes Reported

Each Day

Area of

detail

AugUST 8

IRAQ

Baghdad

KURDISH

AUTONOMOUS

REGION

Mosul Dam

AUGUST 18

0

15

Mosul

Mount Sinjar

Erbil

Iraq

Kirkuk

Near Mount Sinjar

At least 13 strikes

Near Mosul Dam

At least 35 Strikes

Near Erbil

At least 20 Strikes

Strikes Reported Each Day

15

0

AUG. 18

Aug. 8

Area of detail

Baghdad

KURDISH

AUTONOMOUS

REGION

Mosul Dam

Mosul

Mount Sinjar

Erbil

Iraq

Near Mount Sinjar

At least 13 strikes

Near Erbil

At least 20 Strikes

Near Mosul Dam

At least 35 Strikes

Mount Sinjar

Thousands of Yazidi refugees were trapped on the mountain after fleeing Islamist fighters. Targets included:

3 armed vehicles5 personnel carriers1 armored vehicle1 Humvee3 trucks1 mortar position4 checkpoints

Mosul Dam

American strikes allowed Kurdish fighters to regain the dam, which they lost two weeks ago. Targets included:

19 armed vehicles7 Humvees2 antiaircraft guns1 armored vehicle9 fighting positions3 checkpoints2 I.E.D.s2 personnel carriers

Erbil

Strikes in this area helped repel militants approaching the regional capital. Targets included:

7 armed vehicles1 mobile artillery7 vehicles2 mortar positions1 mine-resistant vehicle

Note: Strikes were not reported comprehensively day by day, so some may be missing from daily tallies.

A Closer Look At Mount Sinjar

Updated August 15

Tens of thousands of Yazidis, a religious minority group in Iraq, were trapped on Mount Sinjar, besieged by ISIS militants who captured their towns at the foot of the mountain range in early August. Satellite imagery taken Aug. 7 indicates that many of the displaced fled ISIS by driving vehicles up the mountain, where some encountered road blocks and abandoned their cars. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Source: Vehicle locations from satellite imagery by DigitalGlobe via Amnesty International

SYRIA

IRAQ

NORTH

Red dots are vehicles visible in satellite imagery

About 13 miles

TO BORDER

Sinuni

ROADBLOCKS

Kursi

ABOUT 70 MILES

TO MOSUL

25 miles

Bara

Sinjar

Jaddala

Sinjar Mountains

Elevation 4,449 ft.

Area

visible

Area of

assessed

satellite

imagery

Mosul

IRAQ

Baghdad

ABOUT 250 MILES TO BAGHDAD

Area of assessed

satellite imagery

SYRIA

IRAQ

Sinjar

Red indicates

vehicles on mountain

Sinjar Mountains

Elevation 4,449 ft.

Source: Vehicle locations from satellite imagery by DigitalGlobe via Amnesty International

Iraqis Driven From Their Homes by ISIS

Published August 14

The United Nations estimates that militants with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have forced nearly 180,000 families — or more than a million people — from their homes in Iraq. The exodus roughly breaks down into three phases. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Note: The United Nations estimates one Iraqi family is equal to six individuals. Source: IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix

January 1 to May 31

Over 151 days, families, on average, were displaced daily.

Anbar Province

321,210 families

known displaced

Months before it became something of a household name, ISIS took control of much of Anbar Province, displacing an estimated 500,000 Iraqis.

June 1 to July 31

Over 61 days, families, on average, were displaced daily.

Anbar Province

321,210 families

known displaced

Another half-million Iraqis were displaced in June and July when ISIS captured Mosul and advanced south toward Baghdad.

August 1 to August 6

Over 6 days, families, on average, were displaced daily.

Anbar Province

321,210 families

known displaced

In early August, ISIS seized several towns under Kurdish control, displacing Yazidis, Christians and other religious minority groups. Although the United Nations says that the capture of Sinjar may have displaced as many as 33,000 families, that number is not yet included in the official data.

Note: The United Nations estimates one Iraqi family is equal to six individuals. Source: IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix

U.S. Strikes Militants Near Erbil

Published August 8

American jets attacked mobile artillery vehicles that had been shelling Kurdish targets in Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region. The city has boomed since the American-led invasion of Iraq. It is home to a growing expatriate community of investment consultants and oil executives, as well as to an American consulate. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: American and Kurdish officials

Mosul

Islamist militants have controlled Iraq's second-largest city since June 10.

Mosul Dam

Captured by

militants on

Thursday.

ABOUT 150 MILES

TO BAGHDAD

Iraq

Mahmour

Bombed by American

jets on Friday.

Gwer

Bombed on Thursday.

About 40

miles TO

ERBIL

About 35

miles TO

ERBIL

Kalak

Historic citadel

of Erbil

United States Consulate

is in this neighborhood

Chammah

ERBIL

AIRPORT

Area

visible

Erbil

Erbil

Kurdish capital

IRAQ

Baghdad

NORTH

Mahmour

Bombed by

American jets

on Friday.

Gwer

Bombed on

Thursday.

Mosul

Islamist militants have

controlled Iraq's second-largest

city since June 10.

Mosul Dam

Captured by militants

on Thursday.

Iraq

About 40 miles

TO ERBIL

About 35 miles

TO ERBIL

Historic citadel

of Erbil

United States Consulate

is in this neighborhood

Area

visible

Erbil

Kurdish capital

Erbil

IRAQ

Baghdad

NORTH

Mahmour

Bombed by American

jets on Friday.

Mosul Dam

Captured by militants

on Thursday.

Gwer

Bombed on

Thursday.

Mosul

About 40 miles TO ERBIL

Erbil

Kurdish

capital

Iraq

NORTH

Sources: American and Kurdish officials

Iraq’s Tangle of Insurgent Groups

Published July 12

Though ISIS has grown to be the most powerful militant group in Iraq, its foothold in the country relies on negotiating a shifting tangle of smaller groups and alliances. This is a snapshot of the active militant groups in provinces north and west of Baghdad, based on information from the Pentagon and other U.S. officials and reporting by Times journalists in Iraq. Related article »

Related Maps and Multimedia »

Click group names for more details.

Naqshbandia Order/J.R.T.N. »

Baathist

Active in: Diyala, Salahuddin

ISIS relationship: Fighting

Established in 2007, the group's reputed leader was a high-ranking deputy in Saddam Hussein's regime. The group is believed to have initially assisted ISIS in its push south from Mosul.

1920 Revolution Brigades »

Baathist

Active in: Diyala, Anbar

ISIS relationship: Fighting in some areas

Formed by disaffected Iraqi Army officers who were left without jobs after the Americans dissolved the military in 2003.

Islamic Army of Iraq »

Salafist

Active in: Diyala, Salahuddin, Anbar

ISIS relationship: Periodic fighting

ISIS has targeted family members of the leadership of this group, which has long had a presence in Diyala and has been involved in past sectarian battles.

Mujahedeen Army »

Salafist

Active in: Diyala, Salahuddin, Anbar

ISIS relationship: Truce

A nationalist Islamist group that advocates overthrowing the Iraqi government.

Khata'ib al-Mustapha »

Salafist

Active in: Diyala

ISIS relationship: Truce

Islamic militants who fight against the government.

Army of Muhammad »

Salafist

Active in: Anbar

ISIS relationship: Allies

Islamic militants who fight against the government.

Khata'ib Tawrat al-Ashreen »

Anti-government Sunni Tribe

Active in: Diyala, Salahuddin

ISIS relationship: Truce

Sunni tribes opposed to the Iraqi government.

Ansar al-Islam/Ansar al-Sunna »

Islamist Jihadist

Active in: Diyala

ISIS relationship: Fighting

An Al Qaeda-affiliated group that has led a number of deadly attacks in Iraq over the years.

Opportunity and Hazard for Iraq’s Kurds

Published July 10

In northern Iraq, Kurds control a semiautonomous region that is more economically secure because of access to oil, and relatively stable because of a well-trained military force known as the pesh merga.

Recent gains by militants in Iraq prompted the pesh merga to take control of towns (), including the oil-rich area around Kirkuk. The regional government hopes to hold a referendum on independence soon, but faces pressure from the United States and other countries to remain a part of Iraq. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project, Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

Turkey

PREDOMINANTLY

KURDISH AREAS

Iran

Al Kasik

military base

Rabia

Aleppo

Mosul

Sinjar

Kirkuk

Syria

Tuz

Khurmatu

Leb.

Khanaqin

Kurdish autonomous region

Damascus

Baghdad

Iraq

JORDAN

Amman

Najaf

Turkey

PREDOMINANTLY

KURDISH AREAS

Iran

Al Kasik

military base

Rabia

Sinjar

Mosul

Syria

Kirkuk

Tuz

Khurmatu

Khanaqin

Kurdish autonomous region

Baghdad

Iraq

Najaf

Sources: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project, Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

Refugees From Two Countries in Turmoil

Published June 29

More than a million Iraqis have been displaced this year, according to new estimates by the United Nations, worsening a regional refugee crisis stemming from Syria’s civil war. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Source: United Nations

turkey

Syrian RefugeesMost of the Syrians who have been displaced have fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Nearly all of those fleeing to Iraq have gone to the Kurdish autonomous region.

iran

Mosul

Raqqa

Erbil

Aleppo

Kurdish

autonomous

region

Kirkuk

syria

lebanon

Damascus

Thousands of

refugees at

destination

Baghdad

iraq

ISRAEL

jordan

10

100

Saudi Arabia

turkey

iran

Displaced IraqisThe rapid advance of Sunni militants from Mosul toward Baghdad displaced an estimated 500,000 Iraqis in recent weeks, adding to the hundreds of thousands displaced earlier this year. Many have gone to the already crowded camps in the Kurdish autonomous region.

Mosul

Raqqa

Erbil

Aleppo

Kirkuk

syria

leb.

Damascus

iraq

Baghdad

jordan

Amman

ISRAEL

Saudi Arabia

THOUSANDS OF REFUGEES

AT DESTINATION

10

100

Mosul

Aleppo

syria

Kurdish

autonomous

region

Leb.

Damascus

Baghdad

iraq

jordan

Syrian RefugeesMost of the Syrians who have been displaced have fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Nearly all of those fleeing to Iraq have gone to the Kurdish autonomous region.

turkey

Mosul

Erbil

Aleppo

Kirkuk

syria

leb.

Damascus

iraq

Baghdad

jordan

Displaced IraqisThe rapid advance of Sunni militants from Mosul toward Baghdad displaced an estimated 500,000 Iraqis in recent weeks, adding to the hundreds of thousands displaced earlier this year. Many have gone to the already crowded camps in the Kurdish autonomous region.

Source: United Nations

How Syria and Iraq’s Borders Evolved

Published June 26

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is trying to establish its own Sunni state across borders that have their origins in the Ottoman Empire and post World War I diplomacy. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Rand, McNally & Co. World Atlas (1911 Ottoman Empire map); United Kingdom National Archives (Sykes-Picot); Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project (religious and ethnic map)

- Ottoman Empire

- Sykes-Picot Agreement

- Current Boundaries

Ottoman provincial borders

Current borders

Adana

Turkey

Persia

Aleppo

Aleppo

Nicosia

Mosul

Iran

Zor

Beirut

Syria

Lebanon

Beirut

Lebanon

Damascus

Baghdad

Syria

Iraq

Beirut

Baghdad

Tel Aviv

Amman

Jerusalem

Israel

Basra

Jordan

Jerusalem

Saudi Arabia

Kuwait

Kuwait

Ottoman provincial borders

Current borders

Turkey

Adana

Persia

Aleppo

Aleppo

Mosul

Zor

Iran

Beirut

Syria

Lebanon

Lebanon

Damascus

Baghdad

Syria

Beirut

Baghdad

Iraq

Tel Aviv

Israel

Basra

Jerusalem

Saudi Arabia

Sykes-Picot

Current borders

Turkey

French Control

Aleppo

Independent Arab states

under French influence

Nicosia

Iran

Syria

Lebanon

British

Control

Beirut

Damascus

Iraq

Independent

Arab states under

British influence

International

Zone

Baghdad

Tel Aviv

Amman

British Control

Jerusalem

Israel

Jordan

Saudi Arabia

Kuwait

Kuwait

Sykes-Picot

Current borders

Turkey

French

Control

Independent Arab states

under French influence

Iran

Syria

British

Control

Damascus

Baghdad

Iraq

International

Zone

Independent

Arab states under

British influence

British

Control

Israel

Jordan

Saudi Arabia

Shiite

Sunni

Shiite/Sunni mixed

Other religions

Kurdish

Turkey

Aleppo

Nicosia

Iran

Syria

Lebanon

Beirut

Damascus

Iraq

Baghdad

Tel Aviv

Amman

Jerusalem

Israel

Jordan

Saudi Arabia

Kuwait

Kuwait

Shiite

Sunni

Shiite/Sunni mixed

Other religions

Kurdish

Turkey

Aleppo

Iran

Syria

Lebanon

Damascus

Baghdad

Iraq

Tel Aviv

Israel

Jordan

Saudi Arabia

Ottoman Empire

Before WWI, the Middle East was divided into several administrative provinces under the Ottoman Empire. Modern Iraq is roughly made up of the Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra.

Sykes-Picot Agreement

In 1916, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, British and French diplomats, secretly drew the first map to divide up the Ottoman Empire, beginning a series of border negotiations that led to the establishment of British and French mandates in 1920.

Religious and Ethnic Regions Today

Iraq's current boundaries bring together different, often adversarial, groups under one mixed national identity that has been strained by conflict. Still, if Iraq were to split, partition would not be so simple as drawing new borders along religious or ethnic lines.

Sources: Rand, McNally & Co. World Atlas (1911 Ottoman Empire map); United Kingdom National Archives (Sykes-Picot); Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project (religious and ethnic map)

Who Controls the Border Crossings?

Updated July 1

Beginning on June 20 and in a rapid succession, ISIS fighters captured the western border crossings at Qaim, Waleed and Trebil. More recently the Iraqi government claims to have retaken some crossings. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

Key

Border crossing Crossing controlled by ISIS

TO DAMASCUS

TO ALEPPO

TURKEY

Tanf

Controlled by

Syrian government

SYRIA

Euphrates

River

JORDAN

Yaroubia

Syrian

Kurdish

forces

Karamah

Jordanian

Army

SYRIAN

DESERT

Waleed

Unclear

Trebil

Unclear

Bukamal

ISIS

WESTERN

BORDER

OF IRAQ

Rabia

Iraqi Kurdish

pesh merga

Area of

detail

Qaim

ISIS

SYRIA

iraq

NORTH

IRAQ

JORDAN

30 MILES

TO BAGHDAD

Area of

detail

SYRIA

WESTERN

BORDER

OF IRAQ

IRAQ

JORDAN

Yaroubia

Controlled by

Syrian Kurdish forces

Rabia

Iraqi Kurdish

pesh merga

iraq

SYRIA

Euphrates

River

TO ALEPPO

Bukamal

ISIS

Qaim

ISIS

SYRIAN

DESERT

TO BAGHDAD

Tanf

Syrian

government

Waleed

Unclear

TO

DAMASCUS

Trebil

Unclear

Karamah

Jordanian Army

NORTH

30 MILES

JORDAN

Syria and

Jordan

Karamah

Control Jordanian Army

The Jordanian army has increased security at the crossing, which remains open, but with little traffic.

Tanf

Control Syrian government

Bukamal

ControlISIS

Seized June 25

A local agreement between ISIS and the Nusra Front on June 25 effectively placed Bukamal under ISIS control. By June 30, ISIS had wrested full control of the town and border crossing.

Yaroubia

Control Syrian Kurdish forces

Seized October 2013

This side is controlled by Syrian Kurdish forces affiliated with a party that is engaged in a power struggle with Iraqi Kurdish leaders.

Iraq

Trebil

Control Unclear

ISIS took this crossing on June 22 after Iraqi forces fled, but recent reports of vehicle traffic from Jordan indicate that the crossing may be back the hands of the government.

Waleed

Control Unclear

ISIS took this crossing on June 22. The Iraqi government said that it is back in control of the crossing, but this could not be confirmed.

Qaim

Control ISIS

Seized June 20

ISIS took control of the municipal council, customs office, border crossing and Iraqi police station, increasing its already significant presence on the main route between Baghdad and Aleppo. The Iraqi government said it abandoned the crossing in a strategic move to concentrate forces in Baghdad.

Rabia

Control Iraqi Kurdish pesh merga

Seized June 10

Kurdish pesh merga forces secured this crossing on June 10 immediately following the fall of Mosul.

Sources: Caerus Associates, Long War Journal, Institute for the Study of War

Consequences of Sectarian Violence on Baghdad’s Neighborhoods

Published June 20

Baghdad became highly segregated in the years after the American-led invasion of Iraq. The city’s many mixed neighborhoods hardened into enclaves along religious and ethnic divisions. These maps, based on the work of Michael Izady for Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project, show how the city divided from 2003 to 2009. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Source: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project

Key

Sunni majority Shiite majority Christian majority Mixed areas

2003

Sadr

City

Kadhimiya

Adhamiya

BAGHDAD

Green Zone

Baghdad

Airport

Tigris River

2 miles

2009

Adhamiya

Huriya

BAGHDAD

Green Zone

Amiriya

Baghdad

Airport

Tigris River

2 miles

2003: Before the Invasion

Before the American invasion, Baghdad’s major sectarian groups lived mostly side by side in mixed neighborhoods. The city’s Shiite and Sunni populations were roughly equal, according to Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor and Middle East expert.

2009: Violence Fuels Segregation

Sectarian violence exploded in 2006. Families living in areas where another sect was predominant were threatened with violence if they did not move. By 2009 Shiites were a majority, with Sunnis reduced to about 10 percent to 15 percent of the population.

• Kadhimiya, a historically Shiite neighborhood, is home to a sacred Shiite shrine.

• Adhamiya, a historically Sunni neighborhood, contains the Abu Hanifa Mosque, a Sunni landmark.

• The Green Zone became the heavily fortified center of American operations during the occupation.

• Sadr City was the center of the insurgent Mahdi Army, led by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

• Huriya was transformed in 2006 when the Mahdi Army pushed out hundreds of families in a brutal spasm of sectarian cleansing.

• More than 8,000 displaced families relocated to Amiriya, the neighborhood where the Sunni Awakening began in Baghdad.

• Adhamiya, a Sunni island in Shiite east Baghdad, was walled and restricted along with other neighborhoods in 2007 for security.

• Neighborhoods east of the Tigris River are generally more densely populated than areas to the west.

2003

Sadr

City

Kadhimiya

Adhamiya

BAGHDAD

Green Zone

Baghdad

Airport

Tigris River

2 miles

2003: Before the Invasion

Before the American invasion, Baghdad’s major sectarian groups lived mostly side by side in mixed neighborhoods. The city’s Shiite and Sunni populations were roughly equal, according to Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor and Middle East expert.

• Kadhimiya, a historically Shiite neighborhood, is home to a sacred Shiite shrine.

• Adhamiya, a historically Sunni neighborhood, contains the Abu Hanifa Mosque, a Sunni landmark.

• The Green Zone became the heavily fortified center of American operations during the occupation.

• Sadr City was the center of the insurgent Mahdi Army, led by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

2009

Adhamiya

Huriya

BAGHDAD

Green Zone

Amiriya

Baghdad

Airport

Tigris River

2 miles

2009: Violence Fuels Segregation

Sectarian violence exploded in 2006. Families living in areas where another sect was predominant were threatened with violence if they did not move. By 2009 Shiites were a majority, with Sunnis reduced to about 10 percent to 15 percent of the population.

• Huriya was transformed in 2006 when the Mahdi Army pushed out hundreds of families in a brutal spasm of sectarian cleansing.

• More than 8,000 displaced families relocated to Amiriya, the neighborhood where the Sunni Awakening began in Baghdad.

• Adhamiya, a Sunni island in Shiite east Baghdad, was walled and restricted along with other neighborhoods in 2007 for security.

• Neighborhoods east of the Tigris River are generally more densely populated than areas to the west.

Source: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project

Battle for the Baiji Oil Refinery

Published Jun 19

Witnesses reported that Sunni extremists seized Iraq’s largest oil refinery on June 18 after fighting the Iraqi Army for a week, but officials disputed the reports and the situation remains unclear. Workers were evacuated, and the facility, which provides oil for domestic consumption to 11 Iraqi provinces, including Baghdad, was shut down. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Source: Satellite image by NASA

ABOUT 100

MILES TO

MOSUL

ABOUT 50 MILES

TO KIRKUK

Power

plant

1

Tigris

River

Oil refinery

Employee

dormitories

Village

Employee

village

Village

Smoke plume

at 10:30 a.m.

Wednesday.

Baiji

ABOUT 115 MILES

TO BAGHDAD

1 MILE

1 MILE

Oil refinery

Power

plant

ABOUT 100

MILES TO

MOSUL

Employee

dormitories

Village

Employee

village

Tigris

River

Village

Baiji

Smoke plume

at 10:30 a.m.

Wednesday.

ABOUT 115 MILES

TO BAGHDAD

Source: Satellite image by NASA

Encroaching on Baghdad

Published June 18

Since seizing Mosul on June 10, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been attacking towns along the main highway heading south, coming closer and closer to the capital. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Institute for the Study of War, Long War Journal

Key Towns attacked Bomb attacks

ABOUT 140 MILES

TO MOSUL

Miles from

Central Baghdad

ABOUT 80 MILES

TO KIRKUK

Several clashes occurred at the outskirts of Samarra, where Shiite militiamen have been sent to protect the Al-Askari Shrine.

70

Adhaim

June 15

Samarra

JUNE 11, 13, 17

60

Al-Mutasim

JUNE 14

Dhuluiya

JUNE 12

50

Ishaqi

Muqdadiya

The Iraqi army retook control of Ishaqi and Muqdadiya on June 14. In Muqdadiya, a Shiite militia assisted the government forces.

40

Dujail

JUNE 14

30

Militants took control of several neighborhoods in Baquba on June 16 but were repulsed by security officers after a three-hour gun battle. Later, 44 Sunni prisoners were killed in a government-controlled police station.

Baquba

June 16, 17

Tarmiyah

JUNE 11

20

Falluja and many towns in the western province of Anbar have been under ISIS control for about six months.

Tigris

River

10

At least five bomb attacks occurred in Baghdad, mainly in Shiite areas, in the week after the rebel group took Mosul. The bodies of four young men were found shot on June 17 in a neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen.

Sadr City

Kadhimiya

Falluja

Bab al-Sheikh

Al-Bab Al-Sharqi

Baghdad

Saidiyah

Key Towns attacked Bomb attacks

Miles from

Central Baghdad

70

Adhaim

Samarra

60

Al-Mutasim

Dhuluiya

Muqdadiya

Ishaqi

40

Dujail

30

Baquba

Tarmiyah

20

10

Falluja

Baghdad

Several clashes occurred at the outskirts of Samarra, where Shiite militiamen have been sent to protect the Al-Askari Shrine.

The Iraqi army retook control of Ishaqi and Muqdadiya on June 14. In Muqdadiya, a Shiite militia assisted the government forces.

Militants took control of several neighborhoods in Baquba on June 16 but were repulsed by security officers after a three-hour gun battle. Later, 44 Sunni prisoners were killed in a government-controlled police station.

At least five bomb attacks occurred in Baghdad, mainly in Shiite areas, in the week after the rebel group took Mosul. The bodies of four young men were found shot on June 17 in a neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen.

Falluja and many towns in the western province of Anbar have been under ISIS control for about six months.

Sources: Institute for the Study of War, Long War Journal

Ten Years of ISIS Attacks in Iraq

Published June 15

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni militant group that staged a stunning operation to seize Iraq’s second largest city, has been fueling sectarian violence in the region for years. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Sources: Global Terrorism Database, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (attack data); Congressional Research Service; Council on Foreign Relations; Long War Journal; Institute for the Study of War

100

80

60

Attacks That Could Be Attributed to ISIS

40

20

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

Mosul

Kirkuk

Baghdad

IRAQ

Basra

2004

51 attacks

2005

58 attacks

2006

5 attacks

2007

56 attacks

2008

62 attacks

2009

78 attacks

2010

86 attacks

2011

34 attacks

2012

603 attacks

2013

419 attacks

100

80

Attacks That Could

Be Attributed to ISIS

60

40

20

’04

’05

’06

’07

’08

’09

’10

’11

’12

’13

Mosul

Baghdad

IRAQ

Basra

2004

51 attacks

2005

58 attacks

2006

5 attacks

2007

56 attacks

2008

62 attacks

2009

78 attacks

2010

86 attacks

2011

34 attacks

2012

603 attacks

2013

419 attacks

2004-05 The group emerges as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Its goal is to provoke a civil war.

2006-07 The group’s February 2006 bombing of one of Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines ignites sectarian violence across the country. After merging with several other Sunni insurgent groups, it changes its name to the Islamic State of Iraq.

2008-10 I.S.I. claims responsibility for more than 200 attacks, many in densely-populated areas around Baghdad.

2011-12 The group is relatively quiet for most of 2011, but re-emerges after American troops withdraw from Iraq.

2013 Seeing new opportunities for growth, I.S.I. enters Syria’s civil war and changes its name to reflect a new aim of establishing an Islamic religious state spanning Iraq and Syria. Its success in Syria bleeds over the border to Iraq.

2004-05 The group emerges as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Its goal is to provoke a civil war.

2006-07 The group’s February 2006 bombing of one of Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines ignites sectarian violence across the country. After merging with several other Sunni insurgent groups, it changes its name to the Islamic State of Iraq.

2008-10 I.S.I. claims responsibility for more than 200 attacks, many in densely-populated areas around Baghdad.

2011-12 The group is relatively quiet for most of 2011, but re-emerges after American troops withdraw from Iraq.

2013 Seeing new opportunities for growth, I.S.I. enters Syria’s civil war and changes its name to reflect a new aim of establishing an Islamic religious state spanning Iraq and Syria. Its success in Syria bleeds over the border to Iraq.

2004-05 The group emerges as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Its goal is to provoke a civil war.

2006-07 The group’s February 2006 bombing of one of Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines ignites sectarian violence across the country. After merging with several other Sunni insurgent groups, it changes its name to the Islamic State of Iraq.

2008-10 I.S.I. claims responsibility for more than 200 attacks, many in densely-populated areas around Baghdad.

2011-12 The group is relatively quiet for most of 2011, but re-emerges after American troops withdraw from Iraq.

2013 Seeing new opportunities for growth, I.S.I. enters Syria’s civil war and changes its name to reflect a new aim of establishing an Islamic religious state spanning Iraq and Syria. Its success in Syria bleeds over the border to Iraq.

2004-05 The group emerges as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Its goal is to provoke a civil war.

2006-07 The group’s February 2006 bombing of one of Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines ignites sectarian violence across the country. After merging with several other Sunni insurgent groups, it changes its name to the Islamic State of Iraq.

2008-10 I.S.I. claims responsibility for more than 200 attacks, many in densely-populated areas around Baghdad.

2011-12 The group is relatively quiet for most of 2011, but re-emerges after American troops withdraw from Iraq.

2013 Seeing new opportunities for growth, I.S.I. enters Syria’s civil war and changes its name to reflect a new aim of establishing an Islamic religious state spanning Iraq and Syria. Its success in Syria bleeds over the border to Iraq.

Note: Before 2011, less information was available on who was responsible for attacks, so the number of ISIS attacks from 2004 to 2010 may be undercounted.

Sources: Global Terrorism Database, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (attack data); Congressional Research Service; Council on Foreign Relations; Long War Journal; Institute for the Study of War

A Week of Rapid Advances After Taking Mosul

Updated June 14

After sweeping across the porous border from Syria to overrun Mosul, insurgents aligned with the jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria continued to press south down the main north-south highway toward Baghdad. Related Maps and Multimedia » Related article »

Mosul

Area of

detail

Tikrit

June 13

June 10

Mosul captured

Baghdad

Iraq

Jalawla

Kirkuk

Sadiyah

June 11

Tikrit

captured

Basra

June 12

Dhuluiya captured

June 11-12

Samarra

Tigris R.

About 110 miles

Attacks in

the days after

Mosul captured

30

June 11

Parts of Baiji

captured

20

30

Baghdad

Ishaki   Dujail

June 14

Taji

Lake Tharthar

Falluja

Ramadi

Euphrates R.

After capturing Mosul, Tikrit and parts of a refinery in Baiji, insurgents attacked Samarra, where Shiite militias helped pro-government forces. Then, they seized Jalawla and Sadiyah but were forced back by government troops backed by Kurdish forces. They continued their moves south by Ishaki and Dujail.

June 10

Mosul

captured

Area of

detail

Mosul

Tikrit

Iraq

Baghdad

Basra

About

110

miles

Kirkuk

Tigris R.

Attacks in

the days after

Mosul captured

June 11

Parts of Baiji

captured

30

June 11

Tikrit captured

June 13

Jalawla

30

June 11-12

Samarra attacked

June 12

Dhuluiya

captured

Sadiyah

20

June 14

Ishaki

Lake

Tharthar

Dujail

Taji

Euphrates R.

Ramadi

Baghdad

Falluja

June 10

Mosul

captured

June 11-12

Samarra

attacked

June 12

Dhuluiya

captured

June 13

Jalawla and

Sadiyah

attacked

June 14

Ishaki and

Dujail

attacked

June 11

Parts of

Baiji captured

June 11

Tikrit

captured

Kirkuk

Tigris R.

20

30

About 110 miles

30

Attacks in

the days after

Mosul captured

Baghdad

Taji

Falluja

Lake Tharthar

Mosul

Area of

detail

Ramadi

Tikrit

Euphrates R.

Baghdad

Iraq

Najaf

Basra

After capturing Mosul, Tikrit and parts of a refinery in Baiji, insurgents attacked Samarra, where Shiite militias helped pro-government forces. Then, they seized Jalawla and Sadiyah but were forced back by government troops backed by Kurdish forces. They continued their moves south by Ishaki and Dujail.

What the Militants Want: A Caliphate Across Syria and Iraq

Published June 13

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has vowed to establish a caliphate — a unified Islamic government ruled by a caliph, someone considered to be a successor to Muhammad’s political authority — stretching from western Syria across Iraq to the eastern border with Iran. This map shows the boundaries envisioned by ISIS. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Source: “The Islamic State in Iraq Returns to Diyala” by Jessica Lewis, Institute for the Study of War

turkey

Hasakah

Mosul

Erbil

Aleppo

Raqqa

Kirkuk

Deir al-Zour

iran

Baiji

syria

Tikrit

Homs

Jalawla

lebanon

Samarra

Dhuluiya

Damascus

iraq

Baghdad

israel

saudi

arabia

jordan

kuwait

turkey

Hasakah

Mosul

Aleppo

Kirkuk

syria

iran

Tikrit

Homs

leb.

Samarra

Damascus

Baghdad

iraq

israel

saudi

arabia

jordan

kuwait

Source: “The Islamic State in Iraq Returns to Diyala” by Jessica Lewis, Institute for the Study of War

Attacks Follow Sectarian Lines

Published June 12

The insurgents, originating in Syria, moved through Iraq's Sunni-dominated north and west, occupying cities and towns surrendered by Iraqi soldiers and police. They have largely avoided the Kurd-dominated northeast, but have threatened to march on to Baghdad and into the Shiite-dominated areas of the south. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Source: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project

Mosul

Kirkuk

Baiji

Tikrit

Dhuluiyah

Samarra

Ramadi

Baghdad

Iraq

Falluja

Tigris

Euphrates River

Basra

Predominant group

Sunni Arab

Shiite Arab

Kurd

50 miles

Source: Dr. M. Izady, Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 project

Iraqi Cities, Then and Now

Published June 13

Many of the Iraqi cities that have been attacked and occupied by militants in recent days were also the sites of battles and other major events during the Iraq War. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Mosul

Mosul Iraq

Then: American forces took control of Mosul in April 2003. What followed was a period of relative peace until mid-2004 when periodic insurgent attacks flared, resulting in a large-scale battle in November. The death toll reached dozens, including a number of Iraqi soldiers who were publicly beheaded. Related Article »

Now: In perhaps the most stunning recent development, Sunni militants drove Iraqi military forces out of Mosul on June 10, forcing a half-million residents to flee the city. Iraqi soldiers reportedly dropped their weapons and donned civilian clothing to escape ISIS insurgents.

Moises Saman for The New York Times

Falluja

Falluja Iraq

Then: Falluja played a pivotal role in the American invasion of Iraq. It was the site of a number of large-scale battles with insurgents. In April 2003, it became a hot bed for controversy when American soldiers opened fire on civilians after claiming they had been shot at. Incessant fighting left the city decimated, leveling a majority of its infrastructure and leaving about half its original population. Related Article »

Now: Sunni militants seized Falluja’s primary municipal buildings on Jan. 3. The takeover came as an early and significant victory for the group, initiating a slew of attacks south of the city.

Max Becherer for The New York Times

Tikrit

Tikrit Iraq

Then: The home of Saddam Hussein, Tikrit became the target of an early American military operation during the Iraq war. Securing it proved cumbersome, however, as insurgents mounted continued attacks on the city for years afterward. On Dec. 14, 2003, Hussein was found hiding in an eight-foot deep hole, just south of Tikrit. Related Article »

Now: Tikrit fell to ISIS insurgents on June 11, clearing a path for them to march on to Baiji, home to one of Iraq’s foremost oil-refining operations. After taking the city in less than a day, militants continued the fight just south, in Samarra.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Samarra

Samarra Iraq

Then: Samarra is home to the Askariya shrine, which was bombed in 2006, prompting an extended period of sectarian violence across the country. Related Article »

Now: After an initial attack on June 5, ISIS insurgents have now positioned themselves just miles away from Samarra. It is unclear whether they are capable of capturing the city in the coming days, but the Shiite shrine makes it a volatile target.

Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times

Video: Iraq’s Factions and Their Goals

Published June 13

A look at the goals of of the three main groups in Iraq — Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish — as the country threatens to split apart along sectarian lines. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Growing Humanitarian Crisis

Published June 12

The United Nations estimates that at least 500,000 Iraqis were displaced by the takeover of Mosul. Food supplies are low and there is limited fresh water and little electricity. An additional 430,000 people were displaced by fighting In Anbar Province, which insurgents have controlled for more than six months. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Safin Hamed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An Iraqi family, one of thousands who have fled Mosul for the autonomous Kurdish region, walks past tents at a temporary camp.

Video: Behind the Group That Took Mosul

Published June 10

Background on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Islamist group that appears to be in control of the second largest city in Iraq. Related Maps and Multimedia »

Reporting from Iraq and Jordan by TIM ARANGO, SUADAD AL-SALHY, C.J. CHIVERS, BEN HUBBARD, ROD NORDLAND and ALISSA RUBIN

By SARAH ALMUKHTAR, JEREMY ASHKENAS, MATTHEW ERICSON, BILL MARSH, HAEYOUN PARK, NILKANTH PATEL, ARCHIE TSE, TIM WALLACE, DEREK WATKINS, JEREMY WHITE and KAREN YOURISH

- © 2014 The New York Times Company

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Politics |NYT Now

Breach Prompts Review of White House Security

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and STEVE KENNYSEPT. 20, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

WASHINGTON — The director of the Secret Service ordered an internal review of its security procedures around the White House after a man armed with a knife who jumped the fence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Friday night managed to make his way through the front door of President Obama’s home before being stopped, officials said Saturday.

Omar J. Gonzalez, 42, of Copperas Cove, Tex., jumped the black iron fence that surrounds the White House around 7:20 p.m. on Friday and ran straight to the North Portico door, the grand entrance that is flanked by white marble columns and faces Pennsylvania Avenue. He made it through the unlocked doors and was tackled immediately, said Ed Donovan, a Secret Service spokesman. Mr. Gonzalez was carrying a folding knife with a 3 ½-inch serrated blade, according to a criminal complaint filed in Federal District Court.

“Although last night the officers showed tremendous restraint and discipline in dealing with this subject, the location of Gonzalez’s arrest is not acceptable,” the Secret Service said in a statement Saturday afternoon.

Mr. Obama and his family had left the White House minutes before the incident, on their way to Camp David for the weekend, officials said. Mr. Gonzalez was arrested and then taken to George Washington University Hospital after complaining of chest pains, Mr. Donovan said. The officials said they had no reason to believe he was connected to any protest or terrorist group.

No shots were fired, and the White House guard dogs were not let loose to stop him, the officials said. After the events of Friday night, the Secret Service shut down pedestrian access to the part of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. Officials said the “enhancement of officer patrols and surveillance capabilities” in the area would continue throughout the review.

Mr. Gonzalez was charged Saturday with unlawfully entering a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. He could face up to 10 years in prison. A hearing was scheduled for Monday.

Less than 24 hours after Friday night’s incident, a man was arrested on charges of trying to enter the White House illegally, after pulling his car into the vehicle screening area at one of the gates and refusing to leave, the Secret Service said. A short time earlier the same man, who was not immediately identified, had appeared on foot at another gate, Mr. Donovan said.

It is not uncommon that people climb over the fence, but Secret Service officials said they could not remember an intruder ever making it into the White House.

The incident highlights the difficult balance the Secret Service must maintain as it protects the president and his family while also providing the public with some access to the White House.

The portion of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House has been closed to vehicular traffic since May 1995, when President Bill Clinton ordered it shut after several security breaches, including the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City the month before. But it has remained open to pedestrians, including tourists who regularly stand outside the fence to take pictures and protesters.

On Friday night, officers stationed inside the gates began running toward Mr. Gonzalez as soon as they noticed him, and the statement from the Secret Service said Mr. Gonzalez had not responded to commands from the officers. The officers did not fire at him, having apparently concluded that he was not armed and did not appear to be carrying anything that might contain explosives.

Agents on the roof also held their fire, apparently for the same reasons.

That restraint apparently allowed Mr. Gonzalez to sprint all the way to the entrance of the White House, where foreign dignitaries are greeted by the president. Agents stationed inside tackled him as soon as he was in the grand entryway.

The agents’ decision not to use lethal force contrasted sharply with actions taken by the United States Capitol Police a year ago when officers shot and killed a woman who had driven her car into a barrier at the White House and then led police officers on a chase toward the Capitol. The police came under sharp criticism for killing the woman, who had her 18-month-old daughter in the back seat.

Mr. Gonzalez’s dash to the White House was the second such security breach this month. On Sept. 11, another man was taken into custody after jumping the fence. And in August, a toddler slipped through the fence bars; officers quickly returned him to his parents.

The Secret Service said in its statement that the Office of Professional Responsibility would conduct a comprehensive review, including a physical assessment at the site of the incident and interviews with personnel involved. The review will be submitted to Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, who oversees the Secret Service.

Frank Benenati, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, said in a statement Saturday that the president has “full confidence” in the Secret Service, and he expressed Mr. Obama’s gratitude to the officers and agents who protect the first family.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Review Ordered of White House Security. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Clinton Bans Traffic in Front of the White House

By TODD S. PURDUM

Published: May 21, 1995

Bowing to the longtime wishes of the Secret Service, President Clinton today announced the immediate closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House to all but pedestrian traffic to deter a potential car- or truck-bomb attack.

Before dawn today, the authorities erected concrete barriers at either end of the two-block stretch that over nearly two centuries has been the route of inaugural parades, protest marches and an untold number of bus tours. Officials said they planned to turn the strip into a pedestrian mall that would blend into Lafayette Park, across the street, and to preserve unrestricted access to visitors on foot.

"Pennsylvania Avenue has been routinely open to traffic for the entire history of our Republic," Mr. Clinton said in his weekly radio address this morning. "Through four Presidential assassinations and eight unsuccessful attempts on the lives of Presidents, it's been open; through a Civil War, two world wars and the gulf war, it was open. And now, it must be closed."

The President likened the move to the installation of metal detectors at airports and said it should be "seen as a responsible security step necessary to preserve our freedom, not part of a long-term restriction of our freedom."

"I will not in any way," he added, "allow the fight against domestic and foreign terrorism to build a wall between me and the American people."

Aides said the President had been reluctant to approve the closing, which will cause major traffic disruptions in the heart of the capital, but acceded on Friday evening to the recommendations of Robert E. Rubin, who as Treasury Secretary oversees the Secret Service, and a panel of security experts from outside the Government. The panel had advised the move even before the truck-bomb explosion in Oklahoma City last month, which heightened concern about security at Federal buildings across the country.

The Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, endorsed the President's decision. "I think we did the right thing," he told reporters today at a Republican forum in Green Bay, Wis. He said a Secret Service briefing earlier in the week made clear that "there weren't that many options."

Mr. Dole's counterpart in the House, Speaker Newt Gingrich, said he had told the White House that he would not oppose the street closing. In an appearance on the "Evans and Novak" program on CNN, Mr. Gingrich said, "The thing that is sad about this is when something bad happens, it will happen in a way we haven't thought of by people who are forced to be slightly more creative."

A security study of the White House by the advisory panel of outside experts began last fall, after a light plane with a drunken pilot crashed onto the South Lawn in September. Six weeks later, at the end of October, a gunman on Pennsylvania Avenue fired a semiautomatic rifle at the White House before being tackled by a tourist.

In issuing parts of the panel's report today to buttress their case for closing the avenue, officials provided new details of the plane crash, including the disclosure that the telephone line that was supposed to have linked Federal radar operators to the Secret Service was broken at the time.

A vehicle ban on Pennsylvania Avenue would not have prevented either of the attacks last fall, or most other previous breaches of security at the White House. But Treasury Department officials, who have authority to close roads anywhere in the nation to protect the President, said the threat of a truck bomb -- a threat made chillingly clear by the bombings in Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center -- required new measures to safeguard him as well as tourists and workers in the parklike White House compound, which is museum, family home and crowded office rolled into one.

"After all," said Ronald K. Noble, the Treasury's Under Secretary for Enforcement, who oversaw the security review, "the general who plans only to re-fight the last war does not lead a successful army."

But a report by Mr. Noble on the past incidents at the White House made clear how vulnerable it remained to a determined assailant. For example, he disclosed that Frank Eugene Corder, the pilot who died in the crash below the President's bedroom window last year, had his plane's wing flaps up and his throttle at full forward, which led investigators to conclude that he had intended to crash in a suicide mission.

Mr. Noble also confirmed that besides the problem with the telephone line from radar operators, "a misunderstanding developed" over the years between the Secret Service and the Federal Aviation Administration concerning procedures to alert the White House to approaching aircraft. He said this misunderstanding had been cleared up.

In all, Mr. Rubin said, the review led to 11 security improvement recommendations, 5 of which remain classified. Besides the street closing, the others include a review of civil air traffic rules to enhance security without hindering legitimate traffic.

Mr. Clinton, gregarious by nature, has chafed like all modern Presidents at the security restrictions imposed on him, and he and other officials took great pains to emphasize that what Mr. Noble called the world's most accessible residence of a chief government executive would remain so.

"People will be able to visit as they always have," Mr. Clinton told civic leaders at a White House conference on "Character Building" today. "They'll be able to have their picture taken with cardboard figures as they always have. They'll be able to go to Lafayette Park and protest against the President as they always have. And indeed, they will be able to do that more protected themselves from becoming innocent victims of those who would seek to destroy the symbols of our freedom."

Mr. Clinton met with Mr. Rubin on Wednesday to review the recommendation, officials said, and asked for a bit more time to consider options short of closing the avenue. But the officials said these ideas, which included traffic stops at either end of the compound to limit traffic to cars and small trucks, had ultimately been deemed impractical and most likely to create an even more forbidding air than closing the street entirely.

The current plan is to close the avenue from Madison Place on the east to 17th Street on the west, also shutting down a small, curving stretch of road that runs around the southwest corner of the White House lawn near the Old Executive Office Building. The 13,000 vehicles that use that stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue daily are to be diverted to H, I and K Streets to the north, where new one-way patterns will be devised to ease the flow.

Some details remain to be worked out, and the National Capital Planning Commission, the body charged with overseeing such public spaces, is to report back to Mr. Rubin in 90 days with more specific recommendations on landscaping and traffic flows. Officials said that government vehicles would still be able to use the street for state dinners, inaugurations and the like but that White House employees driving to work would not.

William H. Webster, former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and of the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the outside experts who recommended the closing, said he had been convinced by evidence of the impact an explosion could have, even across the 180 feet between Pennsylvania Avenue and the North Portico.

"They've closed vehicular traffic around Buckingham Palace," he said. "They've had No. 10 Downing Street under total closure for years. You go to see other heads of state, and we still come off smelling like a very open rose. Security's always too much until it's not enough."

By midday, forklifts were carrying big concrete tubs of geraniums to soften the appearance of the highway dividers blocking the street, and tourists, skaters and cyclists were tentatively exploring the broad, empty avenue.

The reaction ranged from approval and pleasure at the novelty of strolling on a traffic-less Pennsylvania Avenue to questions about the effectiveness of the move.

"It's necessary for security," said Cissy Suh, who works for NationsBank in Yokosuka, Japan, and was sightseeing with friends, K. C. and Min Moon of Springfield, Va., and their two children.

"Plus, the space is nice," said Mr. Moon. "You can enjoy the view without the interruption of traffic."

But Barbara and Richard Phillips of Tampa, Fla., remembered a time when tourists could walk up to the fountain on the White House front lawn. "It seems as if they're pushing us further back," Mrs. Phillips said.

"I felt they would do it," said Jeanne Hortie, a second-grade teacher from Holyoke, Mass. "I think it's necessary, as much as I'm against it."

Photo: Workers installed barriers yesterday morning to close Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicles for security reasons. (Associated Press) (pg. 1) Map: "TRAFFIC PATTERN: A Major Avenue Closes in Washington" Citing security concerns, the President has agreed to close Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicles. To handle the expected traffic snarls from the closure, the city's public works department has recommeded creating a number of one-way streets. Map shows areas closed to vehicles and proposed traffic flow on streets surrounding the White House. (pg 28) Diagram shows one of two proposals for converting Pennsylvania Avenue into a predestrian walkway. (pg. 1)

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Possible Clues in Fatal Chase, but No Motive

Miriam Carey Was in Car When Police Fired, Official Says

By N. R. KLEINFIELD and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Published: October 4, 2013

The woman who was shot to death after a taut, high-speed car chase through the streets between the White House and Capitol Hill was still in her car, snagged on the curb of a grass-covered median, when the police fired at her, a Senate official said on Friday.

Terrance W. Gainer, the Senate sergeant-at-arms, who was briefed on aspects of the episode, said the woman, Miriam Carey, was trying to make a U-turn between a United States Capitol Police security booth and some planters in the middle of the street on Constitution Avenue when Capitol Police officers and uniformed Secret Service officers shot at the car with semiautomatic pistols.

Ms. Carey, 34, was a dental hygienist who lived in Stamford, Conn. Law enforcement officials said on Friday that investigators found antipsychotic medications in her apartment, potential clues to her actions. Friends and relatives, while portraying her as harmless, also recounted some bizarre behavior.

After collecting items from the Stamford apartment and interviewing friends and relatives, law enforcement authorities were still trying to understand what prompted her to drive to Washington and what she hoped to accomplish when she tried to force her way onto the White House grounds.

Questions were also being raised about whether she posed enough of a threat during the fast-moving sequence of events that the police needed to shoot her.

Initially, Ms. Carey was thought to have gotten out of the car when she was shot on Thursday afternoon. Early accounts of such events are often inaccurate, however, and on Friday, new details emerged about the shooting and the woman who was killed.

Most police departments discourage or prohibit opening fire on vehicles. With responsibility for safeguarding two of the county’s most significant landmarks, however, the Capitol Police and the Secret Service are particularly attuned to potential terrorist threats.

Car bombs are one concern, as evidenced by the restrictions on vehicles around the Capitol complex, and officials said that by remaining in the car, Ms. Carey might have heightened fears that the car was an explosive threat. No firearms or explosives were found on her or in her car.

Investigators were looking into reports from her boyfriend that she had been delusional and believed that she was a prophet and under electronic surveillance by President Obama.

Another man who knew her, Majestic Steele, who is a neighbor of Ms. Carey’s mother, Idella Carey, said that a few years ago he saw Ms. Carey poised outside her mother’s Brooklyn apartment, clutching a Bible and wailing at the sky. “She was saying, ‘Help me’ and ‘I need you,’ and she was quoting Scripture,” Mr. Steele said. “The way she was speaking, it sounded like she was in trouble.”

In an interview broadcast on Friday night on “Anderson Cooper 360°” on CNN, Amy Carey, one of her sisters, said, “I just know that my sister did experience postpartum depression with psychosis.” But she said her sister had received “treatment and medication and counseling,” and she added, “She didn’t appear to be unstable.”

She and another sister, Valarie Carey, returned to Brooklyn on Friday night. They and the family’s lawyer told a crowd of reporters that their sister had recently been weaned off of her medications, but seemed fine to them. But, they said they felt that she had been unfairly maligned as unstable in news reports.

They also questioned why the Washington police had used deadly force. “Why was my sister shot and killed where her 1-year-old daughter was and she was unarmed?”said Valarie Carey, a former sergeant with the New York Police Department.

“We deserve to know why.”

Her sister had no delusions about meeting Mr. Obama, she added.

As depicted by law enforcement officials, witnesses and video of the chase, the final sequence played out as follows:

Driving a black Infiniti with a young child believed to be her daughter in the back seat, Ms. Carey tried to barrel through a checkpoint outside the White House at 2:12 p.m. She hit an officer who tried to stop her and who rolled over the hood of her car.

She then raced down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol at speeds approaching 80 miles an hour, ignoring red lights and efforts by Secret Service officers to have her pull over. When she seemed boxed in on the western side of the Capitol, officers converged on her with guns drawn. She put her car in reverse and sped off.

In a video of the episode, gunshots can be heard as Ms. Carey raced away. She hit a police car, then hurtled up Constitution Avenue. There, at the security booth, she tried to make the U-turn, heading toward the officers.

They then opened fire. The authorities would not estimate how many rounds were discharged. Mr. Gainer, the sergeant-at-arms, said he believed that five to seven officers had fired.

One officer sustained injuries, which were not life-threatening. The child was not hurt and is in protective custody.

Law enforcement experts outside of Washington said the shooting raised significant issues about the use of deadly force to stop Ms. Carey’s car as it traveled along one of the nation’s best-known routes, Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol.

The investigation into the shooting, which is being led by the Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, may focus on what threat the officers perceived Ms. Carey posed to them, the public and government facilities. The episode occurred just weeks after a mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard and in the midst of a partial government shutdown.

Many police departments, including Washington’s, prohibit officers from firing at moving cars, even when the car is being used in a threatening manner. The Metropolitan Police rules say that no officer shall discharge a firearm “at or from a moving vehicle unless deadly force is being used against the officer or another person,” and it notes, “For purposes of this order, a moving vehicle is not considered deadly force.” It is not clear whether the Secret Service or the Capitol Police have a similar policy.

“The question should be, what was the threat that justified deadly force?” Geoffrey Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina, said. “Was there a way to keep her from getting involved in this incredibly dangerous chase?”

He added: “She had to be stopped. The question is, were there better ways to stop her? I don’t know what the answers are.”

Others who study law enforcement said the rules might legitimately be different for officials in Washington.

Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which recommends that police departments prohibit shooting at cars, said that constraint might not apply to the episode this week.

“The White House and the U.S. Capitol are both considered high risk targets,” Mr. Wexler said. “The people who protect the White House and the people who protect the Capitol are not thinking about your everyday criminal. They are thinking about a terrorist.”

Mr. Gainer, a former chief of the Capitol Police, pointed out that Ms. Carey had tried to breach a barricade at the White House and had fled at a high rate of speed despite being ordered to stop. Such behavior could raise the possibility of a car bomb.

“They did the right thing,” Mr. Gainer said of the officers. “It’s not our typical car chase that starts out with some traffic stop.”

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, defended the officers in a speech on the Senate floor on Friday. He said the decision to shoot Ms. Carey was “understandable” because the Capitol and the White House were often targets of attacks.

Ms. Carey was one of five daughters who grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, where her mother and other relatives still live. Her sister Franchette, who lives with her mother, said she had seen Ms. Carey during the week and noticed nothing unusual about her behavior.

Michael Brown, 33, a longtime friend, said he saw her on Tuesday evening.

He depicted her as generally friendly but not overly sociable. It was not clear where she had been working recently. Dr. Barry J. Weiss employed her at his periodontics practice in Hamden, Conn., for 15 months, before firing her in August 2012. He said she had not been getting along with fellow employees.

“When we confronted her about certain situations within the office, she had a temper,” Dr. Weiss said.

Ms. Carey did not appear to have any previous criminal history.

Reporting was contributed by Kristin Hussey, Marc Santora, Michael S. Schmidt, Nate Schweber, Michael D. Shear and Vivian Yee, and research by Susan Beachy.

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The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor |NYT Now

Science’s Sexual Assault Problem

By A. HOPE JAHRENSEPT. 18, 2014

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AS, Norway

I AM a scientist who studies plants. I like plants. I think about plants almost every hour of the day, and several hours of the night as well. I respect plants and I know there’s more to them than meets the eye, because I’ve been measuring their responses for 20 years. But it is rocks that were my first love and that continue to hold my heart captive. I love rocks with the unconditional love that you lavish upon a newborn baby.

I was a promising graduate student. I landed a position as a professor before I even started to write my dissertation. While I prepared to start my new job, I decided that I would begin by studying the brine that bleeds sideways within the rocks that underlie the inner Aegean region of Turkey. I dreamed of an ocean of hot water underneath Denizli Province, an ocean that occasionally sloshes out onto the surface to form ice-blue thermal springs. I had seen photographs, but I wanted to be there, to take samples and make measurements, to make it “my” field site. I was trying to find an intellectual home.

I was careful to do everything right. I started out modestly and cautiously, in the summer of 1996, with simple reconnaissance. I booked a spot within a chaperoned group tour and stayed in prearranged hotel rooms and ate bland meals with the 10 or so elderly Australian tourists who were my travel companions. We rode in an air-conditioned bus for days while I stared out the window and scribbled notes about the roads and cataloged photos of the landscape. I covered my head with a scarf and averted my eyes toward the sidewalk.

And then, one day in the Mediterranean resort town of Antalya, instead of going to the marketplace with the group, I sat in a cafe to study some maps. It was broad daylight when I began walking back to the hotel, and a stranger pulled me into a stairwell — and then did some other things. Perhaps an hour later I staggered out with his blood under my fingernails. I cannot describe what happened in a way you will understand, because I still do not understand it myself. I have been trying to understand it for almost 20 years.

My story is not unique. In July, Kathryn B. H. Clancy and her co-authors Robin G. Nelson, Julienne N. Rutherford and Katie Hinde published a survey of 666 field-based scientists in the journal PLoS One and reported that 26 percent of the female scientists surveyed had been sexually assaulted during fieldwork. Most of these women encountered this abuse very early in their careers, as trainees. The travel inherent to scientific fieldwork increases vulnerability as one struggles to work within unfamiliar and unpredictable conditions, but male respondents reported significantly less assault (6 percent).

I know several women with stories like mine, but more often it is the men of one’s own field team, one’s co-workers, who violate their female colleagues. The women surveyed by Dr. Clancy’s team stated that their “perpetrators were predominantly senior to them professionally within the research team.”

I suppose that I am writing this because I am still looking for someone to tell. It was no one’s job at my university to hear or care what had happened to me and I did not conceptualize it as a workplace issue, but rather as a personal one cloaked in fear, shame and silence. Dr. Clancy’s study also considers the availability of mechanisms by which to report incidents. The study found that only 18 percent of respondents who experienced assault said that they were aware of a way to report the assault.

I took my chances with the local police, and to be honest, I don’t know if it made matters better or worse. Each scientific field excursion needs an authority figure who has been clearly designated as someone whom women can tell.

I still love rocks and I still dream of the ancient Aegean seas, but for the better part of my career I’ve sealed myself into a locked laboratory, a small well-lit world that I can control. I still do fieldwork, but I do it in “safe” countries like Canada and Ireland — where similar things still happen. Where would I have ended up had I been the first person to report the isotope chemistry of the aquifers that underlie the ancient city of Hierapolis? I’ll never know, because I’ll never go back. I’ll take my chances elsewhere and let my male colleagues study the travertine deposits of the Menderes River Valley. I will continue to do everything right, and it will continue to keep me inadequately safe.

There is a fundamental and culturally learned power imbalance between men and women, and it follows us into the workplace. The violence born of this imbalance follows us also. We would like to believe that it stops short of following us into the laboratory and into the field — but it does not. I listen to my colleagues talk endlessly about recruiting more women into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines, and postulate what the barriers might be. Sexual assault is a pernicious and formidable barrier to women in science, partly because we have consistently gifted to it our silence. I have given it 18 years of my silence and I will not give it one day more.

In August, Lego began selling a set called “Research Institute” that features three female scientist minifigures: a paleontologist, an astronomer and a chemist. I am well qualified in two of those fields, and I am here to say that playing with a different set of dolls will not adequately prepare your daughters for a career in science. You must teach them, rather, to manage their dreams. They need to know that daring to act upon their dreams of science can be both a beautiful and a dangerous thing.

A. Hope Jahren is a professor of geobiology at the University of Hawaii and the author of a forthcoming memoir about her experience as a woman in science.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Science’s Sexual Assault Problem. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

To Save the Planet, Don’t Plant Trees

By NADINE UNGERSEPT. 19, 2014

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NEW HAVEN — AS international leaders gather in New York next week for a United Nations climate summit, they will be preoccupied with how to tackle the rising rate of carbon emissions. To mitigate the crisis, one measure they are likely to promote is reducing deforestation and planting trees.

A landmark deal to support sustainable forestry was a heralded success story of the last international climate talks, in Warsaw last year. Western nations, including the United States, Britain and Norway, handed over millions of dollars to developing countries to kick-start programs to reduce tropical deforestation. More funds are promised.

Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. The assumption is that planting trees and avoiding further deforestation provides a convenient carbon capture and storage facility on the land.

That is the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is wrong.

In reality, the cycling of carbon, energy and water between the land and the atmosphere is much more complex. Considering all the interactions, large-scale increases in forest cover can actually make global warming worse.

Of course, this is counterintuitive. We all learn in school how trees effortlessly perform the marvel of photosynthesis: They take up carbon dioxide from the air and make oxygen. This process provides us with life, food, water, shelter, fiber and soil. The earth’s forests generously mop up about a quarter of the world’s fossil-fuel carbon emissions every year.

So it’s understandable that we’d expect trees to save us from rising temperatures, but climate science tells a different story. Besides the amount of greenhouse gases in the air, another important switch on the planetary thermostat is how much of the sun’s energy is taken up by the earth’s surface, compared to how much is reflected back to space. The dark color of trees means that they absorb more of the sun’s energy and raise the planet’s surface temperature.

Climate scientists have calculated the effect of increasing forest cover on surface temperature. Their conclusion is that planting trees in the tropics would lead to cooling, but in colder regions, it would cause warming.

In order to grow food, humans have changed about 50 percent of the earth’s surface area from native forests and grasslands to crops, pasture and wood harvest. Unfortunately, there is no scientific consensus on whether this land use has caused overall global warming or cooling. Since we don’t know that, we can’t reliably predict whether large-scale forestation would help to control the earth’s rising temperatures.

Worse, trees emit reactive volatile gases that contribute to air pollution and are hazardous to human health. These emissions are crucial to trees — to protect themselves from environmental stresses like sweltering heat and bug infestations. In summer, the eastern United States is the world’s major hot spot for volatile organic compounds (V.O.C.s) from trees.

As these compounds mix with fossil-fuel pollution from cars and industry, an even more harmful cocktail of airborne toxic chemicals is created. President Ronald Reagan was widely ridiculed in 1981 when he said, “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.” He was wrong on the science — but less wrong than many assumed.

Chemical reactions involving tree V.O.C.s produce methane and ozone, two powerful greenhouse gases, and form particles that can affect the condensation of clouds. Research by my group at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and by other laboratories, suggests that changes in tree V.O.C.s affect the climate on a scale similar to changes in the earth’s surface color and carbon storage capacity.

While trees provide carbon storage, forestry is not a permanent solution because trees and soil also “breathe” — that is, burn oxygen and release carbon dioxide back into the air. Eventually, all of the carbon finds its way back into the atmosphere when trees die or burn.

Moreover, it is a myth that photosynthesis controls the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. Even if all photosynthesis on the planet were shut down, the atmosphere’s oxygen content would change by less than 1 percent.

The Amazon rain forest is often perceived as the lungs of the planet. In fact, almost all the oxygen the Amazon produces during the day remains there and is reabsorbed by the forest at night. In other words, the Amazon rain forest is a closed system that uses all its own oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Planting trees and avoiding deforestation do offer unambiguous benefits to biodiversity and many forms of life. But relying on forestry to slow or reverse global warming is another matter entirely.

The science says that spending precious dollars for climate change mitigation on forestry is high-risk: We don’t know that it would cool the planet, and we have good reason to fear it might have precisely the opposite effect. More funding for forestry might seem like a tempting easy win for the world leaders at the United Nations, but it’s a bad bet.

Nadine Unger is an assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at Yale.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: To Save the Planet, Don’t Plant Trees. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Fashion & Style |NYT Now

The Paleo Lifestyle: The Way, Way, Way Back

By ALEX WILLIAMSSEPT. 19, 2014

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Which is more primal, hard cider or a strawberry margarita?

Would a self-respecting cave man check his iPhone after 8 p.m., as long as he was wearing amber goggles?

What about that morning beauty regimen? Is coconut oil or castor oil more likely to restore that neo-Neanderthal glow to a woman’s cheek?

To the uninitiated, the much talked about Paleo diet — a nutritional regimen centered around pasture-raised meat, eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables, and nuts, in the spirit of our cave-dwelling forebears — may seem like another low-carb fad, the South Beach diet dressed up in a mammoth hide. But the time has passed when it could be written off as a fringe movement of shaggy-haired Luddites with an outsize taste for wild boar meatloaf.

Lately, Paleo has charged toward the mainstream, not only as a hugely popular diet (it was most-searched diet of 2013, according to the Google Trends Zeitgeist list), but also as a cave-man-inspired lifestyle that has spawned a fast-growing industry.

There are now glossy magazines on the Paleo lifestyle, conferences like Paleo f(x) that feature Paleo speakers and products, and vacation retreats like PrimalCon, billed as a five-day immersion into all things Paleo. There are Paleo books, action figures, beauty products, liquors, sleep masks, “barefoot” shoes and clothing, not to mention a glut of places that sell all manner of Paleo foods, including almond-flower macaroons, elk jerky and grainless granola bars.

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Michelle Tam, a Paleo lifestyle blogger and author, wears amber goggles to block the blue-spectrum light that she believes interferes with her circadian rhythms. She has adopted a primal sleep regimen and, of course, a Paleo-specific diet.

And, of course, Paleo has its celebrity followers. Actors like Megan Fox, Jessica Biel and Matthew McConaughey have reportedly taken the plunge.

“Ancestral health,” to use a term popular among Paleo followers, has gone mass. For them, Paleo is a way of life, a philosophical prism that colors everything from child rearing to sunscreen.

“It’s like taking the red pill or the blue pill in ‘The Matrix’; once you take the red pill, there’s no going back,” said Karen Phelps, a freelance writer in Ashland, Ore., referring to her conversion to the diet a few years ago, when a successful weight-loss push ended up becoming a total-life commitment. “It’s a total rabbit hole,” she said. “You start thinking, ‘Wait a minute, if I can fix my diet from ancestral health principles, what else can I fix through ancestral health principles?’ The list is endless.”

Certainly, trendy diets and quasi-religious zeal have long gone hand in hand, a point familiar to anyone who has ever endured a newcomer to, say, Atkins spinning out soliloquies on cheese omelets. Even so, such dieters tend to limit their enthusiasm to what’s on the plate. Who ever heard of an Atkins bedroom or an Atkins medicine cabinet?

But among the Paleo crowd, limiting one’s enthusiasm for Paleo to food is almost a rookie maneuver.

“Most people come to the Paleo diet thinking, ‘Hey, I can lose some weight,’ ” said Cain Credicott, the editor and publisher of Paleo Magazine, which sells at the checkout counter at Barnes & Noble, next to Bon Appétit.

“Everybody recognizes now that if you eat a squeaky clean diet but are still going to bed at 1 a.m. after watching TV, waking up at 6 a.m. with an alarm clock and slathering yourself with sunscreen, it doesn’t matter how good your diet is, you’re not going to be healthy,” Mr. Credicott said.

The basic theory of the so-called cave-man diet (which, at this point, you would virtually have to live in a cave to be unaware of) is that the modern diet, with its reliance on grains, starches, dairy and processed sugar, is not what the human body evolved to thrive on, and has contributed to widespread “diseases of civilization” like diabetes and heart disease.

That is why leaders of the movement like Loren Cordain and Robb Wolf advocate a “wild” diet that falls roughly in line with that of those Paleolithic forager ancestors who had not yet learned to cultivate and eat grain, much less pry the lid off a Pringles can.

Paleo is not without its critics. The science has been endlessly debated: Some nutritionists counter that verboten foods like grains, dairy and beans contain valuable nutrients, such as calcium, vitamins B and D, antioxidants and fiber. Elizabeth Kolbert, in a recent New Yorker road test of the diet, also pointed out that a meat-heavy diet has dire environmental implications. Still, proselytes often find that being Paleo quickly becomes a round-the-clock duty.

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A glossy magazine is dedicated to followers.

That was the experience of Michelle Tam, a former pharmacist in Palo Alto, Calif., who has adopted a primal sleep regimen.

It all started four years ago, when Ms. Tam, now 40, tried the Paleo diet to combat sluggishness and a stubborn muffin-top. But it didn’t end when she shed the extra pounds, as she sought to reorder the rest of her life along those ancestral principles. She quit her hospital job and transformed herself into something of a Martha Stewart of Paleo. Her recipe blog, Nom Nom Paleo, draws more than 100,000 page views daily. And she has a best-selling cookbook, a cooking app and action figure (though, oddly, it’s made of vinyl, not stone).

Ms. Tam also found herself altering her sleep to become more Paleo. As Mark Sisson put it in his seminal 2009 book, “The Primal Blueprint,” “our ancestors’ activity and sleep patterns were shaped by sunrise and sunset.” In the primal mind, the modern sleep ritual, interrupted by iPads and Jimmy Fallon, seems as unhealthy as a dinner of Fiddle Faddle with a Mountain Dew chaser.

That’s why Ms. Tam, a confessed television addict, decided to cut out all electronic devices after 8 p.m. If she has to check her iPhone, she wears amber goggles to block the blue-spectrum light that she believes interferes with her circadian rhythms. Next, she turned her bedroom into the equivalent of a Lascaux cave, removing all clocks (her two young sons serve as her morning alarm, she said) and installing blackout window inserts.

The move paid dividends. “I used to envy how my young two boys would fall asleep almost immediately after their heads hit the pillow,” Ms. Tam said. “At dawn, they’d bound out of bed, eager to tell us about the previous night’s dreams. Now, I sleep like them.”

She is not the only beneficiary. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported last fall, Indow Windows, the Portland, Ore.-based manufacturer of her window inserts, said traffic to its site tripled after Ms. Nam tweeted that she was “the happiest zombie on the planet” thanks to the company’s product.

But the lifestyle does not end when you roll out of bed. For many, the quest to rid one’s daily regimen of “poisonous things,” to use Mr. Sisson’s phrase, includes the morning beauty routine. Vita Pedrazzi, a former fashion manager at Harrods in London who now lives in the Canary Islands, said she used to be the sort of beauty obsessive who would slap on makeup to take out the trash, in part because of her sheepishness over her acne. But when the primal path inspired her to rid her bathroom of any product containing creepy-sounding chemicals, she adopted a zero-tolerance policy to any store-bought beauty product or cleanser — even soap.

As she proudly related on her blog, Vita Lives Free, Ms. Pedrazzi, 30, now makes her own beauty products, including a “no-poo” shampoo method (baking soda and apple cider vinegar, with a few drops of jojoba oil for the tips as a leave-in conditioner), body scrub made from olive oil and brown sugar, and toothpaste made with coconut oil and baking soda, with activated charcoal tablets for whitening. Although houseguests are shocked to find not so much as a canister of Ajax in her house — her horrified father-in-law recently raced out to the drugstore to buy toilet cleaner, instead of her white vinegar solution — she feels transformed.

“The new natural beauty routine totally transformed my skin, and I finally defeated my acne,” she said. “I was finally free.”

As the Paleo day continues, many find a way to keep at least a toe in the primal world at the office. A writer for Paleo Lifestyle Magazine recommends keeping a jar of virgin coconut oil in a desk drawer. (“If I end up getting an afternoon sugar craving, or just feel like I’m in need of a quick snack, I just take out my spoon and eat a glob.”)

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Michelle Tam's Paleo-specific diet.

That may be one reason so many are looking to blow off some primal steam at the gym after work.

The preferred form of exercise for the Paleo tribe is CrossFit, a high-intensity workout that stresses Cybex-equipment-free motions like lunges and burpees, and the high-protein, low-carb diet of neo-cave men. As John Durant, a founder of Paleo NYC and Barefoot Runners NYC, put it in his 2013 book, “The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health,” “other animals don’t ‘exercise’ so much as they either play or just do what is required to survive. Birds fly. Fish swim.”

In that spirit, humans are just supposed to do what humans naturally do — or did, 10,000 years ago — to stay fit: Climb. Run around. Hoist things. And never for unnaturally long stretches.

“Evolutionary fitness” die-hards can also partake in back-to-nature workout retreats like MoveNat started by a French exercise guru named Erwan Le Corre, where participants crawl up hillsides on all fours, play catch with rocks and balance on logs over creeks.

For those who spend their day rearing children, the primal impulse has made major inroads into parenting, too. Websites like The Primal Parent extol corn-syrup-free trick-or-treating, baby slings for “attachment parenting” and placenta-eating for new mothers.

Unstructured play, in particular, has become a cherished concept among Paleo-minded parents like Ms. Phelps, the Oregon devotee, who argued that “play is the method by which all mammals learn.”

Primal parents are the polar opposite of the hyper-achievement-oriented “Tiger Mom” model. Instead of overscheduling her 5-year-old daughter with cello lessons and science fairs, Ms. Phelps prefers to spend hours with her after school playing in a muddy creek near their house. “She loves bugs,” Ms. Phelps said. “She loves dirt. I think she’s going to be an entomologist.”

Mud. Rocks. Olive oil showers. From the outside, it may be easy to conclude that the Paleo lifestyle is all about hair shirts and self-denial. But Paleos, too, know how to rage after the workday is done, even though liquor, logically speaking, should be off limits. (It’s not as if hunter-gatherers were slugging back highballs). Dr. Cordain’s 85/15 rule of compliance allows for wiggle room, after all.

For those looking to raise a glass, anything grain-forward, like beer, is typically out. But Paleos tend to look the other way on vodka (particularly potato vodka, which is free from all associations with gluten) and 100 percent agave tequila (hey, it’s cactus).

Pinterest, in fact, is brimming with Paleo cocktail recipes, like the Paleo Strawberry Daiquiri, courtesy of Paleo Girl’s Kitchen. It is made with organic strawberries, ice, fresh-squeezed orange juice, rum and honey. It sounds pretty much like a regular daiquiri.

In movements that require at least a dash of faith, however, sometimes it’s the spirit that counts.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Way, Way, Way Back. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Fashion & Style |NYT Now

CrossFit Flirting: Talk Burpee to Me

By COURTNEY RUBINAUG. 8, 2014

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On a recent Saturday night at the Promenade Bar and Grill in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, the gym buddies Festa Radoni, 26, and Ellen Gerlach, 29, flexed their biceps, comparing muscles as a male friend snapped photos.

“She’s much better at pull-ups,” Ms. Gerlach said, laughing as she elbowed Ms. Radoni.

Over in the corner, Caley Crawford, 25, in five-inch green heels and polka-dot shorts, hung out in a squat position while sipping her drink and chatting. Nearby, two women in strappy dresses discussed how much weight they could snatch — move quickly from ground to overhead — with two men who, like everyone else at the evening’s event, do CrossFit, a popular high-intensity strength and conditioning program that involves lifting very heavy weights.

“Her grip strength is unreal,” one of the men said later of one of the women. He sounded awed.

It was a fairly tame evening out with Team Dangerous, a kind of interfraternity council for CrossFit gyms in the five boroughs, whose other events — among them a prom (dress code: “gym flair”) — have been known to devolve into tequila-fueled handstand push-ups in the street or a penalty of 10 burpees (an explosive squat-push-up-leap combination) for whoever stopped drinking beer. The two-year-old group’s stated mission is to combine fitness and social activities with charity, but it mostly functions to widen the dating pool for CrossFitters. “I don’t want to jinx myself, but that’s very true,” admitted a co-founder, Jason Lucking, 27, who is British, tall and flirtatious (he was, by several accounts, a credible copy of the Australian actor Chris Hemsworth at a CrossFit Halloween party).

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After all, at any one box — that’s CrossFit-speak for gym — there is a finite number of datable options and a point at which it gets embarrassing. Exactly how large a percentage of people in one class do you want wishing they could accidentally-on-purpose drop a stack of 25-pound plates on your foot?

Joshua Newman, until last month a co-owner of CrossFit NYC, which says it is the world’s largest box, recalled a member in the gym’s early days who was nicknamed “Welcoming Committee.”

“He’d put the moves on every single attractive female who walked through the door,” Mr. Newman said. “He basically got drummed out after the point where the first dozen women he dated would warn off the next bunch of arrivals.” He added: “I think probably the birth of Team Dangerous at some core level does come from this idea of not dating people you’re going to have to see all the time — like not dating someone in your apartment building. Every New Yorker knows not to do that.”

Perhaps more than disciples of any other type of exercise, people who participate in CrossFit can’t help being drawn to people who do the same. This is partly because the exercise regimen inspires near-religious devotion, along with in-jokes (Q: How do CrossFitters do aerobics? A: They lift weights faster.); partly because the program has so many types of moves and workouts that it can be discussed for hours (“You need someone who understands the pain,” said Sharifa Dunn, 26, a Reebok CrossFit Fifth Avenue member who was at the bar night); and partly because so many adherents follow the Paleo diet, which forbids grains and dairy.

At a beach share last summer, “two guys went to Costco and bought the equivalent of a cow, a pig, 50 fish and a lot of tequila, and we knew everybody would be happy with that,” said Julie Clow, 39, who frequently attends Team Dangerous events. (Tequila is considered the most Paleo-friendly of all alcohol.) Then there’s aesthetics.

Ms. Radoni explained: “I go out, and regular guys will be like, ‘You’re big.’ They think I look muscular next to them. But CrossFit guys enjoy that.” As a photographer took a group picture after a special July 4 Team Dangerous workout, a petite CrossFitter named Stacey Pearson, 34, called out, “Are my traps in the picture?” She jokingly adjusted her tank top to show the muscles, and the group laughed.

Kasey Heil, 26, a coach at CrossFit NYC whose boyfriend is another CrossFitter, added: “We look good from the outside, but then you have to touch our callused and ripped hands, look at our constantly bruised collarbones, and deal with the ab mat butt raspberry.” The aforementioned raspberry is from where the tailbone hits the mat during situps. As for the calluses, some CrossFitters discreetly check for those (earned by gripping pull-up bars, barbells and kettlebells) the way other single people may look for wedding rings.

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From left, Kyna Chang, Fran Fontan and Evander Holyfield Jr. at a Team Dangerous event.

Being social is in CrossFit’s DNA. Classes begin with introductions and sometimes include goofy icebreaker questions and exercises that require partners. In timed workouts, of which there are many, an unwritten rule is that those who have finished encourage those who are still sweating.

At the bar night, Carolyn Rebeck, 31, told of a particularly grueling workout CrossFitters usually do on Memorial Day for charity: a mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats (no typos on the numbers here), followed by another mile run. This year, Ms. Rebeck finished dead last.

“The entire gym came out and cheered for me when I was running,” she said, getting a little choked up. “Why wouldn’t I want to hang out with these people?”

At the July 4 workout, participants were randomly assigned to groups of four: two men, two women. “For single guys, it’s great,” said Steve Mosier, 35, who is dating someone who works at his gym. “If you can sweat around someone, and they’ve got chalk all over their clothes” — chalk helps when gripping the bar — “and still think that they’re attractive, when they clean up, you’re like, ‘Wow.’ ” The event was sold out, so people elbowed one another for space during the warm-up: high knees, push-ups, planks, squats. (A popular CrossFit T-shirt slogan: “Our warm-up is other people’s workout.”)

James Quigley, head coach of EVF Performance, an Upper East Side gym that offers CrossFit, yelled, “If you’re sweating on a stranger today, that’s how we get comfortable and we make friends!”

Team Dangerous has no membership fee, but a co-founder, David Blair, 41, who works in finance, said that may change with plans — still sketchy — to expand beyond New York. “We have a goal and a belief that people who do fitness are very likely to be like-minded,” he said. “Why wouldn’t they fit in with us?”

The group is popular enough that it now has a competitor, the two-month-old Barbells & Boroughs. And with the success of Team Dangerous, in exercise and matchmaking, comes with new challenges.

“A lot of these guys are young, and so they break up and then you have to deal with that,” Mr. Blair said. “We’re bringing people together, so obviously relationships are going to happen.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 10, 2014, on page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: Talk Burpee to Me. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist |NYT Now

Exercising the Right to Rant

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Gail Collins

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Congress is gone. But not forgotten.

O.K., to be honest, they’re totally forgotten. The members of the House and Senate have been out of session for about a day and the nation has already totally wiped them from the memory bank.

Oh, America’s Legislature, we hardly knew ye.

Before decamping to go home and run for re-election, our elected representatives voted to fund the government and go to war. Pretty much ran the table on their constitutional responsibilities. Normally, that sort of thing would draw attention. “Before I came here I imagined that when war was discussed, everybody would be at their desk,” complained Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, to a rather vacant chamber.

To be fair, Congress actually just gave a vague grunt of acceptance to one part of President Obama’s strategy to combat ISIS. (It could have gone further, but you know how much these guys like leaving everything up to the president.) And it averted a government shutdown by decreeing that we will keep on spending whatever it is we’ve been spending for a couple more months.

“You don’t get perfect,” said Representative Steny Hoyer, the House minority whip.

We were all actually aware of that.

On the plus side — bipartisan! Republicans and Democrats joined together in what was the legislative version of a deep, depressive sigh.

“The bill before us is an imperfect bill.”

“I don’t think we have a better option.”

They were very possibly right. In theory, Congress is supposed to figure out how much money every federal department needs, and then pass some spending bills. However, the system’s been collapsing under partisan pressures for years. The last time it was normal to start every fiscal year with the money plan totally under control, air travel was glamorous.

And when it came to the Obama plans for Syria and Iraq, the members were faced with a rather distressing series of options: A) Give up on the whole idea of doing something about ISIS. B) Come up with their own idea for doing something about ISIS. Or C) Just stay in Washington and keep talking.

While the stay-and-talk option might have been the most honorable path, I think I speak for many Americans in saying that I cannot imagine them coming up with anything helpful. But we should at least reserve the right to rant. They went home! Early!

Let’s discuss, just for the heck of it, a couple of the things Congress did not feel constrained to do before they went back to meet the voters.

What about corporate inversion — the growing tendency of American companies to magically transform themselves into foreign entities in order to avoid paying American taxes? The White House asked Congress to pass a fairly simple plan to deal with that. No dice. Defending his members on Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner said that fixing inversion is way too low a bar and what they should really do is reform “the whole tax code.”

People, how many of you think Congress is going to fix the whole tax code? It’s like saying you aren’t going to open a door because the public really deserves to see the house levitated.

Speaking of the House, its Ways and Means Committee, which is run by Boehner’s very own party, did come up with a sweeping plan for tax reform this year. The speaker promptly made fun of it. (“Blah, blah, blah, blah.”) Having completely and thoroughly slammed the door on any discussion of the bill, he told reporters this week that he was “shocked at how little I have heard about it.”

Then there’s political intelligence. (I know, I know. Stop snickering.) Reformers want to avert the possibility that congressional insiders might pass on insider information to research firms that counsel investors. For instance, imagine there’s a change coming in government payment rates for health insurers. If, say, a Senate staffer leaked that information, it might cause the stock in said firms to soar before the world is informed of the new policy. Which actually happened last year.

Congress had tackled the problem as part of a bill barring members from insider trading that passed in 2012. The House majority leader, Eric Cantor, stripped the provision out at the last minute. Perhaps you remember Eric Cantor. He was the guy who got tossed out of office in a primary in which his totally unknown opponent claimed Cantor was a creature of crony capitalism.

A bipartisan trio of House members is now trying to revive the idea. Louise Slaughter of New York, one of the sponsors, says a bill’s been introduced. But although there is no end to the marvelous achievements people are predicting for the after-election lame-duck session. Congress reforming itself is not one of them.

“Not a snowball’s chance in hell,” said Slaughter.

Cantor is now a brand-new member of the investment banking industry. With $1.4 million in signing bonuses.

O.K., that was the rant. I feel much better.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Exercising the Right to Rant. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Technology |NYT Now

Ex-Employees Say Home Depot Left Data Vulnerable

By JULIE CRESWELL and NICOLE PERLROTHSEPT. 19, 2014

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The data breach at Home Depot compromised the credit cards of 56 million of its customers. Above, a store in Seminole, Fla.

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The risks were clear to computer experts inside Home Depot: The home improvement chain, they warned for years, might be easy prey for hackers.

But despite alarms as far back as 2008, Home Depot was slow to raise its defenses, according to former employees. On Thursday, the company confirmed what many had feared: The biggest data breach in retailing history had compromised 56 million of its customers’ credit cards. The data has popped up on black markets and, by one estimate, could be used to make $3 billion in illegal purchases.

Yet long before the attack came to light this month, Home Depot’s handling of its computer security was a record of missteps, the former employees said. Interviews with former members of the company’s cybersecurity team — who spoke on the condition they not be named, because they still work in the industry — suggest the company was slow to respond to early threats and only belatedly took action.

In recent years, Home Depot relied on outdated software to protect its network and scanned systems that handled customer information irregularly, those people said. Some members of its security team left as managers dismissed their concerns. Others wondered how Home Depot met industry standards for protecting customer data. One went so far as to warn friends to use cash, rather than credit cards, at the company’s stores.

Then, in 2012, Home Depot hired a computer engineer to help oversee security at its 2,200 stores. But this year, as hacks struck other retailers, that engineer was sentenced to four years in prison for deliberately disabling computers at the company where he previously worked.

Company officials said the malware used against Home Depot had not been seen before and would have been difficult to detect. Home Depot said on Thursday that it had patched any holes and that it is now safe for customers to shop there.

Any card used there between April and Sept. 2 might be vulnerable to being used fraudulently. Stephen Holmes, a Home Depot spokesman, said the company improved its security this year by encrypting register systems and switching to a new smart-chip-based payment standard in all stores.

“Our guiding principle is to do what’s right by our customers,” Mr. Holmes said. The company maintains “robust security systems,” he said.

Thefts like the one that hit Home Depot — and an ever-growing list of merchants including Albertsons, UPS, Goodwill Industries and Neiman Marcus — are the “new normal,” according to security experts. These people say retailers have not only been complacent about security, they have also been reluctant to share information with one another.

Government officials estimate that as many as 1,000 retailers have been infiltrated by variations of the malware that first struck another big retailer, Target, late last year, and then Home Depot this year. They say many companies do not even know they have been breached.

“This is happening to so many companies now, it is getting hard to keep track,” said Paul Kocher, the founder and chief scientist at the Cryptography Research division of Rambus.

Still, security experts were flabbergasted that Home Depot, one of the world’s largest retailers, was caught so flat-footed after the breach at Target, which resulted in the theft of data on more than 40 million cards before the holiday season.

After the Target theft, Home Depot’s chief executive, Frank Blake, assembled a team to determine how to protect the company’s network from a similar attack, said one person briefed on the project. In January, Home Depot brought experts in from Voltage Security, a data security company in California, these people said. By April, the company started introducing in some of its stores enhanced encryption that scrambled payment information the moment a card was swiped.

But criminals were already deep in Home Depot’s systems. By the time the company learned on Sept. 2 from banks and law enforcement that it had been breached, hackers had been stealing millions of customers’ card information, unnoticed for months. The rollout of the company’s new encryption was not completed until last week.

The retail industry is rushing to respond by forming threat-sharing associations — Home Depot was a founding member of one such group created earlier this year — and adopting new encryption and payment system they hope will thwart hackers.

But getting those efforts up and running could take months.

Several people who have worked in Home Depot’s security group in recent years said managers failed to take such threats as seriously as they should have. They said managers relied on outdated Symantec antivirus software from 2007 and did not continuously monitor the network for unusual behavior, such as a strange server talking to its checkout registers.

Also, the company performed vulnerability scans irregularly on the dozen or so computer systems inside its stores and often scanned only a small number of stores. Credit card industry security rules require large retailers like Home Depot to conduct such scans at least once a quarter, using technologies approved by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, which develops technical requirements for its members’ data security programs. The P.C.I. Council requires that approved, third-party quality security assessors perform routine tests to ensure that merchants are compliant.

And yet, two former employees said, while Home Depot data centers in Austin, Tex., and Atlanta were scanned, more than a dozen systems handling customer information were not assessed and were off limits to much of the security staff. A spokeswoman for the P.C.I. Council in Wakefield, Mass., declined to comment on Home Depot specifically.

“Scanning is the easiest part of compliance,” said Avivah Litan, a cybersecurity analyst at Gartner, a research firm. “There are a lot of services that do this. They hardly cost any money. And they can be run cheaply from the cloud.”

Home Depot said the industry standards included an exception from scanning store systems that are separated from larger corporate networks, and it said the company had complied with P.C.I. standards since 2009.

In 2012, Home Depot hired Ricky Joe Mitchell, a security engineer, who was swiftly promoted under Jeff Mitchell, a senior director of information technology security, to a job in which he oversaw security systems at Home Depot’s stores. (The men are not related.)

But Ricky Joe Mitchell did not last long at Home Depot. Before joining the company, he was fired by EnerVest Operating, an oil and gas company, and, before he left, he disabled EnerVest’s computers for a month. He was sentenced to four years in federal prison in April.

Several former Home Depot employees said they were not surprised the company had been hacked. They said that over the years, when they sought new software and training, managers came back with the same response: “We sell hammers.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Ex-Employees Say Home Depot Left Data Vulnerable. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist |NYT Now

Startling Adult Friendships

There Are Social and Political Benefits to Having Friends

SEPT. 18, 2014

Inside

David Brooks

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Somebody recently asked me what I would do if I had $500 million to give away. My first thought was that I’d become a moderate version of the Koch brothers. I’d pay for independent candidates to run against Democratic or Republican members of Congress who veered too far into their party’s fever swamps.

But then I realized that if I really had that money, I’d want to affect a smaller number of people in a more personal and profound way. The big, established charities are already fighting disease and poverty as best they can, so in search of new directions I thought, oddly, of friendship.

Ancient writers from Aristotle to Cicero to Montaigne described friendship as the pre-eminent human institution. You can go without marriage, or justice, or honor, but friendship is indispensable to life. Each friendship, they continued, has positive social effects. Lovers face each other, but friends stand side-by-side, facing the world — often working on its behalf. Aristotle suggested that friendship is the cornerstone of society. Montaigne thought that it spreads universal warmth.

These writers probably romanticized friendship. One senses that they didn’t know how to have real conversations with the women in their lives, so they poured their whole emotional lives into male friendships. But I do think they were right in pointing out that friendship is a personal relationship that has radiating social and political benefits.

In the first place, friendship helps people make better judgments. So much of deep friendship is thinking through problems together: what job to take; whom to marry. Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.

Second, friends usually bring out better versions of each other. People feel unguarded and fluid with their close friends. If you’re hanging around with a friend, smarter and funnier thoughts tend to come burbling out.

Finally, people behave better if they know their friends are observing. Friendship is based, in part, on common tastes and interests, but it is also based on mutual admiration and reciprocity. People tend to want to live up to their friends’ high regard. People don’t have close friendships in any hope of selfish gain, but simply for the pleasure itself of feeling known and respected.

It’s also true that friendship is not in great shape in America today. In 1985, people tended to have about three really close friends, according to the General Social Survey. By 2004, according to research done at Duke University and the University of Arizona, they were reporting they had only two close confidants. The number of people who say they have no close confidants at all has tripled over that time.

People seem to have a harder time building friendships across class lines. As society becomes more unequal and segmented, invitations come to people on the basis of their job status. Middle-aged people have particular problems nurturing friendships and building new ones. They are so busy with work and kids that friendship gets squeezed out.

So, in the fantasy world in which I have $500 million, I’d try to set up places that would cultivate friendships. I know a lot of people who have been involved in fellowship programs. They made friends who ended up utterly transforming their lives. I’d try to take those sorts of networking programs and make them less career oriented and more profound.

To do that, you have to get people out of their normal hunting grounds where their guard is up. You also probably want to give them challenging activities to do together. Nothing inspires friendship like selflessness and cooperation in moments of difficulty. You also want to give them moments when they can share confidences, about big ideas and small worries.

So I envision a string of adult camps or retreat centers (my oldest friendships were formed at summer camp, so I think in those terms). Groups of 20 or 30 would be brought together from all social and demographic groups, and secluded for two weeks. They’d prepare and clean up all their meals together, and eating the meals would go on for a while. In the morning, they would read about and discuss big topics. In the afternoons, they’d play sports, take hikes and build something complicated together. At night, there’d be a bar and music.

You couldn’t build a close friendship in that time, but you could plant the seeds for one. As with good fellowship programs, alumni networks would grow spontaneously over time.

People these days are flocking to conferences, ideas festivals and cruises that are really about building friendships, even if they don’t admit it explicitly. The goal of these intensity retreats would be to spark bonds between disparate individuals who, in the outside world, would be completely unlikely to know each other. The benefits of that social bridging, while unplannable, would ripple out in ways long and far-reaching.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 19, 2014, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Startling Adult Friendships. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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SundayReview

The Case for Delayed Adulthood

SEPT. 19, 2014

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Gray Matter

By LAURENCE STEINBERG

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ONE of the most notable demographic trends of the last two decades has been the delayed entry of young people into adulthood. According to a large-scale national study conducted since the late 1970s, it has taken longer for each successive generation to finish school, establish financial independence, marry and have children. Today’s 25-year-olds, compared with their parents’ generation at the same age, are twice as likely to still be students, only half as likely to be married and 50 percent more likely to be receiving financial assistance from their parents.

People tend to react to this trend in one of two ways, either castigating today’s young people for their idleness or acknowledging delayed adulthood as a rational, if regrettable, response to a variety of social changes, like poor job prospects. Either way, postponing the settled, responsible patterns of adulthood is seen as a bad thing.

This is too pessimistic. Prolonged adolescence, in the right circumstances, is actually a good thing, for it fosters novelty-seeking and the acquisition of new skills.

Studies reveal adolescence to be a period of heightened “plasticity” during which the brain is highly influenced by experience. As a result, adolescence is both a time of opportunity and vulnerability, a time when much is learned, especially about the social world, but when exposure to stressful events can be particularly devastating. As we leave adolescence, a series of neurochemical changes make the brain increasingly less plastic and less sensitive to environmental influences. Once we reach adulthood, existing brain circuits can be tweaked, but they can’t be overhauled.

You might assume that this is a strictly biological phenomenon. But whether the timing of the change from adolescence to adulthood is genetically preprogrammed from birth or set by experience (or some combination of the two) is not known. Many studies find a marked decline in novelty-seeking as we move through our 20s, which may be a cause of this neurochemical shift, not just a consequence. If this is true — that a decline in novelty-seeking helps cause the brain to harden — it raises intriguing questions about whether the window of adolescent brain plasticity can be kept open a little longer by deliberate exposure to stimulating experiences that signal the brain that it isn’t quite ready for the fixity of adulthood.

Evolution no doubt placed a biological upper limit on how long the brain can retain the malleability of adolescence. But people who can prolong adolescent brain plasticity for even a short time enjoy intellectual advantages over their more fixed counterparts. Studies have found that those with higher I.Q.s, for example, enjoy a longer stretch of time during which new synapses continue to proliferate and their intellectual development remains especially sensitive to experience. It’s important to be exposed to novelty and challenge when the brain is plastic not only because this is how we acquire and strengthen skills, but also because this is how the brain enhances its ability to profit from future enriching experiences.

With this in mind, the lengthy passage into adulthood that characterizes the early 20s for so many people today starts to look less regrettable. Indeed, those who can prolong adolescence actually have an advantage, as long as their environment gives them continued stimulation and increasing challenges.

What do I mean by stimulation and challenges? The most obvious example is higher education, which has been shown to stimulate brain development in ways that simply getting older does not. College attendance pays neural as well as economic dividends.

Naturally, it is possible for people to go to college without exposing themselves to challenge, or, conversely, to surround themselves with novel and intellectually demanding experiences in the workplace. But generally, this is more difficult to accomplish on the job than in school, especially in entry-level positions, which typically have a learning curve that hits a plateau early on.

Alas, something similar is true of marriage. For many, after its initial novelty has worn off, marriage fosters a lifestyle that is more routine and predictable than being single does. Husbands and wives both report a sharp drop in marital satisfaction during the first few years after their wedding, in part because life becomes repetitive. A longer period of dating, with all the unpredictability and change that come with a cast of new partners, may be better for your brain than marriage.

If brain plasticity is maintained by staying engaged in new, demanding and cognitively stimulating activity, and if entering into the repetitive and less exciting roles of worker and spouse helps close the window of plasticity, delaying adulthood is not only O.K.; it can be a boon.

Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University, is the author of “Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page SR12 of the New York edition with the headline: The Case for Delayed Adulthood. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Magazine |NYT Now

How Gary Hart’s Downfall Forever Changed American Politics

By MATT BAISEPT. 18, 2014

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Gary Hart

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On a scalding July day five years ago, I found myself hiking in Red Rocks Park, just outside Denver, with Gary Hart. The copper cliffs were brilliantly lit in the midday sun, which burned our uncovered heads as we trudged up a steep incline toward the amphitheater that Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration ingeniously carved into the boulders.

We had come because Hart wanted to show me something, and as we made our way uphill, I was soon breathing heavily in the mile-high air. But I was more aware of Hart, who, at 72, labored audibly despite his legendary ruggedness. (The most famous picture from Hart’s first presidential campaign, where he came from nowhere in 1984 to stalemate Walter Mondale and overturn the aging Democratic establishment in the process, was one from New Hampshire, in which the flannel-clad Hart had just managed to bury an ax in a tree from a distance, legend had it, of 40 feet.) He had developed a paunch and was slightly stooped, his arms swinging crookedly at his sides. He wore black pants and a black Nike polo shirt, from which tufts of chest hair sprouted near the unbuttoned collar. His famous mane, still intact but now white and unruly, framed a sunburned, square-jawed face.

“When I announced for president in 1987, we did it right up there,” Hart said, pointing toward a rock formation at the top of the hill.

I tried to imagine the lectern set against the red rocks and blue sky, the crush of cameras and the palpable sense of history. Hart’s aides had wanted him to do something more conventional, with a ballroom and streamers and all of that, but he insisted on standing against the mountainous backdrop, near the amphitheater he called “a symbol of what a benevolent government can do.”

Back then, Hart was as close to a lock for the nomination — and likely the presidency — as any challenger of the modern era. According to Gallup, Hart had a double-digit lead over the rest of the potential Democratic field among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. In a preview of the general election against the presumed Republican nominee, Vice President George H. W. Bush, Hart was polling over 50 percent among registered voters and beating Bush by 13 points, with only 11 percent saying they were undecided. He would have been very hard to stop.

“Must have been a hell of a backdrop,” I said. Hart didn’t respond, and after an awkward moment, I let it drop.

As anyone alive during the 1980s knows, Hart, the first serious presidential contender of the 1960s generation, was taken down and eternally humiliated by a scandal, a suspected affair with a beautiful blonde whose name, Donna Rice, had entered the cultural lexicon, along with the yacht — Monkey Business — near which she had been photographed on his lap. When they talked about him now in Washington, Hart was invariably described as a brilliant and serious man, perhaps the most visionary political mind of his generation, an old-school statesman of the kind Washington had lost its capacity to produce. He warned of the rise of stateless terrorism and spoke of the need to convert the industrial economy into an information-and-technology-based one, at a time when few politicians in either party had given much thought to anything beyond communism and steel. But such recollections were generally punctuated by a smirk or a sad shake of the head. Hardly a modern scandal passed, whether it involved a politician or an athlete or an entertainer, that didn’t evoke inevitable comparisons to Hart among reflective commentators. In popular culture, Gary Hart would forever be that archetypal antihero of presidential politics: the iconic adulterer.

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Hart was invariably described as a brilliant and serious man, perhaps the most visionary political mind of his generation, an old-school statesman of the kind Washington had lost its capacity to produce.

The rest of the world was finished with Gary Hart, but I couldn’t get his story out of my mind, which was why I ended up standing alongside him at Red Rocks on that summer day, like an archaeologist searching for shards of a lost political age. I had come to believe that we couldn’t really understand the dispiriting state of our politics — and of our political journalism — without first understanding what transpired during that surreal and frenetic week in April nearly 30 years ago.

The Hart episode is almost universally remembered as a tale of classic hubris. A Kennedy-like figure on a fast track to the presidency defies the media to find anything nonexemplary in his personal life, even as he carries on an affair with a woman half his age and poses for pictures with her, and naturally he gets caught and humiliated. How could he not have known this would happen? How could such a smart guy have been that stupid?

Of course, you could reasonably have asked that same question of the three most important political figures of Hart’s lifetime, all Democratic presidents thought of as towering successes. Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were adulterers, before and during their presidencies, and we can safely assume they had plenty of company. In his 1978 memoir, Theodore White, the most prolific and influential chronicler of presidential politics in the last half of the 20th century, wrote that he was “reasonably sure” that of all the candidates he had covered, only three — Harry Truman, George Romney and Jimmy Carter — hadn’t enjoyed the pleasure of “casual partners.” He and his colleagues considered those affairs irrelevant.

By the late 1980s, however, a series of powerful, external forces in the society were colliding, creating a dangerous vortex on the edge of our politics. Hart didn’t create that vortex. He was, rather, the first to wander into its path.

The nation was still feeling the residual effects of Watergate, which 13 years earlier led to the first resignation of a sitting president. Richard Nixon’s fall was shocking, not least because it was more personal than political, a result of instability and pettiness rather than pure ideology. And for this reason Watergate, along with the deception over what was really happening in Vietnam, had injected into presidential politics a new focus on private morality.

Social mores were changing, too. For most of the 20th century, adultery as a practice — at least for men — was rarely discussed but widely accepted. Kennedy and Johnson governed during the era that “Mad Men” would later portray, when the powerful man’s meaningless tryst with a secretary was no less common than the three-martini lunch. Twenty years later, however, social forces unleashed by the tumult of the 1960s were rising up to contest this view. Feminism and the “women’s lib” movement had transformed expectations for a woman’s role in marriage, just as the civil rights movement had changed prevailing attitudes toward African-Americans.

As America continued to debate the Equal Rights Amendment for women into the 1980s, younger liberals — the same permissive generation that ushered in the sexual revolution and free love — were suddenly apt to see adultery as a kind of political betrayal, and one that needed to be exposed. “This is the last time a candidate will be able to treat women as bimbos,” is how the feminist Betty Friedan put it after Hart’s withdrawal. (If only she’d known.)

Perhaps most salient, though, the nation’s news media were changing in profound ways. When giants like White came up through the news business in the postwar years, the surest path to success was to gain the trust of politicians and infiltrate their world. Proximity to power and the information and insight derived from having it was the currency of the trade. By the 1980s, however, Watergate and television had combined to awaken an entirely new kind of career ambition. If you were an aspiring journalist born in the 1950s, when the baby boom was in full swing, then you entered the business at almost exactly the moment when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post — portrayed by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the cinematic version of their first book, “All the President’s Men” — were becoming not just the most celebrated reporters of their day but very likely the wealthiest and most famous journalists in American history (with the possible exception of Walter Cronkite). And what made Woodward and Bernstein so iconic wasn’t proximity, but scandal. They had actually managed to take down a mendacious American president, and in doing so they came to symbolize the hope and heroism of a new generation.

It would be hard to overstate the impact this had, especially on younger reporters. If you were one of the new breed of middle-class, Ivy League-educated baby boomers who had decided to change the world through journalism, then there was simply no one you could want to become more than Woodward or Bernstein, which is to say, there was no greater calling than to expose the lies of a politician, no matter how inconsequential those lies might turn out to be or in how dark a place they might be lurking.

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Gary Hart announces his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in 1987 with his wife, Lee, center, and daughter, Andrea.

It was around 8 p.m. on Monday, April 27, 1987, when the phone rang on Tom Fiedler’s desk at The Miami Herald. A woman he did not know was on the line. Ever since Hart’s official announcement at Red Rocks two weeks before, reporters had been speculating among themselves about the state of Hart’s marriage and rumors of affairs, and some of that speculation had begun to leak into the press. Fiedler, a prominent political reporter for The Herald, thought it beneath the media to traffic in such innuendo without any proof, and he published a front-page article that day saying as much. The woman on the phone had apparently just read it.

“You know, you said in the paper that there were rumors that Gary Hart is a womanizer,” she told him. “Those aren’t rumors.” And then a question: “How much do you guys pay for pictures?”

In a subsequent conversation, the anonymous caller told Fiedler that a friend of hers had seen Hart aboard a chartered yacht at Turnberry Isle near Miami, and the two had started an affair on an overnight pleasure cruise to Bimini. Her friend had pictures of her and Hart on the boat that she had shown the caller. The caller never used the name Donna Rice, the 29-year-old commercial actress and pharmaceutical rep who would soon become the first woman dragged through the humiliation of a sex scandal during a presidential campaign.

The caller said there were phone calls between Hart and Rice. Somehow, she knew they had been placed from phones in Georgia, Alabama and Kansas, and precisely when. She claimed that Hart had invited her friend to visit him in Washington, and her friend was going to stay with him that Friday night. “Maybe you could fly to Washington and get the seat next to her,” the anonymous caller suggested.

For decades after that call, just about everyone close to the events of that week, and everyone who wrote about them later, assumed that the caller was Lynn Armandt, the friend Rice brought along on the Monkey Business during the cruise to Bimini. This was a logical deduction, because Armandt would later profit from selling photos she took on that trip. When I asked Fiedler about it last year, though, he told me that although he would continue to protect the identity of his source as he had for 26 years, he was willing to say flatly that it was not Armandt. Fiedler volunteered that he thought Rice knew who the tipster really was.

When I spoke to Rice a few months later, during the first of two long conversations, she told me that she had never figured out with any certainty who set all of this in motion in 1987. But she had come to believe that Armandt was in cahoots with another friend of theirs in Miami — a woman named Dana Weems — who was on the boat for a party but didn’t join them on the cruise to Bimini and thus escaped notice in contemporary accounts of the scandal. Rice had talked to Weems about her dalliance with Hart and showed her the photos from the cruise.

Dana Weems wasn’t especially hard to find, it turned out. A clothing designer who did some costume work on movies in the early 1990s, she sold funky raincoats and gowns on a website called Raincoatsetc.com, based in Hollywood, Fla. When she answered the phone after a couple of rings, I told her I was writing about Gary Hart and the events of 1987.

“Oh, my God,” she said. There followed a long pause.

“Did you make that call to The Herald?” I asked her.

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There’s the narrative we think we know about the scandal, but in truth, the reporters who followed Hart weren’t responding to his challenge.

“Yeah,” Weems said with a sigh. “That was me.”

She then proceeded to tell me her story, in a way that probably revealed more about her motives than she realized. In 1987, Armandt sold some of Weems’s designs at her bikini boutique under a cabana on Turnberry Isle. Like Rice, Weems had worked as a model, though she told me Rice wasn’t nearly as successful as she was. Rice was an artificial beauty who was “O.K. for commercials, I guess.”

Weems recalled going aboard Monkey Business on the last weekend of March for the same impromptu party at which Hart and his pal Billy Broadhurst, a Louisiana lawyer and lobbyist, met up with Rice, but in her version of events, Hart was hitting on her, not on Rice, and he was soused and pathetic, and she wanted nothing to do with him, but still he followed her around the boat, hopelessly enthralled. . . .

But Donna — she had no standards, Weems told me. Weems figured Donna wanted to be the next Marilyn Monroe, sleeping her way into the inner sanctum of the White House, and that’s why she agreed to go on the cruise to Bimini. After that weekend, Donna wouldn’t shut up about Hart or give the pictures a rest. It all made Weems sick to her stomach, especially this idea of Hart’s getting away with it and becoming president. “What an idiot you are!” Weems said, as if talking to Hart through the years. “You’re gonna want to run the country? You moron!”

And so when Weems read Fiedler’s story in The Herald, she decided to call him, while Armandt stood by, listening to every word. “I didn’t realize it was going to turn into this whole firecracker thing,” she told me. It was Armandt’s idea, Weems said, to try to get cash by selling the photos, and that’s why she asked Fiedler if he might pay for them (though she couldn’t actually remember much about that part of the conversation). Weems said she hadn’t talked to either woman — Rice or Armandt — since shortly after the scandal. She lived alone and used a wheelchair because of multiple sclerosis. She was surprised her secret had lasted until now.

“I’m sorry to ruin his life,” she told me, offhandedly, near the end of our conversation. “I was young. I didn’t know it would be that way.”

Fiedler never had any doubt that Hart’s marital infidelity, if it could be substantiated, was a story. Nor, it seems, did anyone else at The Herald, where the question of newsworthiness was raised but quickly dispatched. In the reconstruction of how the story unfolded that Fiedler and his colleagues at the paper later published, there is no mention of any debate about whether a candidate’s private life merited investigation.

On Friday, the day when Hart was supposed to meet with Rice at his Capitol Hill townhouse, The Herald dispatched Jim McGee, its top investigative reporter, to Washington. McGee, who at 34 could fairly be called one of the finest investigative reporters in all of American journalism, spent the flight to Washington stalking his fellow passengers, walking up and down the aisle in search of women who looked as if they could plausibly be on their way to sleep with a presidential candidate. “He wondered how he would decide which woman to follow,” The Herald’s reporters later wrote, without a hint of realizing how creepy that sounded.

On the ground in Washington, McGee caught a taxi to Hart’s home and took up a position on a park bench that afforded a clear view of the front door. It was 9:30 p.m. when he saw Hart leave the townhouse with a “stunning” blonde he recognized from the ticket counter in Miami. Hart and the young woman promptly drove off, and McGee rushed to a pay phone across the street. He called his editors and Fiedler to ask for backup; the story was unfolding rapidly, and he needed more bodies to help with surveillance. McGee was still stationed on the street when, about two hours later, Hart and Rice returned from dinner and re-entered the townhouse. He never saw her leave and assumed she spent the night, although Hart’s aides later said that Rice left through the rear door.

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‘I’m sorry to ruin his life,’ Dana Weems told me, offhandedly, near the end of our conversation. ‘I was young. I didn’t know it would be that way.’

Fiedler awoke Saturday morning and hopped the first flight to Washington. He brought with him McGee’s editor, James Savage, and a photographer, Brian Smith. When you added in Doug Clifton, a reporter helping out the Washington bureau who had joined McGee for part of the stakeout Friday night, The Herald’s undercover team now numbered five, along with at least two rental cars, on a block where maybe one or two residents could be spotted on the sidewalk at any given time in the afternoon. The odds of this kind of surveillance going undetected were not especially high.

About 8:40 p.m. Saturday, Hart and Rice left the house and emerged into the adjacent alleyway, heading for the senator’s car. The idea, apparently, had been to meet Broadhurst and Armandt for dinner. It was then that Hart noticed things were amiss. The first reporter he spotted in the side alley was McGee, a 200-pound man who for some reason had decided to make himself inconspicuous by donning sunglasses and a hooded parka. At night. In May.

McGee, sensing he had been made, turned on his heels and ran, bumping into Fiedler, who, being the only reporter on the scene whom Hart actually knew from the campaign plane, had disguised himself in a tracksuit and was pretending to jog around every so often. “He’s right behind me,” McGee whispered urgently. Fiedler immediately changed direction and jogged across the street, like a disoriented sprinter.

Alarmed, Hart abandoned the dinner plan and led Rice back inside. He was certain he was being watched but mystified as to who might be watching. He peered out of his second-floor kitchen window and surveyed Fifth Street. Hart was by no means an expert in counterintelligence, but he had traveled behind the Iron Curtain, where Americans were routinely tracked by government agents, and he had spent considerable time in the protection of Secret Service agents who were always scanning the periphery for threats. All of this was more than enough training for Hart to recognize the clownish stakeout that had all but taken over his street. He saw the five participants milling around, pretending to be strangers but then talking to one another, ducking into cars or — at least in Hart’s telling, though The Herald team would dispute his account — disappearing behind the bushes. His bushes. He thought perhaps they were reporters, but how could he be sure? Maybe they worked for another campaign or for the Republicans.

Hart decided, at first anyway, to hunker down and wait. He called Broadhurst, at whose nearby townhouse Rice and Armandt were supposed to be staying that weekend, and Broadhurst came over with Armandt and some barbecued chicken. After dinner, Hart instructed Broadhurst to gather up the women and leave via the back door. He would never see Donna Rice again.

Like a character in one of the spy novels he loved to read and write, Hart decided to outwit his surveillants and flush them into the open. It’s not clear how he thought this was going to end, other than badly, but a cornered man does not think clearly. Hart put on a white sweatshirt and pulled the hood up over his thick hair. At first, he got into his car and merged into Capitol Hill traffic. He expected to be followed, and he was — Smith, the photographer, was tailing close behind. Satisfied with this maneuver, Hart pulled over after a few blocks, emerged from the car and started walking back in the general direction of the townhouse. He detoured down a side street and walked twice around the block. Next Hart walked past the rental car in the front where McGee and Savage thought they were safely incognito.

According to the writer Richard Ben Cramer, who chronicled these events in his classic campaign book, “What It Takes,” Hart made a show of writing down the license-plate number in full view of the two reporters; The Herald didn’t mention this detail, but it did report that Hart seemed “agitated” and appeared to yell over his shoulder at someone on the other side of the street as he walked away. Probably both accounts are true. In any event, McGee and Savage deduced from Hart’s behavior that their undercover stakeout had been compromised. They could not write an article without at least trying to get his response. So after quickly conferring, they exited the car, followed Hart’s path back up the alley alongside his row of townhouses and turned a corner. McGee, according to The Herald account, “flinched in surprise.” There was Gary Hart, the presumed nominee of the Democratic Party, leaning against a brick wall in his hoodie. He was waiting for them.

There were no press aides or handlers, no security agents or protocols to be followed. There was no precedent for any reporter accosting a presidential candidate outside his home, demanding the details of what he was doing inside it. It was just Hart and his accusers, or at least two of them for the moment, facing off in an oil-stained alley, all of them trying to find their footing on the suddenly shifting ground of American politics.

Eight days later, The Herald published a front-page reconstruction of the events leading up to and including that Saturday night. Written by McGee, Fiedler and Savage, the 7,000-plus-word article — Moby-Dick-like proportions by the standards of daily journalism — is remarkable reading. First, it’s striking how much The Herald’s account of its investigation consciously imitates, in its clinical voice and staccato cadence, Woodward and Bernstein’s “All the President’s Men.” (“McGee rushed toward a pay telephone a block away to call editors in Miami. It was 9:33 p.m.”) Clearly, the reporters and editors at The Herald thought themselves to be reconstructing a scandal of similar proportions, the kind of thing that would lead to Pulitzers and movie deals. The solemn tone of the piece suggests that Fiedler and his colleagues imagined themselves to be the only ones standing between America and another menacing, immoral president; reading it, you might think Hart had been caught bludgeoning a beautiful young woman to death, rather than taking her to dinner.

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At moments Hart thought that if he said just enough, then his tormentors would see the absurdity in what they were doing.

The other fascinating thing about The Herald’s reconstruction is that it captures, in agonizing detail, the very moment when the walls between the public and private lives of candidates, between politics and celebrity, came tumbling down forever. Even in the dispassionate tone of The Herald’s narrative, you can hear how chaotic and combative it was, how charged with emotion and pounding hearts.

“Good evening, senator,” McGee began, recovering from his shock at seeing Hart standing in front of him. “I’m a reporter from The Miami Herald. We’d like to talk to you.” As The Herald relayed it: “Hart said nothing. He held his arms around his midsection and leaned forward slightly with his back against the brick wall.” McGee said they wanted to ask him about the young woman staying in his house.

“No one is staying in my house,” Hart replied.

Hart may have surprised the reporters by choosing the time and place for their confrontation, but it’s not as if they weren’t ready. They had conferred on a list of questions intended to back Hart up against a wall — which was now literally the situation. McGee reminded Hart that he and the woman had walked right past McGee earlier that evening on the way to his car. “You passed me on the street,” McGee said.

“I may or may not have,” Hart replied.

McGee asked him what his relationship was with the woman.

“I’m not involved in any relationship,” Hart said carefully.

So why had they just seen Hart and the woman enter the townhouse together a few minutes earlier?

“The obvious reason is I’m being set up,” Hart said, his voice quivering.

Photo

Jim McGee, a Herald reporter, left, and Gary Hart after their confrontation in the alley, right.

McGee wanted to know if the woman was in Hart’s house at that very moment. “She may or may not be,” is how Hart answered, evading again. Savage then asked to meet her, and Hart said no.

McGee offered to explain the situation, as if Hart had just woken up in a hospital or an asylum and might not have any idea what was happening. He said that the house had been under surveillance and that he had observed Hart with the woman the night before, in Hart’s car. Where were they going?

“I was on my way to take her to a place where she was staying,” Hart said, referring to Broadhurst’s townhouse nearby.

Savage cut in and asked how long Hart had known the woman — “several months” was the response — and what her name was.

“I would suppose you would find that out,” Hart said.

His voice was steadier now, and the reporters noticed that his composure had returned. As would happen several times throughout the ordeal of the next week, and for long afterward, Hart was lurching between conflicting instincts. There were moments when he thought that if he said just enough, if he issued enough of a denial to explain himself, then his tormentors would see the absurdity in what they were doing. But then he would grow defiant. The hell with them, he would think. They were not entitled to know.

Fiedler made his way into the alley and joined his colleagues, making it three on one (or actually four on one, since Smith, the photographer, was there, too). Looking back years later, Fiedler would recall Hart’s besieged posture, the way he leaned back defensively, as if expecting to be punched.

As Fiedler watched, McGee hit Hart with questions about the phone calls he had made to Rice, which they knew about from the tipster (even though they still hadn’t figured out her identity). Hart, whose suspicions about being set up must have now seemed well founded, didn’t dare deny the calls, but he characterized them as “casual” and “political” and “general conversation.” Then Fiedler jumped in. He asked Hart if he had taken this woman on a yachting trip in Florida.

“I don’t remember,” Hart said, dubiously. You can imagine the vertigo he must have been experiencing as the details of his private life, things he had not disclosed even to his closest aides, just kept coming, one after the other. It probably dawned on him, right about then, that he should never have been in the alley, any more than he should have been on the yacht.

Photo

Donna Rice in 1990. She never saw Hart after the night of The Herald's stakeout.

Fiedler reminded Hart that he had been at Red Rocks and had personally heard the speech. He quoted Hart’s own words back to him, where Hart, alluding to the Iran-contra scandal rocking the Reagan administration, talked about running a campaign based on integrity and ethics and a higher standard. If that were so, Fiedler wanted to know, then why was Fiedler having to stand in this alley, at this moment, doing something so beneath him? He pleaded with Hart to be more forthcoming.

“I’ve been very forthcoming,” Hart said.

When McGee pressed him again about the yacht and whether he was denying having met Rice there, Hart grew visibly irritated. “I’m not denying anything,” he said. They were missing the point. He wasn’t going to confirm or deny knowing Rice or having been on a chartered boat. Hart’s stance was that none of it was anybody’s business but his. When the reporters asked Hart to “produce” the woman or this friend who was supposedly hosting her, Hart said other people had a right to privacy, too.

“I don’t have to produce anyone,” he told them.

McGee pulled out his last question, the one you save for the moment when there is nothing to be lost by asking it. He put the question point-blank to Hart: Had the senator had sex with the woman in the townhouse?

“The answer is no,” Hart said, more definitively than he had answered other questions. As Hart walked away, shaken and alone, and started back up the alley, Smith, the photographer, started clicking away. Hart whirled around. This yielded the shots of him rumpled and recoiling, hiding in a hoodie like some perp who was about to have his head forcibly lowered into the back seat of a cruiser.

“We don’t need any of that,” were Hart’s parting words.

The next morning, on May 3, The Herald reporters published a front-page article about Hart’s purported affair. At the end, they referred to a statement in which Hart challenged reporters interested in his personal life to follow him. Hart couldn’t have known it at the time, but his words — “follow me around” — would shadow him for the rest of his days. They would bury everything else he had ever said in public life.

In the history of Washington scandal, only a few quotes — “I am not a crook,” “I did not have sex with that woman” — have become as synonymous with a politician. In truth, though, Hart never issued any challenge to The Miami Herald’s reporters, or to anybody else, really. The words were spoken weeks earlier to E. J. Dionne Jr., who was then the top political reporter for The New York Times and was writing a profile for this magazine. Dionne discussed a broad range of topics with Hart and then reluctantly turned to the rumors of affairs. Hart was exasperated and he finally told Dionne: “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’d be very bored.”

Photo

The issue that first related the details of the newspaper's surveillance.

Hart said this in an annoyed and sarcastic sort of way, in an obvious attempt to make a point. He was “serious” about the sentiment, all right, but only to the extent that a man who had been twice separated from his wife and dated other women over the years — with the full knowledge of his friends in the press corps and without having seen a single word written about it at the time — could have been serious about such a thing. Hart might as well have been suggesting that Martians beam down and run his campaign, for all the chance he thought there was that any reporter would actually resort to stalking him. Dionne certainly didn’t take the comment literally, though he suspected others might. “He did not think of it as a challenge,” Dionne would recall many years later. “And at the time, I did not think of it as a challenge.”

As it happened, Dionne’s cover story was set to appear Sunday, May 3, the same day the Herald published its front-page exposé. No one at The Herald had a clue that Hart had issued any “challenge” on the previous Monday when Fiedler heard from his anonymous tipster or when he continued to chase the story during the week or when McGee flew off to Washington and began prowling outside the townhouse on Friday night. All of this they did on their own, without any prodding from Hart.

In those days before the Internet, however, The Times circulated printed copies of its magazine to other news media a few days early, so editors and producers could pick out anything that might be newsworthy and publicize it in their own weekend editions or Sunday shows. And so it was that when Fiedler boarded his flight to Washington Saturday morning, eager to join the stakeout, he brought with him the advance copy of Dionne’s story, which had been sent to The Herald. Somewhere above the Atlantic seaboard, anyone sitting next to Fiedler would probably have seen him jolt upward in his seat as if suddenly receiving an electric shock. There it was, staring up at him from the page — Hart explicitly inviting him and his colleagues to do exactly the kind of surveillance they had undertaken the night before.

The discovery of Hart’s supposed challenge, which the Herald reporters took from the advance copy of The Times Magazine on Saturday night and inserted at the end of their Sunday blockbuster — so that the two articles, referring to the same quote, appeared on newsstands simultaneously — probably eased any reservations the editors in Miami might have had about pushing the story into print before they had a chance to identify Rice and try to talk to her. Soon enough, as The Herald would put it in their longer reconstruction a week later, Gary Hart would be seen as “the gifted hero who had taunted the press to ‘follow me around.’ ” Everyone would know that Hart had goaded the press into hiding outside his townhouse and tracking his movements. So what if The Herald reporters hadn’t even known about it when they put Hart under surveillance? Hart’s quote appeared to justify The Herald’s extraordinary investigation, and that’s all that mattered.

The difference here is far more than a technicality. Even when insiders and historians recall the Hart episode now, they recall it the same way: Hart issued his infamous challenge to reporters, telling them to follow him around if they didn’t believe him, and then The Herald took him up on it. Inexplicably, people believe, Hart set his own trap and then allowed himself to become ensnared in it. (When I spoke to Dana Weems, she repeatedly insisted to me that she had only called The Herald after reading Hart’s “follow me around” quote, which was obviously impossible.)

And this version of events conveniently enabled The Herald’s reporters and editors to completely sidestep some important and uncomfortable questions. As long as it was Hart, and not The Herald, who set the whole thing in motion, then it was he and not they who suddenly moved the boundaries between private and political lives. They never had to grapple with the complex issues of why Hart was subject to a kind of invasive, personal scrutiny no major candidate before him had endured, or to consider where that shift in the political culture had led us. Hart had, after all, given the media no choice in the matter.

I had a chance to talk to Fiedler about this over lunch one day in the spring of 2013. We ate at a French restaurant near the campus of Boston University, where Fiedler, who went on to run The Herald before his retirement, was now installed as dean of the College of Communication.

Fiedler explained to me that while he knew no political reporter had ever undertaken this kind of surveillance on a presidential candidate or written an article about a possible extramarital affair, he had never doubted that Hart’s liaison with Rice, if it could be proved, was a legitimate story. Fielder’s view — a view shared by a lot of his younger colleagues and informed, no doubt, by the lingering ghosts of Nixon — was that it wasn’t a reporter’s job to decide which aspects of a candidate’s character were germane to the campaign and which weren’t. It was the job of reporters to vet potential presidents by offering up as detailed a dossier about that person as they could assemble, and it was the voters’ job to rule on relevance, one way or the other.

Fiedler readily acknowledged that the order of events pertaining to the “follow me around” quote had since become jumbled in the public mind, and his expression was genuinely regretful. He mostly blamed the way the TV news programs that weekend juxtaposed The Herald’s reporting with the quote from The Times Magazine, as if one had led to the other. That had really been the beginning of the myth, he said, and from that time on, people were confused about which came first — “follow me around” or The Herald investigation. When I asked why he had never tried to correct the record, Fiedler shrugged sadly. “I don’t know what I would need to do,” he said.

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If Nixon’s resignation created the character culture in American politics, then Hart’s undoing marked the moment when political reporters ceased to care about almost anything else.

Then I mentioned to Fiedler that I had done a web search on his name recently and been sent to his biographical page on the B.U. website. And this is what it said: “In 1987, after presidential hopeful Gary Hart told journalists asking about marital infidelity to follow him around, Fiedler and other Herald reporters took him up on the challenge and exposed Hart’s campaign-killing affair with a Miami model.” Why did his own web page explicitly repeat something he knew to be untrue?

Fiedler recoiled in his seat and winced. He looked mortified. “You know what?” he said. “I didn’t know that. Honestly. I’m serious.” He stared at me for another beat, stunned. “Wow.” I knew he meant it. I was surprised to find that for more than a year afterward — until just last month — Fiedler hadn’t changed a word.

In the days after the Herald story, Hart continued on to New Hampshire, where photographers and political reporters, who until then had always observed some sense of decorum, shoved one another aside and leapt over shrubs in an effort to get near the wounded candidate. It was there, at a carnival-like news conference on Wednesday, May 6, that Paul Taylor, a star reporter for The Washington Post, publicly asked Hart the question that no presidential candidate in America to that point had ever been asked, let alone from one of the country’s most admired newspapers: “Have you ever committed adultery?”

Hart stumbled to answer and ultimately said he shouldn’t have to. What he didn’t know then was that Taylor’s colleagues at The Post — acting at the direction of the paper’s legendary editor and Watergate hero, Ben Bradlee — were already unearthing evidence of a relationship with another woman. By Thursday, Hart was back in Colorado, news helicopters buzzing over his house like something out of Vietnam, and his campaign was through.

The most enduring image of that time, of course, is the infamous photo of Rice sitting on Hart’s lap, which Armandt snapped on a crowded dock in Bimini during that overnight cruise and later sold to The National Enquirer. In it, Rice is wearing a short white dress; Hart is wearing a “Monkey Business crew” T-shirt, along with a startled, crooked grin. Most people who lived through the event, and some who covered it, will tell you that the photo is what provided irrefutable evidence of the affair and drove Hart from the race. But the photo didn’t surface until nearly three weeks after Hart suspended his candidacy. It was a final indignity, to be sure, but it had nothing to do with his decision to quit.

If Nixon’s resignation created the character culture in American politics, then Hart’s undoing marked the moment when political reporters ceased to care about almost anything else. By the 1990s, the cardinal objective of all political journalism had shifted from a focus on agendas to a focus on narrow notions of character, from illuminating worldviews to exposing falsehoods. If post-Hart political journalism had a motto, it would be: “We know you’re a fraud somehow. Our job is to prove it.”

As an industry, we aspired chiefly to show politicians for the impossibly flawed human beings they are: a single-minded pursuit that reduced complex careers to isolated transgressions. As the former senator Bob Kerrey, who has acknowledged participating in an atrocity as a soldier in Vietnam, told me once, “We’re not the worst thing we’ve ever done in our lives, and there’s a tendency to think that we are.” That quote, I thought, should have been posted on the wall of every newsroom in the country, just to remind us that it was true.

Predictably, politicians responded to all this with a determination to give us nothing that might aid in the hunt to expose them, even if it meant obscuring the convictions and contradictions that made them actual human beings. Each side retreated to its respective camp, where they strategized about how to outwit and outflank the other, occasionally to their own benefit but rarely to the voters’. Maybe this made our media a sharper guardian of the public interest against liars and hypocrites. But it also made it hard for any thoughtful politician to offer arguments that might be considered nuanced or controversial. It drove a lot of potential candidates with complex ideas away from the process, and it made it easier for a lot of candidates who knew nothing about policy to breeze into national office, because there was no expectation that a candidate was going to say anything of substance anyway.

Gary Hart, meanwhile, has continued to try to influence the issues of the day. Now a robust 77, he has written 15 books since 1987, including three novels, and now serves on voluntary commissions for the secretaries of state and defense. But he never said much publicly about the scandal or admitted to having an affair, and he never really recovered, politically or emotionally.

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Hart might as well have been suggesting that Martians beam down and run his campaign, for all the chance he thought there was that any reporter would actually resort to stalking him.

A few years ago, during one of our many conversations in the upstairs, book-lined study in Hart’s Colorado home, I asked him whether he ever felt a sense of relief at having not actually become president. This was what people said still — that he allowed himself to be caught because he was ambivalent about the job.

“It was a huge disappointment,” Hart said, shaking his head. “A huge disappointment.”

Lee Hart, to whom he has now been married for more than a half century, had entered the study and was refilling our water glasses, and she overheard him.

“That’s why he accepts every invitation where someone wants him to speak,” she told me. “Every time he can make any kind of a contribution, he does it, because he thinks he’s salving his conscience. Or salving his place after death or something.” She appeared to try to stop herself from continuing, but couldn’t quite do it. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s been very difficult.”

“Is that why I give speeches?” Hart said defensively.

“No, no,” Lee answered quickly. “But you do things when you’re tired to the bone that you shouldn’t be doing.”

I asked Hart what it was he might have to feel guilty about. It seemed we were veering close to the boundary beyond which he had always refused to travel.

“I don’t feel guilty,” he said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with salving my conscience.”

“No, I don’t mean your conscience,” Lee said.

I asked Lee what she had meant to say.

“Gary feels guilty,” Lee said finally. “Because he feels like he could have been a very good president.”

“I wouldn’t call it guilt,” Hart said.

“No. Well.”

“It’s not guilt, babe,” he protested. “It’s a sense of obligation.”

“Yeah, O.K.,” Lee said, sounding relieved. “That’s better. Perfect.”

“You don’t have to be president to care about what you care about,” Hart said.

“It’s what he could have done for this country that I think bothers him to this very day,” Lee said.

“Well, at the very least, George W. Bush wouldn’t have been president,” Hart said ruefully. This sounded a little narcissistic, but it was, in fact, a hard premise to refute. Had Hart bested George H. W. Bush in 1988, as he was well on his way to doing, it’s difficult to imagine that Bush’s aimless eldest son would have somehow ascended from nowhere to become governor of Texas and then president within 12 years’ time.

“And we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq,” Hart went on. “And a lot of people would be alive who are dead.” A brief silence surrounded us. Hart sighed loudly, as if literally deflating. “You have to live with that, you know?”

Matt Bai is the national political columnist for Yahoo News and the author of the coming book “All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid.”

Editor: Ilena Silverman

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page MM37 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Legend of the Fall. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Gary Hart, the Elusive Front-Runner

By E. J. DIONNE Jr.SEPT. 18, 2014

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This article appeared in print on May 3, 1987, and is revisited in Matt Bai’s cover story in the September 21, 2014, issue of the magazine.

“Please,” said the frustrated politician on the other side of the Formica breakfast table in a New Hampshire hotel, “keep your mind open to the possibility that I’m not weird.”

Gary Warren Hart was doing something he doesn’t like to do: he was talking about himself, his childhood, his parents, his religious beliefs, his marriage.

It was an infuriating experience for Hart, the leading Democratic Presidential candidate, because his psyche has been probed more often and more deeply than that of any other contender. He has sat for interview after interview in which the questions focused not on arms control or economics — subjects he knows much about — but on who he is really. He has been forced to reveal more about himself in the last four years than most politicians do in a lifetime. Yet many in politics and the press still insist that they don’t know him.

And so this self-controlled man will sometimes explode when those he perceives as dime-store Freuds try to get at his deepest motivations, his darkest secrets. A week after the New Hampshire interview, the candidate was in a small plane flying from Austin to Denver, where he lives. He had just answered a few questions about his transition from a boy who would be a minister in the conservative Church of the Nazarene to a man who would be a Democratic politician. “I’m going to answer about three more of these, and then I’m not going to answer any more,” he said, his blue eyes at once fierce and cool. “I was 13 at the time. It’s nonsense. Who cares what Ronald Reagan was thinking when he was 13? Or Joe Biden?”

There was nothing at all odd about his struggle with his pietistic Nazarene upbringing, he insisted. “My struggle was with the institution. Thomas Jefferson had that struggle and so have half or more of the thoughtful people in the world. It is not unique to me. And is it something that plagues me today? No. I am very normal and very healthy.”

Then he laughed, as he often does at the ironies of politics. He imagined what his words would look like in print and realized that in the public search for the private man, everything Gary Hart says about Gary Hart could be used against him. “I can see this: ‘Hart insists that he is very normal. In a wide-ranging and lengthy interview, Hart insists that he is not weird.’ ”

Hart is without question one of the most intelligent figures of contemporary American politics. In just 12 years, from 1972 to 1984, he went from being George McGovern’s campaign manager to a Presidential candidate who challenged almost everyone’s political calculations. He nearly took the Democratic nomination away from Walter F. Mondale, the man whom all the smart folks said could not be touched in his party.

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‘I can see this: “Hart insists that he is very normal. In a wide-ranging and lengthy interview, Hart insists that he is not weird.’ ”

Moreover, Hart saw sooner than most that the time had come to change generations in American politics and to update the Democratic Party’s message. As early as 1973, he was speaking of “the end of the New Deal,” of the need for an activist but less intrusive Government. Compassion did not mean bureaucracy, he said. And in a phrase that offended some older Democrats but made the point, he insisted in 1974 that he and the new generation of Democrats were not just “a bunch of little Hubert Humphreys.”

Now, Hart, who announced his candidacy on April 13, is way ahead in the polls for the 1988 nomination, and every Democrat seems to have listened to him. Other contenders are sounding so many of Hart’s 1984 themes that quite a few politicians have described the ’88 race as one among different versions of Gary Hart. Indeed, the new Democratic conventional wisdom often seems to have been built from planks in the ’84 Hart platform. These include increased spending for education, coupled with greater demands on teachers; “military reform,” words that have come to mean being both tough and prudent on defense spending; the need to make America more competitive in the world economy; above all, a sense that it is possible for Government to attend to social needs without producing copies of New Deal and Great Society programs.

Hart wants to build on this advantage by trying to get the campaign to focus on “substance” and “issues.” Among the Democrats running for President, Hart has by far the most detailed approach to national problems. His lectures last year on foreign policy at Georgetown University were praised even by those who disagreed with them. He co-authored “America Can Win,” on military reform. On almost every issue, from education to trade, the candidate who suffered in 1984 from the question “Where’s the beef?” now has enough of the stuff to supply Wendy’s for a decade.

But when Walter F. Mondale turned that slogan on Hart in 1984, he was referring not just to issues, but to Gary Hart himself, the man who changed his name from Hartpence and misrecorded his age. Hart’s current opponents are trying to suggest, without saying so directly, that he is lacking some deeply personal element. Indeed, no candidate suffers as much from scurrilous talk as Hart — about his relations with his wife and other women, about his own psychological makeup.

For an agonizing week after announcing his candidacy, Hart found that in Presidential politics, “character” can indeed overwhelm “substance” and “issues.” The day after he announced, he was drawn into conversations with reporters about a whispering campaign concerning his alleged womanizing, giving currency to the very rumors that infuriate him. At the end of the week, United States marshals seized the proceeds at two Hart fundraisers in Los Angeles. Hart still has $1.3 million in debts from his 1984 campaign, and an angry creditor was seeking payment. Some of Hart’s Democratic opponents couldn’t resist using the episode to make “character” the issue once again.

Thus does a candidate who is certainly capable of equalling or out-thinking his competitors on the issues find himself fighting a shadow war against himself. And everything, it seems, is once again fair game.

“Do you want a record kept of everything you’ve ever said in your life to anybody and have it thrown back at you 15 years later?” Hart asked in frustration when questioned about his 1972 statement that “I never reveal who I really am.” “My problem,” said the 1987 Gary Hart, “is that I’ve revealed too much about myself.”

And if character is the issue, then Gary Hart — who has published two novels, studied existentialist philosophy and likes little better than to discuss movies and popular culture — is fully prepared to go on the offensive.

“See, I think you’ve got the coin reversed,” he says. “I think I’m the healthy one. I think you ought to be asking all those other guys who have done nothing but hold public office and have no other sides to their personalities: Why they don’t write novels and why they don’t read Kierkegaard, why they don’t broaden themselves out?”

“Why is it,” he asks, “that somebody like me is thought the oddball?”

Ottawa, Kan., the place where Gary Hart was born as Gary Hartpence in 1936 — not, as he for a time said, 1937 — is the first stop for those who seek enlightenment on the man. The city of 11,561, about 60 miles from Kansas City, is an agricultural center that has managed to survive tough times.

If the Plaza movie theater on Main Street has the feel of “The Last Picture Show,” the analogy to that film about the life and death of small-town America is otherwise unjust. Ottawa has hung on and even managed to refurbish its downtown, which boasts a splendid Victorian public library building and even a New York-style deli. But in the process of surviving, Ottawa has lost many of its brightest sons and daughters.

Young Gary Hartpence showed few outward signs that he would be one of those to leave town and shake the world. His grades were good — ranging from 86 to 96 — and he was active in other areas, editing the school newspaper, managing the basketball team and acting in plays. He worked at Scotty’s hamburgers as a car hop for 20 cents an hour. And he would cruise Main Street, sometimes ending up at the airport were he and some friends would dance to music from the car radio.

Even then, Hart didn’t have a conventional political disposition.

“Some people in the school will just walk into a group and slap everybody on the back and call ‘em by their first name and just start talking,” said Jim McCrea, a friendly, extroverted bear of a man who is the town’s former Mayor and was a year ahead of Hart in high school. “He didn’t seem comfortable with it. He wasn’t that type.”

Hart likes to offer the image of a rambunctious childhood, but the only blot on his local record uncovered by legions of journalists was the time a friend stole a chemistry test in advance and Gary and a couple of other students memorized the answers. He now regrets doing it.

What troubles Hart most about the public inspection of his past is speculation about his mother. In fact, one of Hart’s main political problems today may be that his parents, Carl and Nina, who died in 1972, are not around to dispel the mystery that has come to surround them and their son.

Carl Hartpence was, by all accounts, including Hart’s, the less complicated parent. He held a variety of jobs and was never particularly successful, though he kept his family fed, clothed and sheltered and was well-liked in town.

“He was just one of those guys who could take anything anyone could dish out and go along with it,” said Bob Brenner, a longtime Ottawa resident and former husband of Hart’s sister.

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For an agonizing week after announcing his candidacy, Hart found that in Presidential politics, ‘character’ can indeed overwhelm ‘substance’ and ‘issues.’

One of those things was Nina’s propensity to move. The local paper, The Ottawa Herald, recently traced 16 separate addresses for Carl and Nina Hartpence while Gary was a boy. According to Hart’s uncle, Ralph Hartpence, the moves came from Nina’s ties to a real-estate dealer and her skill as a housekeeper: “They’d fix and clean it all up and sell it, see?” One day, he recalled, the family “moved over to a new house and didn’t like the situation, so they moved back the same day.” Hart says he has never given much thought to the moving.

The ongoing interest in Nina Hartpence stems from her image in some accounts as a severe, fastidious, at times sickly woman — and from her membership in the Church of the Nazarene, an offshoot of Methodism that forbids its members to smoke, drink or dance. (The church manual says practices such as dancing “tend to break down proper inhibitions and reserve between the sexes.”) Nina Hart steered her son toward the ministry, and he preached a few sermons while in high school.

Hart says his mother was “bothered by her lack of education, somewhat insecure.” But he maintains that she was capable of merriment and was, if anything, less exacting than her church.

The Church of the Nazarene was formed around the turn of the century by congregations joined in the belief that mainline Methodism was soft-pedaling the doctrine of “entire sanctification.” This miraculous experience of the Holy Spirit involves “a cleansing of the inner self and an em-powering for service,” according to a Nazarene tract. Like many Christians who were moved by their faith to social activism, Hart now lays heavy stress on Christianity’s — and John Wesley’s — advocacy of the poor and downtrodden. The words “empowerment” and “service” play central roles in his speeches to this day.

This form of social emphasis, however, came later. In Ottawa, which would reject Hart’s ultimate hero, John F. Kennedy, by nearly 3-to-1 in 1960, Republicanism was the norm and religion was about — religion. And so after graduation, it seemed natural that Gary Hartpence, future minister, would pack off to Bethany Nazarene College, near Oklahoma City, to pursue his studies and his salvation. The latter would come in an unexpected way.

Bethany Nazarene College was not the most promising place for Gary Hart to begin his quest. It was small, sectarian, and at the time unaccredited (it has since grown, won accreditation and become Southern Nazarene University). But he prospered there, learning much that he had not known, a lot of it from one man, Dr. J. Prescott Johnson.

As Johnson, Gary’s philosophy professor, tells it, he looked at the record and intellect of this promising young man and decided to introduce him to thinkers who were well outside the Nazarene purvue.

In effect, the journey with Johnson was “an opening up,” as the professor, who is now retired, puts it. It was a search for a series of truths that troubled other students at Bethany Nazarene — and some officials at the college, which Johnson eventually left. Gary Hartpence lost his first election for president of the student body, partly because he was regarded as insufficiently religious, too much a free-thinking philosopher in the Prescott Johnson mold. It was Hart’s first experience with the political costs of unorthodoxy. He ran a second time and won.

Key to Hart’s intellectual development were Plato and Soren Kierkegaard. (He is listed as Gary “Plato” Hartpence in a yearbook picture of the philosophy club, which he served as president.) Plato laid the groundwork for what later became Hart’s intensely philosophical and coolly rational approach to politics — and encouraged his disdain for the cruder manifestations of political passion. It was Plato who favored the idea of philosophers emerging into the sunshine of enlightenment and then “returning to the cave” of messy, worldly politics to provide thoughtful leadership to others.

Prescott Johnson said recently that he saw the Platonic obligation to “go back into the cave” as a clue to Gary Hart’s current approach to politics. “I think he senses that he’s more at home in the intellectual arena than he is in the manipulative political context,” Johnson said. “And that creates, I think, a suffering that he has to undergo. . . . Being a politician is not his innate disposition.”

When questioned about “returning to the cave,” Hart dissolved into laughter and said he wouldn’t dare discuss the matter. “The cave!” he exclaimed. “Let’s don’t start that. That ain’t going to play in Iowa.”

But earlier, in New Hampshire, he had spoken of how Plato’s mistrust of passion had impressed him. “There are those in politics who substitute emotion and passion for substance, content and what I would generally call governance,” he said. “Who, because they don’t know where the country ought to be going or how to get there, rely more heavily on their ability to stir up people’s emotions.”

But, Hart added, this doesn’t mean that people like him “don’t have deep feelings. It’s that we probably distrust those who only have deep feelings.”

Johnson offered Gary Hartpence a formidable intellectual challenge in the writings of Kierkegaard, one of the forefathers of existentialism who emphasized the solitary individual standing before God and the need to question easy rationalizations for faith. For someone who takes Kierkegaard seriously — and Hart was rereading him during a recent campaign trip — grace can never again come cheap.

The result, for Hart, was a move from pietism to a highly intellectualized, existential Christianity and finally to an ethical stance that is primarily social and political. While he says he still thinks of himself as a religious person — there was a brief flap in 1984 about his friendship with a female Native American spiritualist — Hart is not a regular church-goer and he describes his present-day commitment as the pursuit of peace and justice in this world.

Eventually, Hart’s intellectual evolution had a practical impact. It led him away from the ministry toward a desire to teach philosophy. When he got to Yale, that ambition was itself transformed by John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign into a political commitment.

Most of this, of course, happened in the 1950’s, and there was nothing in Gary Hartpence’s behavior that could be seen in any way as presaging the student rebellions that were to send campuses into turmoil just a few years later. One Bethany Nazarene yearbook includes a large picture of a flat-topped, jug-eared Hartpence next to one of Oletha Ludwig, a strikingly pretty young woman who, like Gary, was included in a national student “Who’s Who” listing.

Miss Ludwig was a decidedly important person on campus. Her father had been president of the institution and was an official of the church in its Kansas City headquarters.

In an autobiographical essay, there is a striking suggestion that young Gary Hartpence knew that marriage to Oletha would be a step up in the world. “Always attracted by a challenge,” Hart wrote, “I pursued her. And her obvious disdain for me — a bumpkin — made her even more appealing.” They married two months after graduation.

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‘There are those in politics who substitute emotion and passion for substance, content and what I would generally call governance.’

At the Harts’ rustic mountain home amid the evergreens, 25 miles from Denver, Lee Hart explains that she was drawn to Gary Hartpence as her opposite — an introspective, quiet, intellectual.

Andrea, the Harts’ voluble 23-year-old daughter, pipes up: “Dad was describing to me once how he always thought when he first met you that you were from that real rich family.”

Mrs. Hart laughs. “Is that why he married me?”

“He thought you were, like, the president of the school’s daughter or something, and you were really rich and here was this poor little boy,” Andrea says.

“We probably appeared that way,” says Mrs. Hart. “We hardly were.” Both Gary and Lee Hart say their 28 years of marriage have not been easy. They have separated twice, in 1979 and in 1981, and reporters following them in 1984 often noted how distant they seemed from each other.

The reports of womanizing anger the Harts and many of their friends. Hart says his main problem has been that, unlike some other politicians, he and his wife are honest about the troubles they have had and their efforts to patch up the marriage. He says he never hid the fact that he dated during their separations — and is again suffering from his honesty.

Some of Hart’s friends also say that his love for the Hollywood life and his close friendship with the actor Warren Beatty, which began during the 1972 McGovern campaign, fuel the rumors. “Just because Gary is a friend of Warren Beatty’s,” says Lee Hart, “doesn’t mean that Gary necessarily has the reputation Warren has — which, by the way, may be overplayed also.”

Hart did not help his cause with certain comments he made in 1972, while he was McGovern’s campaign manager. “I have almost no personal life at all — I lead a completely political existence,” he told a reporter then. “If one party doesn’t share the same interests, you’ve got a problem. Let’s just say I believe in reform marriage.”

“It was a very stupid thing to say,” he now says. “Lee was living in Denver and I was living in Washington and I was unhappy because my kids were little and I didn’t see them much. I learned,” he adds. “There’s no reward for being candid. In fact, there are penalties for being candid. People say, ‘Why are politicians such conniving, calculating S.O.B’s?’ It’s because who knows what oddball thing you say is not going to come back 15 years later to be some profound insight into your character.”

“Follow me around. I don’t care,” he says firmly, about the womanizing question. “I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’d be very bored.”

Lee Hart, a warm and feisty woman, defends her husband. She says the rumors are “not worth dealing with” and that reports about the difficulties in their marriage tend to place too much blame on her husband. There were, she says, “things I would initially want to blame on Gary, but ultimately would have to realize that I was the one.” Mrs. Hart, who bore the main responsibility for raising Andrea and John, their 21-year-old son, says women of her generation “have had to realize when they get angry, oftentimes it’s because they’ve fallen into the trap of making their husband’s bed and making him lie in it.”

Still, Gary Hart seems to be a man, in the words of a campaign aide, who “likes to court danger.” And more than most people, he seems to have contemplated the contradictory drives of human nature.

Earlier, aboard the plane to Denver, Gary Hart had mused about Dostoyevsky, another of the major influences on his world view. He said that one of the lessons of “The Brothers Karamazov” is the conflict between “the Apollonian and the Dionysian,” between “the spiritual-and-moral versus the physical-and-emotional.”

Are people torn between the two sets of impulses? “Most thoughtful people are,” he replied.

And how did he decide whether to put one or the other aside?

He grinned. “Good try,” he said. He wouldn’t touch the question.

Gary Hart believes that one reason he is seen as “different” is that he has made a shift few in public life have made: from campaign manager to Senator, in two years, and then to Presidential candidate.

To manage the 1972 McGovern campaign was to preside over an enormously successful primary effort that upset all predictions — and then be at the helm of a general-election disaster. Hart insists that he is not a “McGovernite,” as the term has come to be used to attack left-wing Democrats, and that McGovern probably was not a McGovernite either. He says he was attracted to McGovern because of the candidate’s opposition to the Vietnam War — and because he had stood in at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 for the forces loyal to the slain Robert F. Kennedy.

If there is a single subject on which Gary Hart is, well, passionate, it is the Kennedys. It was John Kennedy’s 1960 campaign that inspired him to a vocation in “public service,” as he always puts it. John Kennedy made politics legitimate, and Hart’s excitement over the campaign prompted him to go to Yale Law School after he finished Yale Divinity School. When the talk turns to Robert F. Kennedy, Hart, the political outsider, lights up.

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‘People say, “Why are politicians such conniving, calculating S.O.B’s?” It’s because who knows what oddball thing you say is not going to come back 15 years later to be some profound insight into your character.’

“How is it that a former Attorney General of the United States, son of one of the most wealthy and powerful men in America, brother of a President of the United States, got to be the symbol of the outsider?” he asks. “How did that happen? When he had built a reputation of being ‘arrogant, powerful’?”

“His brother’s death tilted the equation,” Hart goes on, sounding a bit like the preacher his mother wanted him to be. “I think Robert Kennedy realized that you can have all the wealth in the world, you can reach the office, you can seek to achieve social acceptability, prominence and all the rest, and it doesn’t save you.” This language, which has echoes of St. Paul’s letters, is not surprising from a man who also uses Pauline language to describe his relationship to his profession: “In politics but not of it.”

That is the way some of his former Senate colleagues see him: as the man who would sometimes leave the floor and watch the debate from the galleries.

Some of his former colleagues, including Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, dismiss as “preposterous” the idea that he was an outsider with few friends in the Senate. Moynihan speaks admiringly of Hart’s intelligence and of his courage in opposing the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget-balancing act as constitutionally questionable and an abrogation of Congressional responsibility.

But other Senators worry about Hart’s distance from the system, and he expects few endorsements from his former colleagues. One Democratic Senator, who respects Hart, wondered recently why it was that a group of his colleagues tried so hard to promote the Presidential candidacy of Senator Dale Bumpers, an Arkansas Democrat who declined to run. To this Senator, who asked not to be named, the Bumpers boomlet was in part a reflection of the unease over Gary Hart.

Hart, who decided to avoid an expensive and bruising battle for re-election by retiring from the Senate in 1986, provides a precedent for his lack of support among his colleagues: his hero, John F. Kennedy.

In “The Double Man,” the novel Hart co-authored with Senator William S. Cohen, a Maine Republican, the hero is described as “simply not interested enough in being a legislator.”

“He felt superior,” the passage continues. “Hell, he was superior.” The character, it turns out, wanted “more than anything else — to be President.”

Asked about the passage, Hart grins. “Cohen wrote that.”

Gary Hart is in his element: A beautiful old New England home in the New Hampshire factory town of Franklin. He has just answered a series of tough questions on issues — arms control, his real passion; nuclear power; the economy. It is a small group and he looks very comfortable.

Finally, Eugene Daniell Jr., the 82-year-old former Mayor and doyen of Franklin politics, speaks up. Hart, he says, is vastly better than in 1984, a much improved, more impressive version of himself. The partisan crowd laughs and cheers, though Hart can’t resist saying that he thinks he was pretty good in 1984.

Those who follow Hart see a man far more at ease with himself than he was four years ago. Always comfortable and even charming in private conversation and small groups, he now seems more willing to share himself with a wider audience. With old friends William P. Dixon and William Shore and veteran liberal organizer Paul Tully playing leading roles in his campaign, he seems ready to delegate authority and prevent the fearsome internecine battles that may have fatally crippled his 1984 effort.

His homecoming last month to his native Ottawa, where he came close to tears while talking about his parents, was a symbol of the change that has occured in the public Gary Hart, representing the sort of thing he could not have abided in 1984.

Yet the Ottawa trip, designed to demystify his childhood, seemed only to spur even more curiosity about the man. All the facts about his life, even the ordinary ones, become part of a great mystery. They all feed the legend of the man who reinvented himself, emptied himself out; the religious, small-town boy who changed his name while at Yale and now hangs out in Hollywood with Warren Beatty.

Gary Hart faces one of the most unusual dilemmas ever presented a Presidential candidate. He must prove that he is extraordinary enough — indeed, “different” enough — to bear the burdens of the Presidency. Yet he must also prove that he is really quite ordinary, not so different from the people he would lead. This is a game that is very hard to win. He is required to engage in forms of self-revelation not demanded of other candidates. Yet the very process of self-revelation makes him stand out.

Prescott Johnson, Hart’s college mentor, expresses the paradox well. He thinks his former student has “the possibility of greatness” precisely because he has successfully synthesized so many unusual experiences and ideas. But Johnson worries that others might not see things as he does. “People are suspicious of somebody who really does stand out,” he says. “They’re afraid of him. Somebody who dares to claim that he has inner resources as an individual and has thought things through — sometimes that does not, except in moments of extreme crisis, go down well with a lot of people.”

Hart, says Johnson, had a feeling “of not being established or accepted, a feeling of difference, that you’re not one of us.”

“In the Nazarene Church,” he goes on, “you get this whole business about we’re strangers and pilgrims in this land. We’re not of the world.” Then Johnson laughs. “But I don’t know. I shouldn’t psychoanalyze Gary,” he says. “He’ll kill me.”

When Gary Hart is read Prescott Johnson’s final three words, his stern response is: “He’s right.” He has never felt like a stranger in this world, he says. Then Hart himself laughs, knowing that having everyone analyze you is one of the prices of being Gary Hart.

Still, he insists, the search for a hidden Gary Hart will always prove fruitless. “You’re looking for something that doesn’t exist,” he says. “You’re looking for a level to me that probably is not there.”

E. J. Dionne Jr. was the chief national political correspondent of The Times.

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U.S. |NYT Now

In Death, Florida Family Reveals a Spiral of Domestic Abuse

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and FRANCES ROBLESSEPT. 19, 2014

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The police said Don Spirit, right, killed his daughter, Sarah; her children; and himself.

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BELL, Fla. — Sarah L. Spirit was 22 years old and eight months pregnant with her fourth child when she called the police in desperation: Her father was violent, she was afraid of him, and she had nowhere to go.

“He pushed me against the refrigerator really hard then closed his hands really hard on my face and caused me pain,” she wrote in the summer of 2008, when she went to a Gilchrist County Court to seek a domestic violence injunction against her father, Don C. Spirit. “I am very scared of him. I know what he is capable of.”

Ms. Spirit wrote that her father threatened to make her life “hell” if she called the authorities. She did go to the police. Although she did not follow up on her request for a restraining order, online court records show he was later sentenced to six months in jail on a battery charge that arose that same week.

On Thursday, the police said Mr. Spirit killed his daughter, now 28; her six children; and then himself, making the case the seventh domestic-related multiple homicide in Florida this year. The victims include Kaleb Kuhlmann, 11; Kylie Kuhlmann, 9; Johnathon Kuhlmann, 8; Destiny Stewart, 5; Brandon Stewart, 4; and Alanna Stewart, who was born in June.

The Spirits lived together in a cycle of extreme poverty, drug addiction and domestic violence in Bell, a tiny town west of Gainesville where peanuts are grown and dairy cows roam the fields.

The Spirit family’s story shows how a downward spiral of drug use, debt and repeated arrests can sometimes result in extreme violence, despite interventions by the authorities. Repeated interactions with the Florida Department of Children and Families did not save the children, even though court records show social workers sent the parole authorities to the Spirit home just a month ago. It is also a reminder that amid the recent focus on domestic violence, it is not just spouses and boyfriends who can be assailants.

The agency would not say why the children were still in the home, despite court records showing that it knew that Ms. Spirit and her boyfriend, James Stewart, had smoked synthetic marijuana in front of their children while both were on probation. The agency said Friday that a Critical Incident Rapid Response Team would assess the agency’s “interactions and interventions” with the family before the killings.

A close friend of Ms. Spirit, who lives in Bell and spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared reprisals in her tight-knit community, said Ms. Spirit had a good heart but was always struggling to support her family and keep it together. “Her life was a mess,” the friend said. “She had no job. She couldn’t work with all them kids. Every time I turned around, something bad was happening to her.”

Ms. Spirit was 15 when her father, an ex-convict, accidentally shot and killed her brother Kyle during a hunting trip. Mr. Spirit was not supposed to be in possession of a firearm, and for that he was sentenced to three years in prison, records show.

At 17, Ms. Spirit was pregnant with her first child. By the time her father was released from prison, Ms. Spirit had two more children and was taking care of a little brother as well, her parents’ divorce records show.

In the years that followed, Ms. Spirit was in and out of court. She was arrested on charges of theft, battery and illegal drug use, and sought child support payments from the fathers of her children. One of those arrests was after a fight with an 18-year-old girl.

Ms. Spirit was also convicted of grand theft this year, after she stole $400 from the wallet of an acquaintance she visited in 2013.

She had been living in a dilapidated shack on the property of her boyfriend’s family. The boyfriend, Mr. Stewart, also ran afoul of the law. He was arrested on charges of battery and dealing in stolen property and is in jail.

Ms. Spirit lived hand to mouth on government assistance, her friend said. The children were often dirty and unfed, and at one point they were removed from her custody.

A couple of weeks ago, Ms. Spirit knocked on her friend’s front door, asking for diapers for the newborn and food for the other children. With her brother Joshua and both the fathers of her children behind bars, Ms. Spirit, who had epilepsy, was so down on her luck that she felt she had no choice but to return to live with her father, the friend said.

Their relationship was clearly strained. Court records show Mr. Spirit took his daughter to court three years ago, accusing her of collecting support payments for one of her children, Johnathon, even though he had been living with Mr. Spirit. Mr. Spirit said the money belonged to him.

A judge ordered Ms. Spirit to pay her father $6,578 in back payments. She was supposed to be paying him $100 a month.

Residents said Mr. Spirit disliked his grandchildren and called them names in public, The Gainesville Sun reported.

“You see how small this town is; we all knew he didn’t like those kids,” the newspaper quoted Kim Berry, a Bell resident, as saying. “We’re shocked it came to this.”

The investigators said they knew of no motives.

“As far as I know, there was no motive related to anybody,” Lt. Jeff Manning of the Gilchrist County Sheriff’s Department said at a news conference Friday morning. “I don’t know how you get clear signs that something like this could happen.”

He choked up and paused. “It’s a difficult scene to try to fathom why somebody did what they did,” he said.

What is known about Mr. Spirit indicates a troubled life that deteriorated even further after the death of his son Kyle. “I may not have lived the best life,” he said in 2001 after killing his son on the hunting trip, The St. Petersburg Times reported then.

Mr. Spirit’s divorce records show that when he was released from prison, he planned to take custody of his surviving son, Joshua. He argued with his former wife over possessions such as a Jet Ski and a camper, and in letters to her, he clearly saw himself as the better parent.

The relationship had not always been so fractious. His former wife, Christine Jeffers, had urged the court to be lenient on him in the shooting death of Kyle, saying that Mr. Spirit had not recovered from his death.

“The loss of our son has really taken a toll on him, and he blames himself every day,” she wrote in a letter to the judge, according to The Gainesville Sun.

“He has punished himself more than the court system ever could punish him.” she wrote. “Since our son’s death, my husband has been severely depressed. The doctors have not found a medication yet to help him. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t catch him crying.”

But court records show that even before his son’s death, Mr. Spirit had a criminal record. In cases dating back to 1990, he had been convicted of drug possession, battery and “depriving a child of food and shelter.”

Bill Shaffer, a neighbor, said Mr. Spirit had a strange quality. Mr. Shaffer said he once gave Mr. Spirit a ride, but his neighbor scarcely said a word and never even said thank you.

Police would not reveal any details about the crime scene. Other family members were unavailable for comment.

Robert Rankin, superintendent of Gilchrist County schools, said there were no indications of any problems with Ms. Spirit’s children. Three attended Bell Elementary School, one in second grade, one in third and one in fifth.

Mr. Shaffer said Bell, population 453, is a “nice, quiet” agricultural community, the kind of place where if someone’s house burns down, people set up a donation box right away to help. There are few jobs, though. Most of the good ones involve hauling rocks, sand and logs.

Mr. Spirit was often seen in the neighborhood riding his bicycle.

Another neighbor, Mark Hall, said he knew the Spirits only through his own fifth-grade son. Kaleb, he said, had gotten into fights in school, and Mr. Hall said he was concerned that he was bullying his son.

“My son tried to befriend him, but I had to tell him to stop being friends with him,” Mr. Hall said. “I didn’t want him to get dragged into that lifestyle.”

Bell, he said, is “very country. People know your good news and your bad news.”

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting from St. Petersburg, Fla.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: In Death, Florida Family Reveals a Sad Spiral of Domestic Violence. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Magazine |NYT Now

Derek Jeter, a Yankee Before the Pinstripes

Text by JON KELLYSEPT. 19, 2014

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Jeter in 1993, during his first spring-training camp.

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One summer morning in 1991, Dick Groch was driving to a baseball game in Battle Creek, Mich., when he made an unplanned detour to a high-school field in Mount Morris, somewhere between the state’s thumb and forefinger. Groch, a scout who covered the Midwest for the New York Yankees, decided he’d stop by a “talent identification” camp there. He didn’t expect to see anything special; the event, he figured, was just a way for some local coach to make a little extra money. Besides, the Yankees were considering Jeffrey Hammonds, an outfielder from Stanford, and Jim Pittsley, a hard-throwing right-hander, as possible picks in the next draft. But Groch thought, why not break up the day?

At the high school, a coach was conducting infield drills when he fungoed a ball into the hole between third and short. It looked as if it was going to dribble through to left field, when a wispy shortstop sprinted to his right, backhanded it, leapt into the air and, while leaning backward, contorted his body into a single, fluid throwing motion that culminated with the ball’s whistling into the first baseman’s mitt. “I said, ‘My God, that’s a major-league play,’ ” Groch recalled recently.

Baseball players are perennially judged against the so-called five tools of the game — fielding aptitude, arm strength, speed and the ability to hit for average and for power. Those with a surplus of talent in any of these areas are, in the vocabulary of scouts, said to have a “plus” arm or bat. “Within less than a 45-minute period,” Groch told me, “I saw someone flash three plus plus tools.”

In his subsequent evaluation for the team, Groch described this 159-pound high-school junior named Derek Jeter as a five-tool prospect. He also noted a sixth attribute: Jeter was “a Yankee.” This wasn’t intended as a brown-nosing observation. There was a sang-froid about the young man, Groch thought — an attitude that would be valuable in New York, because in those days, the Yankees were a mess. The team had not made the playoffs in more than a decade; during one five-year span, its roster of managers went like this: Billy Martin, Yogi Berra, Billy Martin, Lou Piniella, Billy Martin, Lou Piniella. At one point, the team’s owner, George Steinbrenner, paid a gambler $40,000 to spy on his best player, Dave Winfield. The environment, in other words, put a premium on having a thick skin. As Groch put it, “You’re playing in the toughest venue, you have to have an emotional constitution.” Jeter was good, but perhaps just as important, he didn’t seem like the wilting type.

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Document

Notes on a Shortstop

A scout’s musings on the teenage Derek Jeter — provided by The New York Yankees, from Steiner Sports — notes his “active feet” and “long lean sinewy body.”

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That self-possession never wavered. In 1993, the fine-art photographer Andrea Modica visited the Yankees’ spring-training camp in Tampa for her project on young ballplayers. She was working with an 8-by-10 camera, which required a collaboration between artist and subject: each sitting lasted for about 15 minutes, a pretty long time to hold any expression. Modica was captivated by the anxieties in her young and athletic subjects, particularly the minor leaguers hoping to make the team for the first time. “But Derek didn’t have that tension,” she says. “He was elegant.” Modica’s photograph of the 18-year-old — note the early-’90s fade! — did not make it into her book and exhibition. It has never been published until now.

Over the 19 seasons he has played in the major leagues since this picture was taken, Jeter, who will retire this fall, has led the Yankees to 16 postseason appearances and five World Series titles. He has hit better than .400 in 10 different playoff series and is the all-time playoff leader in singles and doubles and is tied for the lead in triples (he is third in home runs and fourth in R.B.I.). Even if he was never the best player in the league during any given year — he never won an M.V.P. award, like the shortstops Alex Rodriguez, Miguel Tejada and Cal Ripken Jr. — he was almost certainly the best shortstop of his generation. His prime lasted until his late 30s, and he played his entire career at the game’s most difficult position, after catcher. His ultimate plus tool might have been the surreal equilibrium on display from the start.

Scouting is an inexact science, especially when its subjects are teenagers. The Yankees’ top pick the year before they drafted Jeter was a pitcher named Brien Taylor, a can’t-miss phenom — who got in a bar fight and never pitched in the majors. In the end, though, Groch got this one right. The five players drafted before Jeter (including Jeffrey Hammonds) made a combined total of two All-Star appearances. Jim Pittsley played 81 games in the majors. “The report I wrote,” Groch said, “it’s exactly what he became.”

Andrea Modica is an associate professor of photography at Drexel University. Her work is in many collections, including the Museum of Modern Art.

Editor: Dean Robinson

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page MM43 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Boy of Summer. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Magazine

Notes on a Shortstop

A scout’s musings on the teenage Derek Jeter notes his “active feet” and “long lean sinewy body.” SEPT. 19, 2014 Related Article

The New York Yankees, from Steiner Sports

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Pope Sets Tone in U.S. by Naming Inclusive Prelate as Chicago Archbishop

By LAURIE GOODSTEINSEPT. 20, 2014

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Bishop Blase J. Cupich, left, will succeed the conservative Cardinal Francis George, who is ill with cancer, as archbishop of Chicago on Nov. 18.

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In his first major appointment in the United States, Pope Francis named Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Spokane, Wash., on Saturday to be the next archbishop of Chicago, replacing a combative conservative with a prelate whose pastoral approach to upholding church doctrine is more in keeping with the pope’s inclusive tone.

Bishop Cupich, 65, will be installed on Nov. 18 as the ninth archbishop of Chicago, succeeding Cardinal Francis George, 77, who is ill with cancer. Two years ago, at 75, Cardinal George offered his resignation, as is the church tradition at that age.

Pope Francis’ choice of prelate for Chicago was highly anticipated as a sign of the direction he intends to set for the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. Chicago is the nation’s third-largest Roman Catholic diocese, with 2.3 million members, and its archbishops have often taken leading roles in the American hierarchy.

Bishop Cupich appeared at ease in a news conference on Saturday morning in Chicago, deftly handling questions about whether he would call himself a “moderate” and what message Francis may be trying to send with the selection.

“His priority is not to send a message but a bishop, and that’s what he’s sending you, someone to serve the needs of people,” Bishop Cupich said. “I think he sent a pastor, not a messenger.”

Very early into his prepared remarks he shifted into Spanish, the language of a growing percentage of Chicago’s Catholics, saying they should think of him as “your brother” and relating that his relatives were immigrants. He gave a strong push, in English, for immigration reform, saying, “It’s time for political leaders to put aside their own agendas and to take up this issue.”

Bishop Cupich (pronounced SOO-pitch) has been chairman of the bishops’ committee responding to the sexual abuse crisis, and has at times been unusually forthright in criticizing the church’s record on abuse. He took over the Spokane Diocese in 2010 after it was sued by abuse victims and declared bankruptcy, and it is still embroiled in a legal case over how the bankruptcy was handled.

He spoke out against a referendum on same-sex marriage in Washington State in 2012. But even before Francis became pope, Bishop Cupich and he sounded much alike. Bishop Cupich emphasized care for the poor and dispossessed, and on hot-button moral issues he employed a tone that emphasized respect and dignity for gays and dialogue with those who disagreed with church teaching.

In a pastoral letter before the vote on same-sex marriage, Bishop Cupich wrote that “the Catholic Church has no tolerance for the misuse of this moment to incite hostility towards homosexual persons or promote an agenda that is hateful and disrespectful of their human dignity.”

Some liberal Catholic commentators and groups, like Call to Action, which is based in Chicago, praised the appointment, while some conservatives were a bit wary. They recalled an experience in 2011 when priests and seminarians said Bishop Cupich had urged them not to join protesters planning to hold prayer vigils outside clinics that perform abortions.

In a brief interview on Saturday immediately after the news conference, Bishop Cupich was asked whether his approach to ministry is to emphasize dialogue over confrontation. He said the church should be willing to confront social issues head-on, but also to listen to opponents.

“I’ve learned from people on both sides of any issue,” he said. “So both are needed: dialogue and, I think, confrontation at times. I’m not afraid of that.”

The Rev. John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement, “Having first met Bishop Blase Cupich when I was an 18-year-old backpacker in Europe and he was a seminarian in Rome, I can say with confidence that, as archbishop of Chicago, he will be a pastorally dedicated, theologically astute and visionary leader in line with Francis’ transformative papacy.”

Cardinal George, who has served in Chicago since 1997, led the American bishops’ conference in confrontations with the Obama administration over abortion, same-sex marriage and religious liberty. His immediate predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, a prominent liberal, was also elected president of the American bishops’ conference and galvanized a generation of church leaders to take stands on such issues as economic justice, nuclear weapons and the environment.

As the bishops were gearing up to sue the Obama administration over the contraception mandate in the health care overhaul, Bishop Cupich called for a “return to civility” in an essay he wrote in the Jesuit magazine America.

He wrote that “outrage” over the mandate was “understandable,” and that religious freedom truly was at risk, but warned against letting the situation escalate lest it “bring lasting harm to both the church and the nation, and even worse, disproportionately affect the least among us.”

Blase (pronounced BLAZE) Joseph Cupich was born in Omaha on March 19, 1949, one of nine children and a grandson of Croatian immigrants.

He has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, studied in Rome and holds a doctorate in sacred theology from The Catholic University of America in Washington.

He was ordained to the priesthood in 1975 for the Archdiocese of Omaha and worked in parishes and a Catholic high school in Omaha; served as rector of a Catholic college in Columbus, Ohio; and in 1998 was made bishop of Rapid City, S.D., by Pope John Paul II.

After 12 years, Pope Benedict appointed him bishop of the Diocese of Spokane, and he was installed on Sept. 3, 2010.

Bishop Cupich said in the news conference that he was “overwhelmed and very surprised” when he learned of the appointment during a phone call about 10 days ago from the pope’s ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Bishop Cupich told reporters that the populous Chicago Archdiocese was an “enormous upgrade, so to speak,” from Spokane, which has about 100,000 Catholics.

He said the Spokane Diocese bankruptcy, which was initiated by his predecessor, had left “some issues that need to be resolved.” The diocese has filed a malpractice suit against the law firm that handled the bankruptcy, accusing the firm of failing to use a strategy that would have prevented more sexual abuse claims from being filed. So far, about 230 claims have been filed, according to The Spokesman-Review newspaper.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said it had been disappointed by Bishop Cupich’s record on sexual abuse in Spokane and his role as chairman of the bishops’ committee on child protection.

In an interview with The New York Times in June, Bishop Cupich said he had been reading Francis’ writings on redistribution of wealth, collaborative leadership and leading by listening.

“I’ve always believed in collaboration and consultation, but I guess I’m listening more intently to the voices of people who might not have had the kind of hearing that they should have — people of diverse backgrounds, people with differing opinions,” Bishop Cupich said.

His lifestyle is in keeping with the frugal example that Francis has been setting for bishops. Bishop Cupich said that in Spokane he lives in a room at the seminary and does not own any furniture.

At the news conference on Saturday, Cardinal George, who is undergoing an experimental cancer treatment and is a survivor of polio, expressed confidence in his successor and “relief” that Francis is allowing him to step down.

But the famously intellectual cardinal also shared his mixed feelings. “At one moment you’re the center of everything, and at the next moment,” he said, “you’re not.”

Mitch Smith contributed reporting from Chicago.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Pope Sets Tone in U.S. by Naming Inclusive Prelate as Chicago Archbishop. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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U.S. |NYT Now

U.S. Bishops Seek to Match Vatican in Shifting Tone

By MICHAEL PAULSONJUNE 12, 2014

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Catholic Bishops chatted during a coffee break at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on Thursday in New Orleans.

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NEW ORLEANS — They are rethinking what kinds of houses they live in, and what kinds of cars they drive. They are wondering whether, in anticipation of the 2016 presidential election, they need to rewrite their advice to parishioners to make sure that poverty, and not just abortion, is discussed as a high-priority issue. And they are trying to get better about returning phone calls, reaching out to the disenchanted and the disenfranchised, and showing up at events.

Fifteen months into the pontificate of Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States find themselves unsettled in ways large and small, revisiting both how they live and what they talk about in light of the new pope’s emphasis on personal humility and economic justice.

Over the last several days as the bishops gathered here for their semiannual meeting, they grappled with the substantive and stylistic implications of a still-new papacy.

After several of their colleagues faced recent criticism for lavish houses, several bishops said in interviews that they were paying new attention to their own spending, mindful of the pope’s decision to eschew the apostolic palace for a small suite in a Vatican guesthouse, and aware that their parishioners are concerned about how the church uses its money.

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From left, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Houston; Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky.; and Msgr. Ronny Jenkins.

“They have a justifiable demand that we not spend extravagantly on ourselves, but that we share those goods with others, and he’s really forced that issue,” said Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Spokane, Wash. Bishop Cupich noted that he owns no furniture and lives in a room at a seminary, and he said he is re-evaluating his diocesan budget to make sure it emphasizes assisting the poor.

Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson said he, too, thinks about Francis as he shapes his agenda, which, he said, now focuses on poverty, homelessness, addiction, violence and immigration. And, he said, he is mindful of his own spending.

“We have to have a home, have to have a car that’s not going to fall apart in the middle of the desert, but within reason we have to live simply,” he said. “The Holy Father is such a model of trying to live with simplicity, and that is working its way into the lives of bishops.”

Spending was clearly on the minds of the church’s leaders, some of whom live in grand homes and preach in landmark churches built decades ago as testaments to Catholicism’s acceptance and success after a period of discrimination in the United States. Asked a general question about the pope’s impact on bishops, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, responded with a defense of the upscale hotel where the bishops were meeting, the Hyatt Regency New Orleans.

“We have to meet at a hotel that’s big enough to hold us,” he said. “We have to meet at a hotel that’s big enough to allow media to attend.”

The shift in tone at the Vatican has been disquieting for some bishops. The archbishop of Indianapolis, Joseph W. Tobin, recently told a group of theologians, “What I’ve seen is how disruptive Pope Francis has been within the hierarchy of the United States,” according to The National Catholic Reporter. “I was talking to a couple of brother bishops a while back and they were saying that bishops and priests were very discouraged by Pope Francis because he was challenging them.”

But the bishops are clearly watching with interest. “Priests and bishops are paying close attention to what he’s saying, and reading it,” John Garvey, the president of the Catholic University of America, said in a telephone interview. Mr. Garvey said he was struck by how often church officials mentioned to him something the pope had only just said. “I don’t remember hearing that in the past about Benedict and John Paul.”

The business of the bishops’ meeting — presentations about clergy sexual abuse and assistance to victims of flooding in the Philippines, as well as about the church’s battles against same-sex marriage and in favor of religious freedom — was planned months ago.

But on Thursday morning, the bishops also spent several hours discussing poverty and the relationship between marriage and economic well-being, both topics chosen to reflect the pope’s priorities. Helen M. Alvaré, a law professor at George Mason University, told the bishops that the Francis papacy was “an inflection point in the life of the church.”

The bishops’ willingness to adapt their agenda to reflect that of Francis will most likely be tested next year, when they must decide how to update their quadrennial guide for Catholic voters. The American bishops, almost all of them appointed by Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict, are a conservative group who have emphasized opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion in recent years and have been unable to reach a consensus on economic issues. On Wednesday, they began a discussion, which will continue through next year, about whether and how to incorporate the priorities of Francis in the 2016 version of the guide, which is called “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.”

“We need to keep talking about the hot-button issues that we’ve been talking about for a long time, but not just those issues,” Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond of New Orleans said in an interview. He added, “We don’t, perhaps, at times talk enough about the poor, about the economy, and we don’t perhaps talk enough about reaching out to those with disabilities, those whose voices are not heard.”

Archbishop Aymond said he has tried to address this in one small way himself, by returning phone calls and letters, and by reminding himself, “people shouldn’t always have to go through several others to get to us.”

Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the gathering that, if the voters’ guide is not revised, “it will not include anything of the teachings of Pope Francis.” And Bishop Robert W. McElroy, an auxiliary bishop in San Francisco, suggested that the document’s discussion of evil, now focused on abortion and racism, should be revisited in light of the pope’s description of economic inequality as a social evil.

Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Houston, who has been leading the bishops’ effort to consider reworking “Faithful Citizenship,” said the document would not shy away from the abortion issue, which he called “very important, crucial, significant, one of the chief issues” and “nonnegotiable.” But, he said, to reflect Francis’ agenda, the bishops would also “want to make sure we speak very insistently about the role of poverty, about the role of the economy.”

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia is leading the bishops’ most Francis-friendly effort — to persuade the pope to visit that city next year, when a large gathering of Catholic families is planned there. Archbishop Chaput said he already had “good reasons to believe” the pope would come to the event. But just in case, the entire bishops’ conference agreed to send a letter to Francis, inviting him to attend, and, in the process, to make what would be his first trip to the United States as pope.

A version of this article appears in print on June 13, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Bishops Seek to Match Vatican in Shifting Tone. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Estate Planning |NYT Now

Parents, the Children Will Be Fine. Spend Their Inheritance Now.

SEPT. 19, 2014

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By RON LIEBER

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Once people hit retirement, they do not know how long they will live or how long their money will last. Still, the vast majority of retirees with children cling to an intention to leave something behind, even though many of those offspring have no expectation of receiving an inheritance.

This parental instinct might seem loving and generous, but there is another way to look at it. All of this devotion to the next generation may also be the height of foolishness. After a few decades of spending well into the six figures to rear and educate each child (and increasingly, years more backstopping young adults who are not quite financially independent), the parents probably ought to cease feeling this sense of obligation. Far better to spend their retirement money in the present on making meaningful memories with family members or on top-notch care that can help make aging more comfortable and graceful — in their own home if possible.

So how can we middle-aged kids convince our parents that they are officially off the hook?

First, consider the state of the generational disconnect. In an article that the journal The Gerontologist published last year, Kyungmin Kim and four colleagues took the unusual step of using polling data from both older Americans and their adult children about whether they expected to leave or receive an inheritance.

Ms. Kim, a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas, reported these results. Among the parents, ages 59 to 96, 86.2 percent expected to leave a bequest. But just 44.6 percent of the children, ages 40 to 60, thought they would get one. As for the most agonizing possible mismatch, where parents had no intention of leaving money behind but their children were expecting some, just 2.4 percent of the parent-child pairs had that disconnect.

Economists who study the motivation for inheritance intentions tend to probe two general areas. The first involves the moral obligation that parents feel toward their offspring, no matter how much support they may have given to them already. A subset of adult children seem to understand this innately. In Ms. Kim’s study, the adult children who were getting money from their aging parents while they were still alive had a higher expectation of getting more once they were dead than other adult children. Entitlement, anyone?

The other inheritance theory relates to exchanges. The assumption here is that parents wish to reward children who help them while they are still alive with an inheritance after they’ve died. They may even subtly (or not so subtly) dangle the prospect of a bequest in front of the children while they are still living to encourage the desired behavior or assistance. What Ms. Kim and her colleagues found, however, was that the adult children who were providing more support were less likely to expect an inheritance, even though their parents were indeed more likely to intend to give them one.

The message here would seem to be that aging parents are generous to a fault, if a bit manipulative on occasion. Adult children, meanwhile, accept their obligations to care for their parents with little expectation of receiving anything in return, though some who remain on the dole well into adulthood expect their parents to provide for them from the grave too.

The study’s yes-no questions, however, are relatively limiting. Many parents may be hoping to leave just a token amount, after all. Adult children might lie about their expectations to please the researchers, too. And besides, even if you expect nothing it doesn’t mean that you don’t badly want that very thing.

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For more insight on this, I turned to an academic who has recently gotten into the business of trying to get older Americans to tap into their home equity during their retirement years. Christopher Mayer is an economist at Columbia Business School with an expertise in housing finance and policy. But he’s also the chief executive at a new reverse mortgage company called Longbridge Financial.

Reverse mortgages, which allow people 62 and older to tap some of the equity in their homes without having to make any loan payments until they die or move out, are roughly half as popular as they were before the housing crisis. Plenty of bad actors persuaded elderly homeowners to take lump sum loan distributions and plow them into inappropriate annuities or other financial products. As a result, protective adult children often come with their parents to discuss reverse mortgages with the person pitching the loan.

But who exactly are they protecting? “It’s hard to have more than three or four conversations with a family before the inheritance topic comes up,” Mr. Mayer said of the children who try to talk their parents out of tapping their home equity. “There are times when they say `Mom and Dad, that could be useful money for me.’”

Hoarding home equity certainly seems prudent. After all, the money tied up in a home can be awfully useful for people who suddenly need $200 a day for in-home care or to enter a nursing facility. Having that source of capital at hand means that they won’t be a financial burden to their children or have to take their chances with Medicaid. Anything left over can go toward an inheritance.

Mr. Mayer is fighting another fact, too, which is the significant percentage of people for whom real wages have not been rising much. “You can look at the next generation and wonder whether your kids will be in a position to do much better than you did,” Mr. Mayer said. So older people scrimp and save and aim to leave some money behind to try to give the younger set a boost.

Adult children who are trying to talk their parents out of a goal like this face long odds. “When people see their time horizon shrinking, they tend to focus on goals that are emotionally meaningful as opposed to more practical ones,” said Laura L. Carstensen, a psychologist who runs the Stanford Center on Longevity. “For the most part, it’s a focus on what or who matters most, and it’s family and family.”

So noted. But in the very least, the generational disconnect in expectations around inheritance need not exist. Ms. Kim chalks this up to the age-old problem of families having trouble initiating forthright conversations about money. And given that older people tend to be more old-fashioned about this sort of thing, it’s on us kids to declare our expectations and begin persuading our parents to worry less about having much of anything left over after they’re gone.

So here it goes. Mom and Dad: I expect nothing from you going forward except love, conversation, holiday meals and grandchild babysitting. Spend your money on your health and comfort and making the kinds of memories with close friends and family members that will last even as other, older ones, fade. Leave a bit aside for me or for charity if it truly makes you happy, requires no sacrifice or makes sense for tax reasons. But otherwise, spend what you have and have faith that the education and life skills you already gave me are more than enough.

I don’t want an inheritance, nor do I expect one. If any fellow adult children agree, go tell your parents the same thing this weekend.

Make the most of your money. Every Monday get articles about retirement, saving for college, investing, new online financial services and much more. Sign up for the Your Money newsletter here.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Children Will Be Fine. Spend Their Inheritance.. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Golden Opportunities

Tapping Into Homes Can Be Pitfall for the Elderly

Erika Baker says she was steered into a loan with high fees.

By CHARLES DUHIGG

Published: March 2, 2008

Erika Baker was 67 years old, divorced and worried about her job when a saleswoman showed up at her door in late 2006.

A reverse mortgage, the saleswoman explained, would give Ms. Baker instant access to hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in the value of her home. Such a loan, typically available only to homeowners in their 60s and older, would not have to be repaid until Ms. Baker moved out, the saleswoman said.

And if she never moved, the loan would be settled by selling her house after she died. “Your Home Pays You Cash!” read a brochure the saleswoman left behind.

Ms. Baker, who lives just outside San Diego, jumped at the offer, borrowing a little more than $200,000 through a company called Senior American Funding.

Then the problems began. The saleswoman pressured her to put the proceeds of the loan into complex investments that put her money out of reach, Ms. Baker said. She received only about $33,000 in cash, far less than she needed for her final years.

“I thought this was a safe way to make sure I’d never run out of money,” Ms. Baker said. “Then everything became so confusing. No matter where I turned for help, it seemed like things got worse.”

As the United States has become an older nation, reverse mortgages have grown into a $20-billion-a-year industry, with elderly homeowners taking out more than 132,000 such loans in 2007, an increase of more than 270 percent from two years earlier. In surveys, many borrowers say reverse mortgages have improved their lives and provided money they needed for retirement.

But hundreds of people who have sought reverse mortgages — in lawsuits, surveys and conversations with elder-care advocates — have complained about high-pressure or unethical sales tactics they say steered them toward loans with very high fees. Some say they were tricked into putting proceeds of their loans into unprofitable investments, while sales agents pocketed rich commissions.

“Every scam artist is getting into this business,” said Prescott Cole, an elder-care advocate who has worked with numerous reverse mortgage borrowers. “Because reverse mortgages are so complicated and give you money up front, years can pass before a senior realizes they’ve lost everything.”

Reverse mortgage lenders and brokers dispute those accusations, noting that the loans are heavily regulated and have helped hundreds of thousands of people.

“For a lot of elderly people, their only real asset is their house,” said Peter Bell, president of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association, a trade group. “A reverse mortgage is one of the few ways someone can access wealth that’s otherwise out of reach, while still living in their house for as long as they want.”

However, some borrowers find their wealth is still out of grasp, even after they have sought a reverse mortgage.

For example, Senior American Funding, the company that sold Ms. Baker her loan, has been sued three times in the last 13 months by clients who said they were misled. (Two of those cases were settled out of court for undisclosed sums. The third, filed by Ms. Baker in California state court last month, is pending.)

The company, which is licensed in 16 states, has originated mortgages worth more than $100 million since 2004.

“We never pressure clients,” said one of the company’s founders, Matthew Copley. “We just try to make sure they know about their options.”

However, a former sales agent, Hani Shenoda, and an agent who still works at the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution, said in interviews that managers at Senior American Funding encouraged them to pressure older homeowners into unwise loans and investments. The company disputes that assertion.

On Tuesday, after being contacted by a reporter, Senior American Funding announced it would no longer sell combinations of loans and investments like the one Ms. Baker had bought.

“When we make mistakes, we address them as responsibly as we can,” Mr. Copley added.

Ms. Baker owned a home worth about $600,000 but was living paycheck to paycheck, teaching child-rearing skills to low-income mothers for about $400 a week, when she was told in 2006 that her job was ending.

Months earlier, she had received a mailing from Senior American Funding, one of the hundreds of reverse mortgage companies that have emerged in the last several years. She scheduled an appointment with a saleswoman named Laurie Spencer. (Ms. Spencer no longer works at Senior American Funding, according to the company, and could not be located.)

“This saleswoman was so friendly and personable,” Ms. Baker said. “It was like God had sent me a friend to tell me how to survive.”

In the kitchen of the home, where Ms. Baker displays watercolors of dolphins and flowers she has painted, the saleswoman recommended a loan of $218,900, with a variable interest rate initially set at 6.57 percent.

Because reverse mortgages do not require borrowers to make immediate repayments, the interest charges are added to the debt every day, and the total amount owed grows over time. The saleswoman did not explain that within 10 years, Ms. Baker’s $218,900 loan could grow to as much as $400,000, Ms. Baker said. That debt would be paid by selling the house when she moved out or died.

The saleswoman also did not emphasize the high fees, Ms. Baker said. The loan’s fees cost her $17,100 — almost 8 percent of the total loan — which was paid out of the proceeds as soon as the loan closed.

To ensure that borrowers know such details, the federal government requires them to speak to an independent adviser before closing a reverse mortgage.

“We make potential borrowers talk to a counselor to make sure they understand what they are doing,” said Renée Shadel, an investigator with the Washington state attorney general’s office. “These can be great loans for some people, but only if they understand them.”

But critics say these counseling sessions are often brief and unhelpful. Some elderly borrowers, for instance, said their sessions lasted only 10 minutes, rather than the 60 to 90 minutes most counselors say they need to explain the loans.

Critics say some sessions are so brief because reverse mortgage companies are paying for the advice. One of the largest reverse mortgage counseling companies, Money Management International, often asks lenders to pay for providing advice to the lender’s clients, according to a company spokeswoman.

Money Management International, which is a nonprofit company, received $900,000 from reverse lenders last year. By regulation, counselors may not charge clients, though they are allowed to seek support from lenders.

“Anytime anyone gives a counselor a donation, they expect a quid pro quo,” said Buz Zeman, a reverse mortgage counselor with Housing Options Provided for the Elderly, a nonprofit group financed by government grants. “The point of counseling is to make people consider other options. That’s difficult if you feel like your next paycheck relies on convincing someone to get the loan.”

A spokeswoman for Money Management International says it seeks payments from lenders because government grants do not cover costs. The group’s counselors educate clients only about how loans work and do not recommend whether to proceed, she said, adding that the average time a counselor spends with a client is 58 minutes.

“There is no quid pro quo relationship with lenders,” a Money Management International spokeswoman, Catherine Williams, said in an e-mail message, adding that clients receive the same advice whether a lender pays for the session or not. “Funding is not tied to the outcome of any case.”

Even when lenders do not pay for counseling, it can still prove unhelpful. Ms. Baker’s counseling session, which was provided by an agency that does not accept money from lenders, lasted only about a half hour, and she walked away from the conversation still confused, she said.

Then the saleswoman persuaded her to sign the loan forms.

After the reverse mortgage closed, Ms. Baker used the proceeds to pay off a $68,000 traditional mortgage on her home, and she put about $33,000 into various savings accounts.

The remaining $100,000 was used to purchase, at the saleswoman’s urging, two deferred annuities — complex contracts that offer monthly income in exchange for a large lump-sum payment.

Those annuities prohibited Ms. Baker from gaining access to most of her funds for seven years unless she paid a stiff penalty.

Moreover, the annuities were likely to cost her money rather than pay her. Annuities are so complex that it is impossible to forecast precisely how much Ms. Baker will receive from them. However, based on recent payout data for similar products, she will probably earn about $520 a month from her annuities for the rest of her life. Ms. Baker’s mortgage debt is increasing by about $600 a month as the interest compounds on the money she used to purchase those annuities.

If Ms. Baker collected monthly income from her annuities for 10 years, she could receive $62,400. However, the debt she would owe over that period would likely increase by $79,000 to $300,000, depending on how her loan’s interest rate changed.

“Buying an annuity with the proceeds of a reverse mortgage is incredibly dangerous,” said Mr. Cole, a critic of reverse mortgages. Indeed, the practice is so troublesome that many annuity companies and states either tightly regulate or forbid it.

The salespeople at Senior American Funding were richly rewarded for their sales: the company received about $8,750 in commissions from Ms. Baker’s annuities, and $7,200 for processing her reverse mortgage.

Last month, Ms. Baker sued Senior American Funding, accusing it of fraud and elder abuse.

Mr. Copley, the Senior American Funding co-founder, defended the company’s actions and said Ms. Baker consented to every transaction.

However, Mr. Copley conceded that Ms. Baker was given documents with inaccurate numbers and that sales agents, including him, at the time did not fully understand the products they were selling her.

“If we made mistakes, I’m sorry,” he said.

Other lenders have also been accused of pushing older homeowners into unwise deals.

A survey released last year by AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, of more than 1,500 reverse mortgage borrowers found that almost one in 10 were urged to buy other financial products, like annuities.

Lawsuits against reverse mortgage companies, including the nation’s largest, Financial Freedom Senior Funding, contend that those firms helped pressure older Americans into bad investments.

In court filings, companies have denied those claims.

“Financial Freedom is not involved in selling annuities, does not recommend annuities, and won’t even allow borrowers to use reverse mortgage proceeds to buy an annuity at closing,” said Joel Schiffman, the company’s general counsel. “We only pursue a reverse mortgage when it is in a senior’s best interest.”

Some regulators and lawmakers, however, have said that more safeguards are needed, including giving borrowers more information about alternatives to reverse mortgages, disclosing fees more clearly and providing more government money to counselors, so that they do not seek payments from lenders.

New laws governing reverse mortgages are under consideration in Congress, though lobbyists for some lenders are mounting strong opposition, Congressional staff members say.

For Ms. Baker, now 68, such safeguards would come too late. She says she wakes up in the night, terrified there will not be enough money for food, gas or anything else. To cut her grocery bill, she stopped buying meat and fresh vegetables.

“Before, at least I knew my house was safe, and that no one would take that away from me,” she said. “Now, I don’t know if there is anything I can count on.”

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Africa |NYT Now

Lockdown Begins in Sierra Leone to Battle Ebola

By ADAM NOSSITERSEPT. 19, 2014

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Sierra Leone’s Aggressive Attack on Ebola

Sierra Leone’s Aggressive Attack on Ebola

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FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — The most ambitious and aggressive government campaign against the Ebola epidemic gripping parts of West Africa began on Friday when Sierra Leone ordered everyone in the country to remain indoors for three days, suspending commerce, emptying the streets and halting this beleaguered nation in its tracks in an attempt stop the disease from spreading.

Calling the struggle against Ebola a matter of life or death, the government mustered police officers, soldiers and nearly 30,000 volunteers to go house to house, hoping to educate the country about the dangers of Ebola and identify people who might pass the disease to those around them.

“Some of the things we are asking you to do are difficult, but life is better than these difficulties,” President Ernest Bai Koroma said in an extraordinary radio address on Thursday night explaining the national lockdown.

From the start, the limits of the government campaign were evident. The warnings, mobilization and exhortations quickly clashed with the reality that cases here are surging and the infrastructure to deal with them hardly exists.

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Kroo Bay

Sierra Leone

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Freetown

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SIERRA LEONE

Freetown

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There is no large-scale treatment center for Ebola patients in the capital, Freetown, so many patients have to be placed in a holding center until they can be transported to a facility hours away — that is, if an ambulance can be found to pick them up and if those packed facilities have room.

The countrywide lockdown showed the desperation among West African governments — particularly in the three hardest-hit countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — as they grapple with an epidemic that has already killed more than 2,600 people and shows no signs of slowing down.

While governments in the region have already cordoned off large swaths of territory in hopes of containing the outbreak, none have attempted anything on the scale of what is being tried here. The government says it wants to visit every residence in this country of about 6 million, with the aim of instructing people in how to stop the disease from being transmitted and to find out who is harboring sick people, with potentially deadly consequences.

“We have been sending lifesaving messages through radio, TV and print, but it’s not enough,” said Roeland Monasch, a representative for Unicef, which supported the government effort, providing money, advice and information materials. “We need to take information to where people are.”

In the streets of the capital on Friday, one woman lay curled in a fetal position, eyes shut, precariously balanced on cardboard sheets next to an open gutter in front of locked storefronts. From a wary distance, the anti-Ebola volunteers said she had high fever. Hours of calls had produced no ambulance.

A small crowd, including the police, soldiers brandishing guns, presidential advisers and spectators taking cellphone pictures of the immobile woman, milled about. A medical worker said two more bodies in the vicinity needed attention. But still there was no ambulance.

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Kroo Bay, a densely populated area of Freetown, Sierra Leone, on Friday. The neighborhood, a perennial home of cholera outbreaks, sits in a sea of muddy lanes and open sewers in which pigs forage.

“They are not responding; they say they have lots of cases now,” said a volunteer, Alhassan Kamara.

Finally, a rickety ambulance pulled up, more than five hours after the initial calls, the volunteers said. But the loosely outfitted attendants refused to pick up the sick woman: they had no chlorine spray and said it was not their job. A loud anti-Ebola jingle played on a car radio. It took a second ambulance, and the president of a moped club who quickly suited up in protective gear, to get the sick woman bundled off to uncertain care.

On nearby streets, other volunteers were going house to house to warn people of the disease’s dangers. Normally clogged streets in the capital were empty, stores were shut down tight, and pedestrians were rare on the main thoroughfares.

The senior United Nations envoy appointed to work on the Ebola crisis, Dr. David Nabarro, said he was struck by the yawning gap between the spread of the disease and the ability to fight it. The world needed to increase the efforts on the ground many times over, he said.

That would include “the capacity to treat between 9,000 and 10,000 people within the countries at any time,” he said. “To get there, we need to get extra people and cash into the countries, obviously, but also we need fantastic organization and logistics that are second to none.”

Dr. Dan Lucey, an American who volunteered in an Ebola holding center at a Freetown hospital, described the situation as horrific. “There were not enough beds, space,” he said. “When you first see this, you say this is totally intolerable. It can’t be this bad,” he said after returning home. “It was an incredible, searing experience not like anything I’ve ever seen.”

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Graphic: What You Need to Know About the Ebola Outbreak

Without treatment units in the capital, he said, patients who tested positive for Ebola had to be driven at least four hours away. Those who tested negative could be exposed to Ebola while they waited. When Dr. Lucey volunteered, there was just one other doctor present. Patients were housed together in open wards with a plastic curtain between beds, awaiting their test results. At the foot of each bed were three buckets — one for urine, one for stool, one for vomit.

“There were body fluids everywhere,” he said. Fuel for the ambulances could be hard to come by. “It’s beyond belief until you see it day after day,” he said.

Dr. Oliver Johnson, a British physician currently working at the hospital with King’s Health Partners, said Friday that the 18-bed unit had received 10 patients during the first day of the lockdown and now had four physicians. He said two other isolation units had opened in the Freetown area in the past several days. “We’re starting to see more beds, more supplies. More staff are coming to work,” he said.

Sierra Leonean health workers, who he said have worked bravely, are now being offered hazard pay. “Things are improving,” he said, but “the real question is whether we can get ahead of the curve. We’ve been seeing more new patients than we’ve been able to build new beds.”

The United States is planning to build as many as 17 Ebola treatment centers in Liberia, with about 1,700 treatment beds, while the United Nations is planning an expanded mission in the region, based in Accra, Ghana, according to Anthony Banbury, the United Nation’s Ebola operation crisis manager. It is intended to be more nimble than the United Nations’ notoriously bureaucratic operations, bringing in as many as 500 trucks and jeeps from other missions in Africa, possibly paying teams in one country to speed up safe burials, buying fuel for monitoring teams in another country, or offering helicopters to transport health workers where they are needed.

But even with the promises of help, international health officials are worried by what they describe as a rapid growth of cases here in Sierra Leone’s capital — a dense urban environment where containment is difficult and the ability to respond is limited.

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Volunteers in Freetown prepared to go house-to-house to warn people about Ebola’s dangers.

“The situation in Freetown is very worrisome as cases increase,” said Michael Goldfarb, a spokesman for Doctors Without Borders. “Without an immediate, massive, and effective response, there could be an explosion of cases as has been witnessed in Monrovia,” he added, referring to the capital of Liberia.

Whether Sierra Leone’s lockdown will constitute an effective response is open to question. Despite the mobilization, the volunteers hardly appeared to be thick on the ground. In some neighborhoods, residents said they were yet to see any of the green-vested young men and women who had volunteered.

In other neighborhoods, the volunteers — many of them students, all working for no pay — complained that there was no response to their knocks at most houses. If they arrived without supplies like soap or chlorine, residents were not interested in speaking with them, the volunteers said.

Where there was a response, it was often followed by cursory admonitions to residents to wash their hands, report on neighbors suspected of illness and wear long-sleeve shirts at the market.

At one house, several volunteers talked loudly at once about hand washing, leaving the residents visibly dazed. At another, they were amazed to discover residents who were supposed to be under quarantine because of their suspected exposure to Ebola, but were actually unguarded and free to roam about. At still another, one gave out questionable information about the Ebola virus — seeming to contradict some basic precautions.

Well into the morning, the house-to-house visits had yet to begin in Kroo Bay, a densely populated neighborhood of iron-roof shanties where roughly 14,000 people live, despite officials saying they would start at dawn. The police cruised into Kroo Bay on a pickup truck, yelling at residents to go indoors and warning of imprisonment. People simply stared at the officers and continued lingering as the police drove off.

“The policeman is doing his thing, and I am doing my thing,” said Kerfala Koroma, 22, a building contractor. “We can’t even afford something to eat on a normal day. How can we get something now?”

Sheri Fink contributed reporting from New York, and Somini Sengupta from the United Nations.

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Lockdown Begins in Sierra Leone to Battle Ebola. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Africa |NYT Now

What You Need to Know About the Ebola Outbreak

UPDATED SEPT. 19, 2014

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By Joe Burgess, Denise Grady, Josh Keller, Patrick J. Lyons, Heather Murphy and Sergio Peçanha.

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U.S. | Paying Till It Hurts

After Surgery, Surprise $117,000 Medical Bill From Doctor He Didn’t Know

By ELISABETH ROSENTHALSEPT. 20, 2014

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Peter Drier was billed by an assistant surgeon he did not know was on his case.

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Before his three-hour neck surgery for herniated disks in December, Peter Drier, 37, signed a pile of consent forms. A bank technology manager who had researched his insurance coverage, Mr. Drier was prepared when the bills started arriving: $56,000 from Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, $4,300 from the anesthesiologist and even $133,000 from his orthopedist, who he knew would accept a fraction of that fee.

He was blindsided, though, by a bill of about $117,000 from an “assistant surgeon,” a Queens-based neurosurgeon whom Mr. Drier did not recall meeting.

“I thought I understood the risks,” Mr. Drier, who lives in New York City, said later. “But this was just so wrong — I had no choice and no negotiating power.”

In operating rooms and on hospital wards across the country, physicians and other health providers typically help one another in patient care. But in an increasingly common practice that some medical experts call drive-by doctoring, assistants, consultants and other hospital employees are charging patients or their insurers hefty fees. They may be called in when the need for them is questionable. And patients usually do not realize they have been involved or are charging until the bill arrives.

The practice increases revenue for physicians and other health care workers at a time when insurers are cutting down reimbursement for many services. The surprise charges can be especially significant because, as in Mr. Drier’s case, they may involve out-of-network providers who bill 20 to 40 times the usual local rates and often collect the full amount, or a substantial portion.

Photo

Peter Drier, a bank technology manager in New York City, was blindsided after neck surgery by a $117,000 bill from a doctor he did not recall meeting.

“The notion is you can make end runs around price controls by increasing the number of things you do and bill for,” said Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, a health policy expert at the Brookings Institution until recently. This contributes to the nation’s $2.8 trillion in annual health costs.

Insurers, saying the surprise charges have proliferated, have filed lawsuits challenging them. In recent years, unexpected out-of-network charges have become the top complaint to the New York State agency that regulates insurance companies. Multiple state health insurance commissioners have tried to limit patients’ liability, but lobbying by the health care industry sometimes stymies their efforts.

“This has gotten really bad, and it’s wrong,” said James J. Donelon, the Republican insurance commissioner of Louisiana. “But when you try to address it as a policy maker, you run into a hornet’s nest of financial interests.”

In Mr. Drier’s case, the primary surgeon, Dr. Nathaniel L. Tindel, had said he would accept a negotiated fee determined through Mr. Drier’s insurance company, which ended up being about $6,200. (Mr. Drier had to pay $3,000 of that to meet his deductible.) But the assistant, Dr. Harrison T. Mu, was out of network and sent the $117,000 bill. Insurance experts say surgeons and assistants sometimes share proceeds from operations, but Dr. Tindel’s office says he and Dr. Mu do not. Dr. Mu’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

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Readers’ Perspectives

As you read this article, please share your experiences by responding to the questions that will appear. Your responses will inspire future articles in this series.

— Elisabeth Rosenthal, Reporter

The phenomenon can take many forms. In some instances, a patient may be lying on a gurney in the emergency room or in a hospital bed, unaware that all of the people in white coats or scrubs who turn up at the bedside will charge for their services. At times, a fully trained physician is called in when a resident or a nurse, who would not charge, would have sufficed. Services that were once included in the daily hospital rate are now often provided by contractors, and even many emergency rooms are staffed by out-of-network physicians who bill separately.

Patricia Kaufman’s bills after a recent back operation at a Long Island hospital were rife with such charges, said her husband, Alan, who spent days sorting them out. Two plastic surgeons billed more than $250,000 to sew up the incision, a task done by a resident during previous operations for Ms. Kaufman’s chronic neurological condition.

In the days after the operation, “a parade of doctors came by saying, ‘How are you,’ and they could be out of network or in network,” Mr. Kaufman said. “And then you get their bills. Who called them? Who are they?”

Photo

Patricia Kaufman, at home in Highland Park, N.J., with her husband, Alan, was charged $250,000 by two plastic surgeons who sewed up an incision after her back surgery.

Doctors’ offices often pursue patients for payment. Ms. Kaufman’s insurer paid about $10,000 to the plastic surgeons, who then sent a bill for the remainder. The couple, of Highland Park, N.J., refused to pay.

When insurers intervene in a particular case, they say they have limited ability to fight back. Insurance examiners “are not in the room on the day of surgery to see the second surgeon walk into the room or why they were needed,” said Clare Krusing, a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group. And current laws do not require hospitals that join an insurance network to provide in-network doctors, labs or X-rays, for example.

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Out-of-Network Rates Drive Unexpected Medical Costs

When out-of-network physicians perform hospital procedures, hefty charges can be added to medical bills. Insurers often pay the full amount or large portions, which provides an incentive for doctors to include out-of-network colleagues.

Muscle and skin graft

Spinal fusion

Gallbladder removal

Breast lesion removal

Potential

out-of-network doctor bill

$150,500

$115,625

$44,000

$18,500

Average paid to in-network doctors

$1,781

$5,893

$1,892

$688

Potentail

out-of-

network doctor bill

Muscle and skin graft

Spinal fusion

$150,500

$115,625

Average paid to in-network doctors

$1,781

$5,893

Potential out-of-

network doctor bill

Gallbladder removal

Breast lesion removal

$44,000

$18,500

Average paid to in-network doctors

$1,892

$688

Sources: America’s Health Insurance Plans; Healthcare Bluebook

SEPT. 19, 2014

Illustrations by Jennifer Daniel/The New York Times

So sometimes insurers just pay — to protect their customers, they say — which encourages the practice. When Mr. Drier complained to his insurer, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, that he should not have to pay the out-of-network assistant surgeon, Anthem agreed it was not his responsibility. Instead, the company cut a check to Dr. Mu for $116,862, the full amount.

Unexpected Fees

When Mr. Drier agreed to surgery in December, he was not in a good position to bargain or shop around. Several weeks earlier, he had woken up to excruciating pain in his upper back and numbness and weakness in two fingers of his left hand, which persisted. A scan showed that one of the disks that normally serve as cushions between vertebrae was herniated and pushing on a nerve. With a busy job and social life, he was living on painkillers.

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Peter Drier

Peter Drier “There was a chapter on here’s why you would need surgery for certain people, and mine was that case.” Publish Date September 20, 2014.

The rate of spinal surgery in the United States is about twice that in Europe and Canada, and five times that in Britain, said Dr. Richard A. Deyo of Oregon Health and Science University, who studies international comparisons. Studies are limited but have generally concluded that after two years, patients who have surgery for disk problems do no better than those treated with painkillers and physical therapy — although the pain, which can be debilitating, resolves far more rapidly with surgery.

The United States has more neurosurgeons per capita than almost any other developed country, and they compete with orthopedists for spinal surgery. At the same time, Medicare and private insurers have reduced payments to surgeons. The average base salary for neurosurgeons decreased to $590,000 in 2014 from $630,000 in 2010, according to Merritt Hawkins, a physician staffing firm.

To counter that trend, some spinal surgeons have turned to consultants — including a Long Island company called Business Dynamics RCM and a subsidiary, the Business of Spine — that offer advice on how to increase revenue through “innovative” coding, claim generation and collection services.

Some strategies used by surgeons, including billing large amounts for a second surgeon in the room or declaring an operation an emergency, raise serious questions. The indications for immediate spinal surgery, such as loss of bladder function or rapidly progressive paralysis, are rare. But insurers are more likely to reimburse a hospital or surgeon with whom they do not have a contract if a case is labeled an emergency.

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Mark Sullivan, 46, of New Jersey, went to an emergency room last year with excruciating lower back pain and leg weakness. He was in the operating room less than 24 hours later. “The surgeon stood at the foot of my bed and said, ‘You need surgery; you won’t walk out of the hospital,’ ” he recalled.

Mr. Sullivan’s emergency admission made it easier for an out-of-network surgeon to perform the operation and bill $29,000. The insurer paid $9,500, and Mr. Sullivan paid about $580, as required by his plan. When the doctor’s billing office pursued Mr. Sullivan for the balance of the bill and even threatened to turn his account over to collection, he agreed to file an appeal with his insurer for additional payment, but he refused to pay more himself.

A Last-Minute Surprise

Mr. Drier’s concern about extra charges began even during his preoperative physical. The hospital sent his blood tests to an out-of-network lab and required him to have an echocardiogram (eventually billed for $950), even though he had no cardiac history. (The American Society of Echocardiography discourages such testing for patients with no known heart problems.)

His worries escalated as he lay prepped for the operating room on the morning of his surgery. A technician from a company called Intraoperative Monitoring Service L.L.C. asked him to sign a financial consent form, noting that the company did not accept Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, so he would be required to pay the bill himself. The monitoring had been ordered by his surgeon and is considered essential for the type of neurosurgery he was having, to make sure delicate nerves are not damaged as they are manipulated.

“I demanded to know the price, and when he said he didn’t know, I made him call,” Mr. Drier recalled. When the technician said it would be $500 plus an hourly rate, Mr. Drier negotiated it down to $300.

In the operating room, he underwent a procedure called spinal fusion, in which the surgeons removed two herniated disks that were impinging on nerves, and inserted some bone graft as well as plates and screws to stabilize the spine. On his hospital bill, Mr. Drier noted charges for three implants, a total of about $10,400, as well as for two surgical screws billed at $2,470 and $3,990 — expensive for hardware, he thought, but his insurer paid the full amount.

The biggest surprise was the bill from Dr. Mu, the assistant surgeon. Fusions generally require a second trained pair of hands, but those can be provided by a resident or a neurosurgical nurse or physician assistant employed by the hospital, for whom there is no additional charge. The operative record for Mr. Drier’s surgery states that no qualified resident was available.

Dr. Mu is the chief of neurosurgery at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, though he sometimes operates at other hospitals. According to a database that tracks hospital admissions in New York State, most operations he performs at Jamaica involve emergency surgery on Medicaid patients, often victims of trauma — a challenging but probably not very lucrative practice.

One insurer, Aetna, is in court with Dr. Mu’s private-practice group, NeuroAxis Neurosurgical Associates of Kew Gardens, Queens. NeuroAxis sued to recover higher payments for its out-of-network assistant surgeons; Aetna says the practice’s fees for those surgeons are excessive. J. Edward Neugebauer, chief litigation officer at Aetna, said the company had also sued an in-network neurosurgeon on Long Island who always called in an out-of-network partner to assist, resulting in huge charges. The surgeons shared a business address.

Photo

Insurers have gone to court with NeuroAxis Neurosurgical Associates, a private practice in Queens, over what they call excessive fees for surgical assistants.

Surgeons from other specialties also team up: After Gunther Steinberg of Portola Valley, Calif., had a needle biopsy of an eye lesion in 2010, he discovered that his insurer had paid about $10,000 to the eye surgeon who performed the outpatient procedure and $10,700 to a second ophthalmologist in the room.

“The idea of having an assistant in the O.R. has become an opportunity to make up for surgical fees that have been slashed,” said Dr. Abeel A. Mangi, a professor of cardiac surgery at Yale, who said the practice had become commonplace. “There’s now a whole cadre of people out there who do not have meaningful appointments as attending surgeons, so they do assistant work.”

In Mr. Drier’s case, each surgeon billed for each step of the procedure. Dr. Tindel billed $74,000 for removing two disks and an additional $50,000 for placing the hardware that stabilized Mr. Drier’s spine. Dr. Mu billed $67,000 and $50,000 for those tasks.

If the surgery had been for a Medicare patient, the assistant would have been permitted to bill only 16 percent of the primary surgeon’s fee. With current Medicare rates, that would have been about $800, less than 1 percent of what Dr. Mu was paid.

Visitors Who Bill

Unexpected fees are routinely generated outside the operating room as well. On the wards, a dermatologist may be called in to examine a rash and perform an expensive biopsy. The person in scrubs who walks a patient to a bathroom for the first time after hip surgery may turn out to be a physical therapist billing $400.

Mr. Sullivan, who had the emergency back surgery, discovered charges from more than 10 providers in the 48 hours after his operation. (The surgery involved simply trimming a herniated disk in his lower back.) He wrote to various doctors to dispute bills, saying, “I was admitted to Overlook Hospital from Nov. 26-27, 2013, and I have received numerous invoices for procedures that were never done, by physicians that never treated me.”

He was puzzled by $679 in occupational therapy charges involving the delivery of a device to help him put on his socks, which he never used. He was irate about charges from a group of hospital-based primary care physicians from Inpatient Medical Associates, who visited him briefly once a day and billed close to $1,000 in out-of-network costs.

Photo

Mark Sullivan, 46, of New Jersey, received a hospital bill that included charges for occupational therapy, which he did not realize had occurred.

Healthy surgical patients typically do not need a general doctor; an anesthesiologist clears them for surgery. Mr. Sullivan noted that if he had needed an internist, he would have called his own, who is in his insurance network and whose office is just down the block.

Dr. Mangi, the Yale cardiac surgeon, said hospitals often encouraged extra visits for both billing and legal reasons. He said he was required to request a physical therapy consult before each discharge, for example, even if he felt there was no need.

“You can cut fees, but institutions find ways” to make the money back, he said. “There’s been a mushrooming industry of mandatory consultants for services that neither doctors nor patients want.”

A Possible Remedy

For months, Mr. Drier stewed over what to do with the $117,000 check Anthem Blue Cross had sent him to pass on to Dr. Mu, refusing to sign over a payment he considered “outrageous and immoral.” He worried that such payments could drive up premiums at his employer.

In the past few years, some insurers have filed lawsuits and sought injunctions to prevent providers from going after their clients for payment of unexpected medical bills. Dr. Scott Breidbart, chief medical officer at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, part of the same parent company that covers Mr. Drier, said that it had not taken that route, but that in some situations it had refused to do further business with in-network surgeons who repeatedly called in out-of-network assistants.

A New York State law that will take effect in March — one of a few nationally — will offer some protection against many surprise charges and require more advance disclosure from doctors and hospitals on whether their services are covered by insurance. It states, for example, that patients are not responsible for unforeseen out-of-network charges beyond what they would have paid in-network. It directs insurers and hospitals to negotiate any further payment or enter mediation.

In many other countries, such as Australia — where, as in the United States, people often rely on private insurance — it is seen as a patient’s right to be informed of out-of-pocket costs before hospitalization, said Mark Hall, a law professor at Wake Forest University.

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Peter Drier

Peter Drier “I couldn’t beat the medical billing administrators that knew how to say the right things and never said anything wrong and knew the laws backwards.” Publish Date September 20, 2014.

Mr. Drier tried to negotiate with the surgeons to divvy up the $117,000 payment in a way he believed was more fair; he liked Dr. Tindel and felt he was being underpaid. Mr. Drier’s idea, he wrote in an email, was to settle on “a reasonable fee for both the surgeon and assistant and return the rest of the check to the insurance company/employees” of his company.

But in July, he received a threatening letter from Dr. Mu’s lawyer noting that he had failed to forward the $117,000 check. So he sent it along, with regret.

For a continuing conversation about health care costs and pricing in the United States, please join our Facebook group, Paying Till It Hurts.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: After Surgery, $117,000 Bill From Doctor He Never Saw. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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N.Y. / Region

New York Curbs Medical Bills Containing Surprises

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLISMARCH 30, 2014

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Every year, thousands of New Yorkers find themselves responsible for a surprise medical bill from a doctor, like an anesthesiologist, who becomes involved in their care but, unbeknown to the patient, is not covered by their insurance.

Now a provision in the state budget agreement announced Saturday is intended to protect consumers by requiring that they be given a reasonable amount of notice when an out-of-network doctor will be treating them.

If they are stuck with a surprise bill, patients will be responsible only for whatever their co-pay would be if the doctor were in-network. The out-of-network doctor and the insurance company will have to hash out the bill using what is known as baseball arbitration, with each proposing a price and an arbitrator choosing one of them. The law will go into effect in one year.

“The heart of the bill came out of the fact that the No. 1 complaint on health insurance issues we receive year after year is people who get stuck with surprise balance bills,” Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the state’s Financial Services Department, which regulates insurance, said on Sunday.

Usually the doctors involved are not the primary physician whom the patient has come to know but a radiologist, pathologist or anesthesiologist involved in a procedure, like surgery or colonoscopy. Sometimes, patients make it to the operating table before they learn that the out-of-network doctor is involved in the operation.

Insurance plans typically either do not permit patients to go to doctors out of their prescribed network, or charge more when they do. Mr. Lawsky said that patients with plans restricting them to in-network doctors tend to be the patients who are most cost-conscious and can least afford surprise bills.

He said his department got several thousand complaints a year but suggested that many more people had the problem but did not complain.

“We think this is potentially a national model,” Mr. Lawsky said. “These surprise balance bills are very prevalent around the country.”

The bill was widely supported by consumer advocates and organizations like the American Cancer Society, as cancer patients are often saddled with such bills.

“It’s a huge cause of credit problems and consumer bankruptcy,” Mark Scherzer, a consumer advocate, said.

The law would be the toughest in the nation, said Chuck Bell, program director of Consumers Union, the nonprofit that publishes Consumer Reports.

One patient affected by the old system was Claudia Knafo, a concert pianist from the Upper West Side of Manhattan who needed spinal surgery. Ms. Knafo said she carefully researched which surgeon to choose, and chose one at her usual hospital. He listed her insurance plan on the hospital website and a patient coordinator confirmed the coverage, she said. After the surgery, the insurance company told her that the doctor had dropped her plan in 1997. She received a bill for $101,000, and her insurance paid only $3,500, leaving her with a $97,000 surprise balance.

Ms. Knafo considered bankruptcy and divorce before the state attorney general and Mr. Lawsky interceded and she was let off the hook.

“Our lives were really consumed by this,” she said on Sunday. Two years later, she added, “I still sometimes have nightmares that it’s not resolved.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 31, 2014, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: State Curbs Medical Bills Containing Surprises. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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SundayReview | Opinion

Too Young to Die, Too Old to Worry

By JASON KARLAWISHSEPT. 20, 2014

Inside

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Leonard Cohen, 1988. Last year he announced he would start smoking again when he turned 80.

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THIS weekend, the singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen is celebrating his 80th birthday — with a cigarette. Last year he announced that he would resume smoking when he turned 80. “It’s the right age to recommence,” he explained.

At any age, taking up smoking is not sensible. Both the smoker and those who breathe his secondhand smoke can suffer not only long-term but acute health problems, including infections and asthma. And yet, Mr. Cohen’s plan presents a provocative question: When should we set aside a life lived for the future and, instead, embrace the pleasures of the present?

At the start of the 20th century, only one-half of 1 percent of the United States population was over the age of 80. Industrialized nations were preoccupied with infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and polio. Many of the common diseases of aging, such as osteoporosis, were not even thought of as diseases.

Today, 3.6 percent of the population is over 80, and life is heavily prescribed not only with the behaviors we should avoid, but the medications we ought to take. More than half of adults age 65 and older are taking five or more prescription medications, over-the-counter medications or dietary supplements, many of them designed not to treat acute suffering, but instead, to reduce the chances of future suffering. Stroke, heart attacks, heart failure, kidney failure, hip fracture — the list is long, and with the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ plan to prevent Alzheimer’s disease by 2025, it grows ever more ambitious.

Aging in the 21st century is all about risk and its reduction. Insurers reward customers for regular attendance at a gym or punish them if they smoke. Physicians are warned by pharmaceutical companies that even after they have prescribed drugs to reduce their patients’ risk of heart disease, a “residual risk” remains — more drugs are often prescribed. One fitness product tagline captures the zeitgeist: “Your health account is your wealth account! Long live living long!”

But when is it time to stop saving and spend some of our principal? If you thought you were going to die soon, you just might light up, as well as stop taking your daily aspirin, statin and blood pressure pill. You would spend more time and money on present pleasures, like a dinner out with friends, than on future anxieties.

When it comes to prevention, there can be too much of a good thing. Groups like the United States Preventive Services Task Force regularly review the evidence that supports prevention guidelines, and find that after certain ages, the benefits of prevention are not worth the risks and hassles of testing, surgeries and medications. Recent guidelines for cholesterol treatment from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, for example, set 79 years as the upper limit for calculating the 10-year risk of developing or dying from heart attack, stroke or heart disease. They also suggest that, after 75, it may not be beneficial for a person without heart disease to start taking statins. But that doesn’t mean everyone follows this advice.

Besides, isn’t 75 the new 65? Age seems a blunt criterion to decide when to stop. Is Mr. Cohen at 80 really 80? In his mid-70s, he maintained a rigorous touring schedule, often skipping off the stage. Maybe 80 is too young for him to start smoking again.

Advances in the science of forecasting are held out as the answers to these questions. Physician researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and at Harvard, have developed ePrognosis, a website that collates 19 risk calculators that an older adult can use to calculate her likelihood of dying in the next six months to 10 years. The developers of ePrognosis report that frail older adults want to know their life expectancy so they can not only plan their health care but also make financial choices, such as giving away some of their savings.

Even more revolutionary is RealAge, a product of Sharecare Inc. that has quantified our impression that as we age, some of us are really older, while others are younger than the count of their years. It uses an algorithm that assesses a variety of habits and medical data to calculate how old you “really” are.

Websites like these can be a convenient vehicle to disseminate information (and marketing materials) to patients. But complex actuarial data — including its uncertainties and limitations — is best conveyed during a face-to-face, doctor-patient conversation.

We are becoming a nation of planners living quantified lives. But life accumulates competing risks. By preventing heart disease and cancer, we live longer and so increase our risk of suffering cognitive losses so disabling that our caregivers then have to decide not just how, but how long, we will live. The bioethicist Dena Davis has argued that emerging biomarkers that may someday predict whether one is developing the earliest pathology of Alzheimer’s disease (like brain amyloid, measured with a PET scan) are an opportunity for people to schedule their suicide. Or at least start smoking.

Our culture of aging is one of extremes. You are either healthy and executing vigorous efforts to build your health account, or you are dying. And yet, as we start to “ache in the places where [we] used to play,” as one of Mr. Cohen’s songs puts it, we want to focus on the present. Many of my older patients and their caregivers complain that they spend their days going from one doctor visit to the next, and data from the National Health Interview Survey suggests one reason. Among older adults whose nine-year mortality risk is 75 percent or greater, from one-third to as many as one-half are still receiving cancer-screening tests that are no longer recommended.

I don’t plan to celebrate my 80th birthday with a cigarette or a colonoscopy, and I don’t want my aging experience reduced to an online, actuarial accounting exercise. I recently gave a talk about Alzheimer’s disease to a community group. During the question and answer session, one man exclaimed, “Why doesn’t Medicare pay us all to have dinner and two glasses of wine once a week with friends?” What he was getting at is that we desire not simply to pursue life, but happiness, and that medicine is important, but it’s not the only means to this happiness. A national investment in communities and services that improve the quality of our aging lives might help us to achieve this. Perhaps, instead of Death Panels, we can start talking about Pleasure Panels.

Jason Karlawish is a professor of medicine, medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 21, 2014, on page SR5 of the New York edition with the headline: Too Young to Die, Too Old to Worry. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Start-ups

Former Hampton Creek Executive Says He Will Not Advise Company

By Nick Wingfield September 20, 2014 7:22 pmSeptember 20, 2014 7:22 pm

A top executive at Hampton Creek, the high-profile food and technology start-up, who left after only nine days on the job said on Friday he would not remain as an adviser, despite an earlier statement by the company that he would.

Photo

Ali Partovi abruptly left Hampton Creek.

The discrepancy between the accounts of Ali Partovi, who became the company’s chief strategy officer in early September, and Hampton Creek suggests the split between the two was not as amicable as the company has said publicly. Neither Mr. Partovi nor Josh Tetrick, the chief executive, will say why Mr. Partovi abruptly resigned. While new executives often do not last, it is unusual for them to leave so quickly.

Mr. Tetrick said the arrangement simply did not work out as planned.

“He’s an incredible person and has made us better in numerous ways,” Mr. Tetrick said in a statement he issued after The Wall Street Journal and others reported on Mr. Partovi’s departure. “I’m fortunate to call him a friend — and mentor. I think we both realized that we’d all be more effective with him as an adviser — given our current needs and opportunities as a young, growing company.”

On Friday evening, though, Mr. Partovi said he would not serve as an adviser to the company. “I resigned completely,” said Mr. Partovi, who remains an investor in Hampton Creek along with his twin brother, Hadi. “I’m not working with Hampton Creek in any capacity.”

Mr. Partovi’s sudden departure from Hampton Creek is even more puzzling because he served as an adviser to Mr. Tetrick for months after investing in the company this year, before he joined Hampton Creek as an executive.

The loss of Mr. Partovi, a well-known tech entrepreneur and investor who made early investments in Facebook, Dropbox and other companies, comes at an important time for Hampton Creek. The company is in discussions with investors to raise up to $50 million in new financing. Hampton Creek is one of the most visible in a wave of start-ups seeking to bring tech-style innovation to the food business.

Hampton Creek, based in San Francisco, has analyzed thousands of plants to find low-cost, environmentally friendly substitutes for common ingredients in various foods. Its best-known product, Just Mayo, is a mayonnaise that uses a type of Canadian yellow pea as a substitute for eggs. Hampton Creek products, which also include a cookie dough, are available at Costco, Dollar Tree, Walmart and Whole Foods.

In a phone interview on Friday evening, Mr. Tetrick said that Mr. Partovi and he realized after Mr. Partovi joined that “it wasn’t a good mutual fit” and that the two of them decided to part ways early rather than trying to force their relationship to work. “My sense is he’ll continue to be helpful for us,” Mr. Tetrick said.

After being informed that Mr. Partovi had said he would not advise the company, Mr. Tetrick sounded surprised.

“O.K.,” he said. He paused before continuing, “Like every person in our world, if they prefer not to be an adviser, that’s their call.”

Appointments and Executive Changes, Hampton Creek Foods, Partovi, Ali, Start-ups

Start-ups

The Food Start-Up Hampton Creek Adds Tech Talent

By Nick Wingfield September 4, 2014 10:00 amSeptember 4, 2014 10:00 am

The flow of techies seeking to shake up the food business is picking up.

Over the past few years, Silicon Valley venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have been cooking up new ways to bring innovation to eating. Their efforts span everything from gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches to Soylent, a nutrient-rich drink mix invented by engineers.

Another start-up, Hampton Creek, is taking a different tack by scouring the planet for ingredients that can be used to make healthier, cheaper foods with less impact on the environment. The company, based in San Francisco, has received funding from a variety of investors with technology backgrounds, including Khosla Ventures. And increasingly Hampton Creek is hiring people from the technology business to run the company.

Photo

Ali Partovi, an early investor in Zappos, Facebook and Dropbox, is joining join Hampton Creek as its chief strategy officer.

The latest is Ali Partovi, a technology investor and entrepreneur who on Thursday will join Hampton Creek as its chief strategy officer. Mr. Partovi, along with his identical twin brother, Hadi, was an early investor in Zappos, Facebook and Dropbox. He also co-founded iLike, sold to Myspace, and LinkExchange, bought by Microsoft.

Earlier in the summer, Hampton Creek hired Dan Zigmond, previously the lead data scientist for Google Maps, to be its vice president of data.

Hampton Creek’s best-known product so far, Just Mayo, is a mayonnaise that uses a cultivar of Canadian yellow peas as a substitute for eggs. The result is a product that requires significantly less land and water than the chickens needed to produce eggs, said Josh Tetrick, the company’s chief executive and founder, in a phone interview.

Hampton Creek’s product has no cholesterol, less saturated fat and costs a little less to make than conventional mayonnaise, he said. Hampton Creeks products, which also include a cookie dough, are being sold at Whole Foods, Costco, Walmart and Dollar Tree, and soon will be available in thousands of corporate cafeterias through a partnership with Compass Group, a large food service company.

Photo

Hampton Creek’s best-known product, Just Mayo, is a mayonnaise that uses a cultivar of Canadian yellow peas as a substitute for eggs.

The reason Hampton Creek needs tech expertise is because it is building a database of plants with different properties that make them compelling alternatives to traditional ingredients, with the ability to make cakes rise, crystallize like sugar and perform other feats of culinary alchemy.

Out of about 5,000 plants it has screened so far, Hampton Creek has identified a little over a dozen that can be commercialized and that are “significantly better than the status quo,” Mr. Tetrick said.

“We don’t even think of ourselves as a food company,” he said. “We think of ourselves as a technology company.”

Mr. Tetrick is looking to Mr. Partovi to help with the company’s recruiting and marketing efforts. Mr. Partovi was an early investor and adviser in Hampton Creek and the architect of an advertising partnership with Facebook, which Mr. Tetrick and Mr. Partovi said had been very effective for the company.

“No one has ever attempted to launch a massive consumer packaged goods company using the Internet as the primary marketing vehicle,” Mr. Partovi said.

A version of this article appears in print on 09/08/2014, on page B6 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Food Start-Up Lures Techies.

Executives and Management, Start-ups, Appointments and Executive Changes, Food, Hampton Creek Foods, Partivi, Ali, Start-ups

Social NYT NOW

Pass the Word: The Phone Call Is Back

By Jenna Wortham September 20, 2014 4:00 pmSeptember 20, 2014 4:00 pm

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The “Telephone Hour” number from the 2009 Broadway revival of “Bye Bye Birdie”: Teenagers now have many more communication options than they did in the 1950s.

Just a few years ago, it seemed that the old-fashioned phone call was going out of style. Smartphones were on the rise, and many people were using them for everything except making calls.

Phone calls were still part of my job, but they were absent from my personal life, save for the occasional restaurant reservation or doctor’s appointment. I preferred sending messages by text, instant message or email. It felt much easier and more time-efficient than trying to reach someone by phone.

But a few months ago, something curious started to happen.

My friends started picking up their cellphones for an unusual purpose: They wanted to talk. And I started answering when they called.

For example, one friend who lives in California grew tired of trying to have intimate catch-ups over instant message and email, and now uses those means only to coordinate a time when she can call to chat. Another, who lives not far from me in Brooklyn, finds arranging outings over text message too exasperating, and prefers to quickly call and sort out our plans instead.

As much as I enjoy sending and receiving messages, they can be confusing, particularly when it comes to conveying sarcasm or sincerity. And as much as I love using emoji — those colorful cartoons that can be inserted into text messages to infuse them with warmth and humor, they don’t have all that much nuance. Using them isn’t always a guaranteed way of getting my feelings across.

Many industry experts say I’m not the only person to have a renewed appreciation of the virtues of actually talking on a phone, even on a smartphone.

Chetan Sharma, an independent analyst who follows the wireless industry, noted that cellular voice volume in the United States grew 14 percent in the last year: According to figures from CTIA — the Wireless Association, the number of voice minutes in the United States increased to 2.62 trillion, from 2.3 trillion.

One reason for the uptick, Mr. Sharma said, is that nearly 40 percent of American households are now mobile-only, meaning that they no longer have a landline phone, and rely entirely on their cellphones.

“Those minutes are transferring over to mobile,” he said.

He also suspects that shifts in consumer habits are playing a role, and he notes that Americans now have a much wider array of communication options. Texting by SMS — the technology used for basic cellphone messaging — is being supplemented by messaging applications like Apple’s iMessage and WhatsApp, which is now owned by Facebook. In other words, people are adjusting their habits, choosing the platform and service that best suit their conversation needs at a given moment.

A handful of new voice-centered mobile applications are gaining traction as they try to improve on the old-fashioned phone call. All are aiming to solve a basic problem: For people accustomed to messaging, a phone call often feels disruptive and inconvenient. They may not want to answer a call immediately, but if they don’t, they may be caught in endless, irritating games of phone tag.

The new services aren’t trying to replicate the phone calls of yore. Instead, they are trying to fashion a new kind of voice interaction that is efficient and intimate, yet not intrusive. Many have the advantage of letting the recipient of a message play it and answer it at her leisure.

One service, Voxer, works like a walkie-talkie, letting people relay quick snippets of audio to one another. Another, called ChitChat and developed by Ideo, the design firm, performs a similar function, although messages disappear after they are heard.

One entrepreneur, Alan Braverman, has been developing an app, Sobo, that his company describes as “an audio version of Twitter.” His company says the application “will be satisfying a void in the social media app world by enabling quick, nonperishable sound bites.”

Even the giant technology companies are seizing the trend.

This month, Apple announced that it would include a feature on the next version of its mobile software that will also allow its users to send voice notes that will disappear after they are heard.

Thomas Gayno, one of the founders of Cord, a voice messaging service that recently raised nearly $2 million in seed funding from investors, says his start-up aims to combine the best parts of text-based communication — its brevity and convenience — and apply them to voice interactions.

“Maybe we can combine the ease of asynchronous communication like text and Twitter with the power of voice to create a new way to communicate,” he said. “It is much more adaptive to our always-on lifestyle.”

Mr. Gayno built Cord with his friend Jeff Baxter. The men, who met while working at Google on projects including Glass, the computer eyewear, are also betting that voice interaction will be an increasingly crucial portion of technology products, and are building Cord with an eye on that future. Although they did not share early user numbers, they said Cord was slowly building an audience.

Mr. Gayno pointed to devices like smartwatches, smart household appliances and in-car navigation systems as products that might be easier to control with spoken commands.“The next generation of computers won’t have keyboards,” he said. “Or if they do, they’ll be impossible to use. They will work from a voice interface.”

Of course, companies like Cord still have something of an uphill battle. Some people have no interest in going back to what they consider the dark ages — the era of making phone calls.

“The nontalkers are still out there,” Mr. Baxter said. “Some people say, text has won, voice is over, and they don’t want any of it.”

And I can’t say I want to totally give up texting for talking, either. But I appreciate having the option, and hope to convince more of my friends to get on board.

A version of this article appears in print on 09/21/2014, on page BU5 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Pass the Word: The Phone Call Is Back.

Social

Cellphones Now Used More for Data Than for Calls

By JENNA WORTHAM

Published: May 13, 2010

Liza Colburn uses her cellphone constantly.

She taps out her grocery lists, records voice memos, listens to music at the gym, tracks her caloric intake and posts frequent updates to her Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The one thing she doesn’t use her cellphone for? Making calls.

“I probably only talk to someone verbally on it once a week,” said Mrs. Colburn, a 40-year-old marketing consultant in Canton, Mass., who has an iPhone.

For many Americans, cellphones have become irreplaceable tools to manage their lives and stay connected to the outside world, their families and networks of friends online. But increasingly, by several measures, that does not mean talking on them very much.

For example, although almost 90 percent of households in the United States now have a cellphone, the growth in voice minutes used by consumers has stagnated, according to government and industry data.

This is true even though more households each year are disconnecting their landlines in favor of cellphones.

Instead of talking on their cellphones, people are making use of all the extras that iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones were also designed to do — browse the Web, listen to music, watch television, play games and send e-mail and text messages.

The number of text messages sent per user increased by nearly 50 percent nationwide last year, according to the CTIA, the wireless industry association. And for the first time in the United States, the amount of data in text, e-mail messages, streaming video, music and other services on mobile devices in 2009 surpassed the amount of voice data in cellphone calls, industry executives and analysts say.

“Originally, talking was the only cellphone application,” said Dan Hesse, chief executive of Sprint Nextel. “But now it’s less than half of the traffic on mobile networks.”

Of course, talking on the cellphone isn’t disappearing entirely. “Anytime something is sensitive or is something I don’t want to be forwarded, I pick up the phone rather than put it into a tweet or a text,” said Kristen Kulinowski, a 41-year-old chemistry teacher in Houston. And calling is cheaper than ever because of fierce competition among rival wireless networks.

But figures from the CTIA show that over the last two years, the average number of voice minutes per user in the United States has fallen.

Still, even the telephone design industry has taken note. Ross Rubin, a telecommunications analyst with the NPD Group, said cellphones outfitted with numerical keyboards — easiest for quickly dialing a phone number — were no longer in vogue. Touch screens, or quick messaging devices with full “qwerty” keyboards, on the other hand, are. On the newest phones, users must press several buttons or swipe through several screens to get to the application that allows them to make calls.

“Handset design has become far less cheek-friendly,” Mr. Rubin said. Mr. Hesse of Sprint said he expected that within the next couple of years, cellphone users would be charged by the data they used, not by their voice minutes, a prediction echoed by other industry executives.

When people do talk on their phones, their conversations are shorter; the average length of a local call was 1.81 minutes in 2009, compared with 2.27 minutes in 2008, according to CTIA. For some, the unused voice minutes mount up.

“I have thousands of rollover minutes,” said Zach Frechette, 28, editor of Good magazine in Los Angeles, who explained that he dialed only when he needed to get in touch with someone instantly, and limited those calls to 30 seconds. “I downgraded to the lowest available minute plan, which I’m not even getting close to using.”

Mr. Frechette said part of the reason he rarely talked on his phone was that he had an iPhone, with its notoriously spotty phone reception in certain locales. But also, he said, most of his day was spent swapping short messages through services like Gmail, Facebook and Twitter. That way, he said, “you can respond when it’s convenient, rather than impose your schedule on someone else.”

Others say talking on the phone is intrusive and time-consuming, while others seem to have no patience for talking to just one person at a time. They prefer to spend their phone time moving seamlessly between several conversations, catching up on the latest news and updates by text and on Facebook with multiple friends, instead of just one or two.

“Even though in theory, it might take longer to send a text than pick up the phone, it seems less disruptive than a call,” said Jefferson Adams, a 44-year-old freelance writer living in San Francisco. By texting, he said, “you can multitask between two or three conversations at once.”

Nicole Wahl, a 35-year-old communications manager at the University of Toronto, estimates she talks on her phone only about 10 minutes a month.

“The only reason I ever call someone anymore is if I don’t have their Twitter handle or e-mail address,” Ms. Wahl said. “Like my hairdresser to see if she has a last-minute appointment or my parents to say I’m dropping by.”

American teenagers have been ahead of the curve for a while, turning their cellphones into texting machines; more than half of them send about 1,500 text messages each month, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

Mrs. Colburn, from Massachusetts, said she caved to the pleading of her 12-year-old daughter Abigail for a cellphone to send text messages with her friends after she and her husband discovered it was hindering her from developing bonds with her classmates.

“We realized she was being excluded from party invitations and being in the know with her peers,” she said.

Mrs. Colburn said texting had also become a much easier way to stay in touch with her daughter and receive quick updates about after-school plans.

“The other night she texted me from upstairs to ask a vocabulary question,” she said with a laugh. “But I drew the line there. I went upstairs to answer it.”

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Online Emotions, in Hundreds of New Flavors

By JENNA WORTHAM

Published: March 9, 2013

TO say that I like to send text messages is like saying Garfield likes lasagna. It is my expressive medium. On Wednesday alone, I sent at least 100 — but I like to send more than just words. I’m a big fan of using emoji, the colorful symbol alphabet that contains nearly a thousand images of cute animals, food items and expressive smiley faces to convey what words cannot.

When a friend recently told me that she was sick, I replied with a cartoon row of steaming bowls of soup and a flexing bicep — my way of wishing her a speedy recovery.

I insert all kinds of visual images into messages, including GIFs — those short, looping animated clips — to emphasize a point. When my friend Ray got an iPhone, for example, I texted him a GIF of the singer Rihanna jumping up and down to convey my own enthusiasm for his purchase.

Using emoji, emoticons and GIFs in a texted conversation instantly signals the difference between sincerity and a joke or sarcasm. And it takes less effort. It’s easier to smooth over hurt feelings with an impish cat face than to hastily type a long and winding explanation of why you’re 20 minutes late to your dinner date, or to let a friend know that you are sending your love her way with an animated GIF of two pandas hugging.

Path's new messaging app.

Typically, these mobile phone features have not been big businesses in the United States. But a few young American start-up businesses, including a private social networking service called Path and messaging services called Lango and MessageMe, are trying to change that. Path and MessageMe have released souped-up versions of emoji and emoticons called “stickers” that can be inserted into messages; Lango’s will be introduced on Tuesday. Compared with emoji, stickers are elaborate, artsy creations. On Path, for example, the sticker that’s intended to convey an upset mood shows a frowning face surrounded by a storm cloud and lightning bolts.

“People have always been typing ‘LOL,’ or putting in a YouTube link while communicating,” said Arjun Sethi, one of the founders of MessageMe. “This is a faster and more intuitive way to communicate; it’s about more ways to be expressive in this medium.”

It is an opportunity that has sharp-eyed entrepreneurs and venture capitalists eager to cash in.

“Messaging as a category will evolve to be more commerce-oriented,” says Chi-Hua Chien, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, which has invested in Path and several other messaging applications.

Lango's Super Bowl stickers.

THE sticker apps are free to download. But for a few dollars, users can buy extra packs that include premium items like hand-drawn caricatures of snacks — a dancing slice of pizza, for example — or cartoon characters from the trippy children’s show “Adventure Time.” For the Super Bowl, Lango released a theme pack containing cartoon caricatures of the San Francisco 49ers.

Like emoticons and emoji, these sticker applications have been popular for quite some time in other parts of the world. Line, an app that lets people send stickers, drawings and messages to one another, has enjoyed commercial success in South Korea and Japan. The service, developed by Naver, a South Korean company, says it has more than 100 million users. The company recently opened an office in San Francisco to drum up a big audience for Line in the United States.

Line’s popularity was part of what motivated Lango and MessageMe to bring their own versions of sticker-type messaging to the United States.

The translation might not be as easy as it sounds. Even though I’m in the target audience for these sticker apps — always looking for new ways to spice up my text messages — I have found some of the stickers a bit too gimmicky, at least when compared with their less fussy, emoji predecessors. I found it hard to imagine the images gaining conversational traction among my friends, which is half the fun of using visual icons in the first place.

David Lee, one of the founders of SV Angel, an angel investment venture capital firm, has invested in MessageMe. But he does have one niggling question, which is whether “user behavior and cultural norms in Asia and other countries are so different that they don’t translate well to the U.S.”

Cellphone users in Asia quickly adopted text messaging and found creative ways to express themselves within those messages’ character limits. But many Americans became familiar with emoji only when the iPhone released a software update that included an emoji keyboard a few years ago.

Those who study digital media and culture say the United States is still developing its mobile habits and behavior, so other countries’ trends may not be a good metric for what will work at home.

Mimi Ito, a cultural anthropologist at the University of California, Irvine, who studies how young people use digital media in Asia and the United States, says it may be too late for these visual stickers to catch on.

“Many users in this country,” she says, “missed many of the kinds of mobile use practices that characterized early mobile texting culture.”

Unlike emoji, the sticker apps do not function on the default texting program, which makes using them more of an effort. And figuring out how to satisfy the American mobile consumer has frustrated companies like Zynga and Facebook, which have struggled to translate Web success to mobile.

Nonetheless, Mr. Lee says he is confident that Americans will embrace visual texting methods. He also says the applications fit well into what he sees as the future of social networking, where friend groups are built around phone address books and texting, rather than a Web site.

Mr. Sethi of MessageMe agrees that my cohort just needs time to adapt to these new visual communication markers.

“People are just now starting to use what’s available technologically on phones,” he said. “We just have to get people used to it.”

Other forms of visual-based communication are catching on here, so maybe there is hope for the mobile stickers. Big audiences have already been gained by video-chatting services, like Skype, as well as by Instagram, the photo-sharing service, and Snapchat, a tool that lets people send photos and videos that self-destruct after a few seconds.

“The U.S. has clearly jumped onto the visual mobile communication bandwagon,” Ms. Ito says. “But in a way that is different from the emoji orientation of the earlier adopters.”

As for me, I’ll stick with my simple emoji vocabulary of hearts, blushing women and half-hatched chicken — for the time being.

Big Data

Making Big Data Think Bigger

By Steve Lohr September 20, 2014 8:00 amSeptember 20, 2014 8:00 am

Photo

A graphic visualization of the mobile industry, ranging from hardware makers to media providers. Software, denoted in yellow, plays an increasingly large and interconnected role in the industry.

Big-data management promises a significant shift in the way decisions are made across the economy. Abundant new sources of data from the web, sensors and smartphones, mined for patterns and insights by smart software, will mean that more and more decisions will be based on data and analysis rather than experience and intuition.

Logic would suggest that decision-making based more on science and less on hunch would have a big payoff in productivity and innovation. But so far the academic research and the industry’s track record suggest gains of 1 percent to 5 percent from data-driven decision-making. Those seemingly modest gains tend to be in efficiency, cost savings and productivity.

In some industries, small percentages can mean a competitive edge and big savings. In the commercial airline industry, for example, a 1 percent gain in fuel efficiency would save roughly $3 billion a year worldwide. Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, speaks of “the power of 1 percent.”

Tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning will someday help executives peer into the future to guide major strategic decisions like what products to bet on, what markets to enter and what companies to buy. But, said David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, “the leap from the tools to the insight is the weak link.”

Computer scientists and management experts are working to strengthen that link. One promising area of research is called computational enterprise analytics, and it was chosen this week as one of the central fields in the research agenda of a new nonprofit organization, the Center for Global Enterprise.

Computational enterprise analytics, according to Peter C. Evans, the center’s vice president for strategic analysis and trends, is a collaboration between computing and management science that seeks to describe complex business ecosystems. The research uses tailored software that automatically pores over sources of information like news releases on product announcements, research investments and partnership deals, analysts’ reports, patent filings and CrunchBase, the online database of start-ups and venture financing.

The information is scored by significance and relevance, then translated into graphics showing links, nodes and types of activity among the actors in a business ecosystem — the mobile phone industry, for example. The visualization tools planned by the center would ideally be interactive, allowing users to zoom in and out to examine the underlying data.

“We’re seeking a scientific understanding of organizations,” said Rahul C. Basole, an associate professor at the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing, who is working with the center. “And the tools we’ll be developing are visual analytics for the c-suite,” he said, referring to executive offices.

An analysis using such tools, Mr. Evans said, might provide early signals — based on patent filings, partnerships and start-up activity — about where a company’s competitors are investing in innovation. “It is taking data-analysis tools out of the engineering realm, with its focus on optimization and efficiency, and putting it into the strategic management realm,” he said.

Computational enterprise analytics is one of the four research programs being developed by the Center for Global Enterprise, each a collaboration that will rely heavily on academic partners. The other three programs are Business Models for Speed and Scale, Measuring Organizational Capital and the Emerging Platform Economy.

The center was founded by Samuel J. Palmisano, the former chief executive of IBM, as a forum for executives and academics to develop management skills for coping with globalization and rapid technological change.

It has already held invitation-only gatherings at Peking University and Stanford University, and others are planned. The meetings, said Christopher G. Caine, president of the center, are intended to foster “peer-to-peer learning among chief executives” as part of the organization’s role of working as “a catalyst for applied learning.”

Big Data, Policy, Computers and the Internet, Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Immelt, Jeffrey R, Palmisano, Samuel J, Peking University, Stanford University

Unboxed

When There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Information

By STEVE LOHR

Published: April 23, 2011

INFORMATION overload is a headache for individuals and a huge challenge for businesses. Companies are swimming, if not drowning, in wave after wave of data — from increasingly sophisticated computer tracking of shipments, sales, suppliers and customers, as well as e-mail, Web traffic and social-network comments. These Internet-era technologies, by one estimate, are doubling the quantity of business data every 1.2 years.

Yet the data explosion is also an enormous opportunity. In a modern economy, information should be the prime asset — the raw material of new products and services, smarter decisions, competitive advantage for companies, and greater growth and productivity.

Is there any real evidence of a “data payoff” across the corporate world? It has taken a while, but new research led by Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggests that the beginnings are now visible.

Mr. Brynjolfsson and his colleagues, Lorin Hitt, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Heekyung Kim, a graduate student at M.I.T., studied 179 large companies. Those that adopted “data-driven decision making” achieved productivity that was 5 to 6 percent higher than could be explained by other factors, including how much the companies invested in technology, the researchers said.

In the study, based on a survey and follow-up interviews, data-driven decision making was defined not only by collecting data, but also by how it is used — or not — in making crucial decisions, like whether to create a new product or service. The central distinction, according to Mr. Brynjolfsson, is between decisions based mainly on “data and analysis” and on the traditional management arts of “experience and intuition.”

A 5 percent increase in output and productivity, he says, is significant enough to separate winners from losers in most industries.

The companies that are guided by data analysis, Mr. Brynjolfsson says, are “harbingers of a trend in how managers make decisions.”

“And it has huge implications for competitiveness and growth,” he adds.

The research is not yet published, but it was presented at an academic conference this month. The conclusion that companies that rely heavily on data analysis are likely to outperform others is not new. Notably, Thomas H. Davenport, a professor of information technology and management at Babson College, has made that point, and his most recent book, with Jeanne G. Harris and Robert Morison, is “Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results” (Harvard Business Press, 2010).

And companies like Google, whose search and advertising business is based on exploiting and organizing online information, are testimony to the power of intelligent data sifting.

But the new research appears to be broader and to apply economic measurement to the impact of data-led decision making in a way not done before.

“To the best of our knowledge,” Mr. Brynjolfsson says, “this is the first quantitative evidence of the anecdotes we’re been hearing about.”

Mr. Brynjolfsson emphasizes that the spread of such decision making is just getting started, even though the data surge began at least a decade ago. That pattern is familiar in history. The productivity payoff from a new technology comes only when people adopt new management skills and new ways of working.

The electric motor, for example, was introduced in the early 1880s. But that technology did not generate discernible productivity gains until the 1920s. It took that long for the use of motors to spread, and for businesses to reorganize work around the mass-production assembly line, the efficiency breakthrough of its day.

The story was much the same with computers. By 1987, the personal computer revolution was more than a decade old, when Robert M. Solow, an economist and Nobel laureate, dryly observed, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”

It was not until 1995 that productivity in the American economy really started to pick up. The Internet married computing to low-cost communications, opening the door to automating all kinds of commercial transactions. The gains continued through 2004, well after the dot-com bubble burst and investment in technology plummeted.

The technology absorption lag accounts for the delayed productivity benefits, observes Robert J. Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University.

“It’s never pure technology that makes the difference,” Mr. Gordon says. “It’s reorganizing things — how work is done. And technology does allow new forms of organization.”

Since 2004, productivity has slowed again. Historically, Mr. Gordon notes, productivity wanes when innovation based on fundamental new technologies runs out. The steam engine and railroads fueled the first industrial revolution, he says; the second was powered by electricity and the internal combustion engine. The Internet, according to Mr. Gordon, qualifies as the third industrial revolution — but one that will prove far more short-lived than the previous two.

“I think we’re seeing hints that we’re running through inventions of the Internet revolution,” he says.

STILL, the software industry is making a big bet that the data-driven decision making described in Mr. Brynjolfsson’s research is the wave of the future. The drive to help companies find meaningful patterns in the data that engulfs them has created a fast-growing industry in what is known as “business intelligence” or “analytics” software and services. Major technology companies — I.B.M., Oracle, SAP and Microsoft — have collectively spent more than $25 billion buying up specialist companies in the field.

I.B.M. alone says it has spent $14 billion on 25 companies that focus on data analytics. That business now employs 8,000 consultants and 200 mathematicians. I.B.M. said last week that it expected its analytics business to grow to $16 billion by 2015.

“The biggest change facing corporations is the explosion of data,” says David Grossman, a technology analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. “The best business is in helping customers analyze and manage all that data.”

Looking to Industry for the Next Digital Disruption

William Ruh, a vice president at General Electric, and Sharoda Paul, an expert in social computing.

By STEVE LOHR

Published: November 23, 2012

SAN RAMON, Calif. — When Sharoda Paul finished a postdoctoral fellowship last year at the Palo Alto Research Center, she did what most of her peers do — considered a job at a big Silicon Valley company, in her case, Google. But instead, Ms. Paul, a 31-year-old expert in social computing, went to work for General Electric.

Ms. Paul is one of more than 250 engineers recruited in the last year and a half to G.E.’s new software center here, in the East Bay of San Francisco. The company plans to increase that work force of computer scientists and software developers to 400, and to invest $1 billion in the center by 2015. The buildup is part of G.E’s big bet on what it calls the “industrial Internet,” bringing digital intelligence to the physical world of industry as never before.

The concept of Internet-connected machines that collect data and communicate, often called the “Internet of Things,” has been around for years. Information technology companies, too, are pursuing this emerging field. I.B.M. has its “Smarter Planet” projects, while Cisco champions the “Internet of Everything.”

But G.E.’s effort, analysts say, shows that Internet-era technology is ready to sweep through the industrial economy much as the consumer Internet has transformed media, communications and advertising over the last decade.

In recent months, Ms. Paul has donned a hard hat and safety boots to study power plants. She has ridden on a rail locomotive and toured hospital wards. “Here, you get to work with things that touch people in so many ways,” she said. “That was a big draw.”

G.E. is the nation’s largest industrial company, a producer of aircraft engines, power plant turbines, rail locomotives and medical imaging equipment. It makes the heavy-duty machinery that transports people, heats homes and powers factories, and lets doctors diagnose life-threatening diseases.

G.E. resides in a different world from the consumer Internet. But the major technologies that animate Google and Facebook are also vital ingredients in the industrial Internet — tools from artificial intelligence, like machine-learning software, and vast streams of new data. In industry, the data flood comes mainly from smaller, more powerful and cheaper sensors on the equipment.

Smarter machines, for example, can alert their human handlers when they will need maintenance, before a breakdown. It is the equivalent of preventive and personalized care for equipment, with less downtime and more output.

“These technologies are really there now, in a way that is practical and economic,” said Mark M. Little, G.E.’s senior vice president for global research.

G.E.’s embrace of the industrial Internet is a long-term strategy. But if its optimism proves justified, the impact could be felt across the economy.

The outlook for technology-led economic growth is a subject of considerable debate. In a recent research paper, Robert J. Gordon, a prominent economist at Northwestern University, argues that the gains from computing and the Internet have petered out in the last eight years.

Since 2000, Mr. Gordon asserts, invention has focused mainly on consumer and communications technologies, including smartphones and tablet computers. Such devices, he writes, are “smaller, smarter and more capable, but do not fundamentally change labor productivity or the standard of living” in the way that electric lighting or the automobile did.

But others say such pessimism misses the next wave of technology. “The reason I think Bob Gordon is wrong is precisely because of the kind of thing G.E. is doing,” said Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at M.I.T.’s Center for Digital Business.

Today, G.E. is putting sensors on everything, be it a gas turbine or a hospital bed. The mission of the engineers in San Ramon is to design the software for gathering data, and the clever algorithms for sifting through it for cost savings and productivity gains. Across the industries it covers, G.E. estimates such efficiency opportunities at as much as $150 billion.

Some industrial Internet projects are already under way. First Wind, an owner and operator of 16 wind farms in America, is a G.E. customer for wind turbines. It has been experimenting with upgrades that add more sensors, controls and optimization software.

The new sensors measure temperature, wind speeds, location and pitch of the blades. They collect three to five times as much data as the sensors on turbines of a few years ago, said Paul Gaynor, chief executive of First Wind. The data is collected and analyzed by G.E. software, and the operation of each turbine can be tweaked for efficiency. For example, in very high winds, turbines across an entire farm are routinely shut down to prevent damage from rotating too fast. But more refined measurement of wind speeds might mean only a portion of the turbines need to be shut down. In wintry conditions, turbines can detect when they are icing up, and speed up or change pitch to knock off the ice.

Upgrades on 123 turbines on two wind farms have so far delivered a 3 percent increase in energy output, about 120 megawatt hours per turbine a year. That translates to $1.2 million in additional revenue a year from those two farms, Mr. Gaynor said.

“It’s not earthshaking, but it is meaningful,” he said. “These are real commercial investments for us that make economic sense now.”

For the last few years, G.E. and Mount Sinai Medical Center have been working on a project to optimize the operations of the 1,100-bed hospital in New York. Hospitals, in a sense, are factories of health care. The challenge for hospitals, especially as cost pressures tighten, is to treat more patients more efficiently, while improving the quality of care. Technology, said Wayne Keathley, president of Mount Sinai, can play a vital role.

At Mount Sinai, patients get a black plastic wristband with a location sensor and other information. Similar sensors are on beds and medical equipment. An important advantage, Mr. Keathley said, is to be able to see the daily flow of patients, physical assets and treatment as it unfolds.

But he said the real benefit was how the data could be used to automate and streamline operations and then make better decisions. For example, in a typical hospital, getting a patient who shows up in an emergency room into an assigned bed in a hospital ward can take several hours and phone calls.

At Mount Sinai, G.E. has worked on optimization and modeling software that enables admitting officers to see beds and patient movements throughout the hospital, to help them more efficiently match patients and beds. Beyond that, modeling software is beginning to make predictions about likely patient admission and discharge numbers over the next several hours, based on historical patterns at the hospital and other circumstances — say, in flu season.

The software, which Mount Sinai has been trying out in recent months, acts as an intelligent assistant to admitting officers. “It essentially says, ‘Hold off, your instinct is to give this bed to that guy, but there might be a better choice,’ ” Mr. Keathley explained.

At a hospital like Mount Sinai, G.E. estimates that the optimization and modeling technologies can translate into roughly 10,000 more patients treated a year, and $120 million in savings and additional revenue over several years.

The origins of G.E.’s industrial Internet strategy date back to meetings at the company’s headquarters in Fairfield, Conn., in May 2009. In the depths of the financial crisis, Jeffrey R. Immelt, G.E.’s chief executive, met with his senior staff to discuss long-term growth opportunities. The industrial Internet, they decided, built on G.E.’s strength in research and could be leveraged across its varied industrial businesses, adding to the company’s revenue in services, which reached $42 billion last year.

Now G.E. is trying to rally support for its vision from industry partners, academics, venture capitalists and start-ups. About 250 of them have been invited to a conference in San Francisco, sponsored by the company, on Thursday.

Mr. Immelt himself becomes involved in recruiting. His message, he says, is that if you want to have an effect on major societal challenges like improving health care, energy and transportation, consider G.E.

An early convert was William Ruh, who joined G.E. from Cisco, to become vice president in charge of the software center in San Ramon. And Mr. Ruh is taking the same message to high-tech recruits like Ms. Paul. “Here, they are working on things they can explain to their parents and grandparents,” he said. “It’s not a social network,” even if the G.E. projects share some of the same technology.

Cloud Computing

Salesforce Boss Tips His Hand on Company’s Big News

By Quentin Hardy September 19, 2014 4:25 pmSeptember 19, 2014 4:25 pm

Marc Benioff raised the bar against himself last week, accidentally announcing that his company would do something big in data analytic technology that customers access through so-called cloud computing.

It looks like he’s building a product that ordinary people can use for sophisticated analysis. The hazard is, a lot of his competitors are saying the same kind of thing. That means he’ll need to show real results, not just promises, to win credibility.

Last week Mr. Benioff, the founder and chief executive of Salesforce, a cloud computing software company for sales, software and marketing, posted a lighthearted tweet. It was a printout of the agenda for Dreamforce, his big annual conference that starts Oct. 13.

Top secret v1 of the sched for Dreamforce #df14. Doesn’t incl the 1,450 breakout sessions. Must bring food to attend. http://t.co/J3a7jO2Qoy

— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) 12 Sep 14

Several sharp-eyed analysts noted the photo included a talk on something called “analytics cloud,” which Salesforce officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to make their lives worse, confirm was not something they planned to be publicized ahead of time. Mr. Benioff pulled the tweet, replacing it with a joke about the gaffe.

Here is the new Top Secret 2014 Dreamforce Agenda. Bring a can of food to get in to #DF14. The best DF ever. http://t.co/fmjA6zV0dG

— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) 15 Sep 14

But of course on the Internet it’s hard to make anything really go away. By the most extraordinary coincidence, on Tuesday of this week IBM announced its “Watson Analytics Zone,” a cloud-based analysis service with a supposedly easy to use interface and a free version.

There are many others. In June, Microsoft announced it would be offering a toolkit of proprietary and open source analysis software, in an easy to use, drag and drop format. The company called it “comprehensive machine learning in the cloud.”

In February, Oracle purchased BlueKai, a cloud-based analytics platform. The company specialized in organizing customer and audience data for personalized marketing. On Sept. 28 Oracle is kicking off Openworld, its big trade show. Oracle may have been planning some analytics news out ahead of Dreamforce, but Mr. Benioff’s tweet makes that highly likely.

There are also a host of stand-alone analysis and visualization companies, including Tableau Software, Splunk and ClearStory. While targeting different parts of the corporation, all of these have their eye on making once-arcane analytics a mainstream, easy to use business. Pivotal, a software company started by data storage giant EMC, is another example.

What can Salesforce show? In June 2013 the company purchased, for an undisclosed sum, a company called EdgeSpring, which was headed by a former Salesforce executive and involved with artificial intelligence and data visualization technologies. Then last July Salesforce paid about $390 million for RelateIQ, which automates and cleans up data entry around things like customer interactions.

Photo

Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, revealed in a tweet something that maybe he shouldn’t have about the company’s analytics cloud.

Putting those two things together, Mr. Benioff’s marketing-driven company looks like it’s positing a quick way that all parts of a company can relate their customer transactions, such as service calls or bill pay, to customer care and upselling. Even applying machine learning to how customers handle corporate emails could produce new sales leads.

They are all making what Matt McIlwain, a partner at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle, calls “a data intelligence layer” that all tech companies in that count on holding a significant amount of corporate data will have to create for their clients. “They’re building application data servers, akin to application Web servers when the Internet was taking off,” he said. “What none of them are saying yet is who, from a product perspective, is actually ahead.”

Mr. Benioff has paid for a show that included Hilary Clinton and Bruno Mars, along with what Salesforce estimates will be 130,000 less famous attendees. Mr. Benioff immediately raised that estimate to 150,000.

At a show where analysts are hoping for signs Salesforce can keep growing, clearly Mr. Benioff is hoping for a “wow” in the now-hypertrendy world of big data analysis. Nothing makes that tougher, however, than saying you’ll have one.

Cloud Computing, Benioff, Marc, Cloud Computing, Data-Mining and Database Marketing, Salesforce.com Inc

Enterprise Computing

Tableau Software Helping Data Become More Visual

By Quentin Hardy June 13, 2014 7:00 amJune 13, 2014 7:00 am

Photo

A Tableau chart demonstrates that although reports of earthquakes are on the rise over the past several decades, this probably doesn’t mean there are more earthquakes.

Data point, meet data stream.

Tableau Software, which makes tools for visualizing all kind of digital information, is about to release a new version of its flagship product. That wouldn’t be a big deal in itself, but the features Tableau has added say a lot about what’s happening in the business world.

In the new version, Tableau 8.2, people are encouraged to shift from making individual maps, bar charts and fever lines that illustrate information. Instead, Tableau has added a series of narrative boxes that go above each chart; clicked through in order, the charts should be better at using different data points to prove an overall case.

For example, in a presentation on earthquakes, by clicking the arrow on the upper right we are led through an explanation that although reports of earthquakes have been on the rise over the last several decades, this probably doesn’t mean there are more earthquakes. What has happened is that we now have better tools for detecting quakes. Big quakes, which don’t need sensors to be felt, have been steady.

“We wanted to string together information to create storytelling capabilities,” said Francois Ajenstat, director of product management at Tableau. “We want people to be more curious, to explore the data.” Turning the numbers into a story, he said, should help that.

The charts can also automatically add new data as it streams in, which further illustrates why Tableau is making these changes: Data has moved from something that is painstakingly collected, stored and downloaded to something that more often automatically streams online.

As a result, we are starting to think of information in more dynamic ways, and need to visualize information as something that changes over time. That is a big change from a typical PowerPoint presentation, which presents data in more static ways.

At its best, this could mean we’ll move from seeing projections of data less as a single concept, which must be digested and then considered against another distinct point. Instead, it could be more of a fluid persuasion, based on lots of related information.

“There’s a lot of opportunity here,” said Mr. Ajenstat, whose company has sold visualization software to over 19,000 corporations. “Every single person in the world uses data now. Things like the quantified self will make them want to show that data better.”

Tableau is hardly alone in this shift to dynamic illustration. Stamen Design, a company based in San Francisco that has worked for Google and Facebook, increasingly uses animations of data points. A company called ClearStory Data helps people move through mountains of big data by interactive charts and maps. Even Microsoft offers animations as an addition to its PowerPoint product.

This may not necessarily mean that meetings are going to start being lots more fun, however, if old-style PowerPoint livens up. Knowing how to use tools still matters as much as having them, and, if anything, that could become an even bigger challenge as we gain more data sources.

Tableau already employs a cognitive psychologist to help with things like color choices in presentations. Category data, like different products, should have strongly contrasting colors, while related numerical data, like sales trends, should be presented in a continuum of gradual shades.

The company also offers tutorials on how to do this kind of presentation better, as well as showcasing a gallery where people have done interesting work using free versions of Tableau (so far these are the older, static kind of presentation). There are other visualization tutorials out on the web, as well.

Let us hope they are used, for the sake of all our future meetings.

Enterprise Computing, ClearStory Data, Data-Mining and Database Marketing, Enterprise Computing, Software, Stamen Design

One on One

A Conversation With Michael Harris, Author of ‘The End of Absence’

By Nick Bilton September 19, 2014 3:00 pmSeptember 19, 2014 3:00 pm

Photo

Michael Harris, author of “The End of Absence.”

Michael Harris, a former magazine editor, is the author of “The End of Absence,” a book that tries to remind people what life was like before the Internet.

Mr. Harris believes that we now live in an age that lacks solitude, and the time we once used to daydream silently is now filled with social media.

The following is an edited interview:

Q.

What made you decide to write this book?

A.

About two years ago, I was working as a magazine editor. Like a lot of people in magazines I had multiple monitors in front of me, with multiple things going on at once. Then one day, I just hit that overload moment. I was able to see that this wasn’t the life I wanted for myself. I wanted to engineer moments of absence back into my life.

Q.

So what did you do?

A.

I quit my job.

Q.

That’s a bold move. And did you just walk way from technology?

A.

Kind of. In order to understand where you are, you have to leave it. So I had to leave the future, basically. I took a vacation back to 1985 and tried to return to the digital reality of my youth. And for a while, I was absent from technology. I duct-taped my iPhone to my kitchen counter so it was like an old corded telephone.

Q.

So you didn’t use today’s technology at all. What was that like?

A.

It was crushingly lonely at first. I had withdrawal feelings for two or three weeks. Though I was quickly more present and I became the best boyfriend ever to my partner. Then, the moment I went back online, I did it in a whiplash way, and — quickly — I became the worst boyfriend I had ever been.

Q.

So what did you learn?

A.

It is not really about abstinence, it’s about trying to be conscious every day and of feeding myself a healthy media diet.

Q.

What stood out to you most when you were reporting this book?

A.

What I came away with the most was this sense of how we build our sense of self today. We have become so afraid of disconnecting that we are constantly diving into our phones. If we can break away from our phones where retweets and Facebook likes are our main approval systems, it becomes possible to develop our own approval systems. We break away from group think.

Q.

Who are you trying to reach with this message?

A.

Some people see an Internet book and they think it’s written for Internet people. But my book is for people who can remember a time before the Internet, but have since been subsumed by it. These people who are the translators of before and after.

Q.

And what about the next generation that didn’t grow up before the Internet?

A.

We should be teaching them how to use new media in schools. People don’t need help using online technologies as much as they need help seeing themselves use it. When we have a hyper-connection, or an overload of connection, we lose that sense of self. We become algorithmic versions of ourselves.

Q.

Don’t you think it’s too late to teach the next generation this?

A.

This is the dystopian “Matrix” of the future that is hard to shake. But the idealistic side of me believes we’re moving through a naive state and we will become more intelligent consumers of online media. I think it will eventually change.

Internet, One on One, Social, Books and Literature, Computers and the Internet, Harris, Michael, Social Media, The End of Absence (Book)

Daily Report: Ellison Retires as Oracle’s Chief

By The New York Times September 19, 2014 7:08 amSeptember 19, 2014 7:08 am

Photo

Silicon Valley just got a little less colorful.

Lawrence J. Ellison announced his retirement on Thursday as chief executive of Oracle, a company he founded in 1977 that has transformed the way businesses use technology and made him one of the world’s richest people, Quentin Hardy reports.

The move, effective immediately, is one of the last times that one of the tech industry’s first generation of celebrity executives is exiting the role of chief. Mr. Ellison’s generation of leaders took computers from the back offices of a few big institutions and into everyday life.

“By a lot of definitions, it’s the end of an era,” said Zach Nelson, chief executive of NetSuite, who worked at Oracle from 1992 to 1996. Mr. Ellison is the largest investor in NetSuite, a company that uses so-called cloud computing technology to manage things like retailing. “He is the longest-tenured founder and C.E.O. in the Valley.” Read more »

Ellison, Lawrence J, Hurd, Mark V, Oracle Corporation, Silicon Valley (Calif)

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Technology |NYT Now

Larry Ellison to Step Down as Oracle’s Chief

By QUENTIN HARDYSEPT. 18, 2014

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Lawrence J. Ellison in April. He was the chief executive with the highest total compensation in 2013.

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SAN FRANCISCO — Silicon Valley just got a little less colorful.

Lawrence J. Ellison on Thursday announced his retirement as chief executive of Oracle, a company he founded in 1977 that has transformed the way businesses use technology and made him one of the world’s richest people.

The move, effective immediately, is one of the last times that one of the tech industry’s first generation of celebrity executives is exiting the role of chief. Mr. Ellison’s generation of leaders took computers from the back offices of a few big institutions and into everyday life.

“By a lot of definitions, it’s the end of an era,” said Zach Nelson, chief executive of NetSuite, who worked at Oracle from 1992 to 1996. Mr. Ellison is the largest investor in NetSuite, a company that uses so-called cloud computing technology to manage things like retailing. “He is the longest-tenured founder and C.E.O. in the Valley.”

Mr. Ellison will become executive chairman and will continue to work on Oracle’s technology as its chief technology officer, the company said in a statement.

The current chairman, Jeffrey O. Henley, will become vice chairman. The chief executive job will be shared by Mark V. Hurd, now co-president, and Safra A. Catz, co-president and chief financial officer.

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Safra A. Catz and Mark V. Hurd will share the top job at Oracle.

Along with Bill Gates at Microsoft and Andy Grove at Intel, Mr. Ellison was one of the most important — and flamboyant — figures of tech’s early boom years.

His personal fortune, estimated by Bloomberg at about $46 billion, has helped Mr. Ellison become one of the technology industry’s most recognizable people. He has been married four times, and in 2013 his sailboat racing team, Oracle Team USA, won the America’s Cup for the second time in San Francisco.

A licensed pilot and a collector of exotic aircraft, he lives on an estate in Woodside, Calif., valued at over $100 million, and maintains several other properties, as well as a yacht nearly the length of a football field. He bought the 141-square-mile Hawaiian island of Lanai in 2012 for a reported $300 million and is turning the land into a technology-infused sustainable community.

Despite all this, Mr. Ellison does not seem ready to leave Oracle. The executive, who turned 70 last month, said during a conference call with financial analysts that he would “continue doing what I’ve been doing for the past several years,” including overseeing Oracle’s technology development, making final decisions on corporate matters and even appearing on quarterly earnings calls.

The two executives who are replacing him, Mr. Ellison said, “deserved the recognition.”

Oracle’s software and hardware are involved with the ways that companies and large organizations store and manage their data, as well as sophisticated applications for running things like international manufacturing and corporate financial systems.

It is unusual for big technology companies to split responsibilities at the top, but so far the two co-presidents have split much of running Oracle, a company with over 120,000 employees that is based in Redwood Shores, Calif. Mr. Hurd runs service and sales, while Ms. Catz oversees operations and finance.

Still, neither has Mr. Ellison’s technological expertise, nor is either likely to cast anything like the shadow that Mr. Ellison has over his 37-year career.

Born to an unwed mother in New York, Mr. Ellison was adopted by his aunt and uncle and grew up in a Jewish household in Chicago. He is known for a fascination with Japanese samurai culture.

He attended college but did not graduate, and he took a job in the computer business. An early project involved writing for the Central Intelligence Agency a database that could turn numbers into information. The idea, pioneered by IBM, was to relate one set of data to another, for example, a row of people’s names with a column of their birth dates. This, in turn, could be combined in a table of, say, all people born under the astrological sign Leo.

In 1977, working with Robert Miner and Edward Oates, Mr. Ellison created a company called Software Development Laboratories to sell their product, the relational database, to the government. Finishing the project ahead of schedule, they turned their database into software for businesses. After a second name change, the company became Oracle in 1982.

Mr. Ellison proved to be a master salesman as well as an able technologist with a good eye for managing talent, and Oracle became a dominant maker of software for businesses.

He was also adept at changing Oracle with the technological times. The company was born in an era when mainframe computers were giving way to minicomputers, and it managed to dominate business computing through the rise of personal computers, computer servers and the Internet. Once a foe of growth through acquisitions, over the last several years Mr. Ellison has spent billions getting Oracle into cloud computing, considered the next wave in technology.

Some analysts felt that Mr. Ellison’s passion for the business would keep him busy at Oracle, despite the nominal changes.

“He’s going to have Oracle’s C.E.O.s reporting to him. He’ll have product reporting to him, and product is what it’s all about,” said Bill Hostmann, a research analyst at Gartner. “He gets himself out of day-to-day operations, but is it really that different?”

Whatever the changes mean for Mr. Ellison, they are certainly a victory of sorts for Mr. Hurd, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard who resigned in 2010 after a sexual harassment investigation. HP concluded that Mr. Hurd had not violated its sexual harassment policy, but the executive and the HP board were at odds over other matters of conduct.

At the time, Mr. Ellison castigated the HP board, and he was quick to hire Mr. Hurd, who has moved to strengthen Oracle’s ties to big business.

On Thursday, Oracle reported first-quarter revenue of $8.6 billion and net income of $2.2 billion, or 48 cents a share. In its previous fiscal year, the company had total revenue of $38 billion and net income of almost $11 billion.

Using nonstandard accounting, analysts had expected earnings per share to be 64 cents, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. By that accounting, Oracle missed expectations by 2 cents.

Shares of Oracle declined about 2 percent in after-hours trading.

Mr. Ellison does not leave his company entirely untroubled. Besides continuing challenges in cloud computing, including acquisitions and new competition, the company faces a raft of new types of databases, first developed inside Google and Yahoo, that also threaten the dominance of the relational database.

Whatever troubles Oracle may face, they will not be Mr. Ellison’s.

In addition to NetSuite, he is also a major investor in Salesforce, another premier company in the next generation of business computing.

A version of this article appears in print on September 19, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Ellison Says He Is Done as Chief at Oracle. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Big Weekend for Apple May Herald Strong Demand for iPhone 6

By Brian X. Chen September 19, 2014 7:00 amSeptember 19, 2014 7:00 am

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Apple employees in Hamburg, Germany, cheered on a customer who made their store’s first iPhone 6 purchase on Friday.

For Apple, the unveiling of the new iPhones is like the debut of a blockbuster movie. Eager fans lined up to be the first to experience the new gadgets. And investors will closely watch first-weekend sales, in much the same way movie producers track box office numbers.

Expectations for this year’s batch of iPhones are generally high. The two new models — the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus — releasing Friday are significant upgrades, with much larger screens than past models. They cater to growing consumer demand for bigger screens on smartphones.

Most of the people lining up for new iPhones this weekend will probably be the Apple customers who are most enthusiastic about having the next shiny new iThing. But if history is a measure, first-weekend sales are a strong indicator of overall demand for Apple’s phones.

In 2012, Apple sold five million iPhone 5 smartphones in the first three days they were on sale. Then during the holiday quarter, the most lucrative period for Apple and tech companies in general, Apple sold about 48 million iPhones, compared with 37 million in the same period a year earlier.

Last year, Apple sold nine million of its iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C devices in the first three days they were on sale. Then over the holiday quarter, Apple sold 51 million of them.

So if the new iPhones with larger screens bring in big first-weekend numbers, that could indicate another immensely profitable holiday quarter for Apple. Analysts’ predictions, however, are mixed.

Maynard Um, a financial analyst for Wells Fargo, expects this weekend’s iPhone sales to be high. He said that based partly on the four million early online orders for the new iPhones, Apple should sell them in the “low teens” of millions, which would be much higher than first-weekend sales for past models.

Photo

An Apple customer buying two new iPhones in Manhattan on Friday morning.

Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein, has lower expectations, because the sales number will depend largely on how many iPhones Apple can make. He believes that Apple will sell from 7 million to 8 million new iPhones this weekend. Many people who ordered the devices online have reported estimated delivery times of up to a month. That suggests Apple may be facing tighter supply constraints for the new iPhones compared with past models, Mr. Sacconaghi said. He also noted that unlike last year’s iPhones, the latest ones will not initially go on sale in China, the largest smartphone market in the world.

Gene Munster, an analyst for Piper Jaffray, offered an even lower estimate of 6.5 million units. Like Mr. Sacconaghi, Mr. Munster said the number of iPhones that Apple can sell this weekend will depend on the number it can provide to retailers. And multiple signs point to a tight supply.

That, Mr. Munster said, is why first-weekend numbers may no longer be a reliable indicator of overall demand for iPhones. “The trouble is, they’ve gotten so big in so many retail points that the speed of which they fill up those retail points adds a lot of confusion to the opening number,” he said.

A clearer indicator of consumer demand at this point may be the four million early online orders for new iPhones. That number signals strong interest without ties to issues like limitations in supply, Mr. Munster said.

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Technology

Handset Makers Go Big on Smartphones

By BRIAN X. CHENFEB. 26, 2014

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A vendor selling phone cases in Guangzhou, China. Samsung’s bigger-screen smartphones have sold well in Asian markets.

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BARCELONA, Spain — Smartphones are going against one of the long-held rules in portable electronics, that smaller is better.

Year by year, computers, storage devices and music players have shed size and weight. And for decades, it has been happening with cellphones, too.

But now cellphones, and smartphones in particular, are going the way of the television: They just keep getting bigger and bigger. And people keep buying them.

The trend became even more apparent this week, as handset makers introduced a number of big-screen smartphones — from five diagonal inches to more than seven inches — at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain.

Samsung Electronics, Sony and the Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, among others, are all betting that consumers find images and video to be more vivid and engaging on a bigger screen, and that they may prefer to carry a larger phone instead of both a smartphone and a tablet.

The turn to bigger screens is a sharp departure from the dominant strategy of phone makers just a few years ago, when critics often and loudly mocked devices with big screens, joking that people would never buy them because they would not fit in the pockets of tight hipster jeans, or because people would not want to be seen clutching big devices to their skulls.

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The Rise of the Phablet

The Rise of the Phablet Molly Wood says bigger may be better when it comes to smartphones. Video Credit By Clare Major on Publish Date February 26, 2014.

But Samsung, the No. 1 phone maker in the world, pushed hard on phones with bigger screens, and the effort has paid off with millions of units sold, particularly in Asia.

Samsung has said its research found that people liked bigger-screen phones because they wanted a device that was good for handwriting, drawing and sharing notes. Asian-language speakers found it easier to write characters on a device using a pen rather than typing.

Now Samsung and other phone makers believe they will find a more receptive audience outside Asia, too, including in the United States and Europe.

“The cultural difference is not much,” said Lee Young-hee, head of marketing for Samsung’s mobile division. “Most people like the bigger display — it’s more and more welcomed by people around the world.”

Demand for big-screen phones is clearly strong. IDC, the research firm, estimates that at least 20 percent of all smartphones shipped last year in China, the largest smartphone market in the world, were five inches or larger. It predicts that number will balloon to 50 percent by 2017.

IDC also recently predicted that the growth of tablet sales would slow this year, partly because many people are gravitating toward larger phones and shifting away from smaller tablets.

“In some markets consumers are already making the choice to buy a large smartphone rather than buying a small tablet,” said Tom Mainelli, an IDC research director who follows tablets.

The most extreme example of a big phone announced this week came from Huawei, which introduced the MediaPad X1, a smartphone with a seven-inch screen, usually a size used in tablets. Because the device has a phone connection, Huawei calls it a phablet.

Roland Sladek, a vice president for international media affairs at Huawei, said the company found that people liked to spend at least an hour a day on mobile devices, and that has driven the demand for larger screens.

Other makers are pushing slightly smaller versions. Samsung this week introduced the Galaxy S5, its latest flagship smartphone, which, at 5.1 diagonal inches, is just a smidge bigger than its predecessor. Sony unveiled the Xperia Z2, a 5.2-incher. ZTE introduced the Grand Memo II, a six-inch phone; last month it introduced the Boost Max, a 5.7-incher that the company hopes will help it gain some traction among American buyers.

Photo

Huawei this week introduced the MediaPad X1, a smartphone with a seven-inch screen, usually a size used in tablets.

“In the U.S., people live in the big house, drive a big car and I think they’ll also like big phones,” Lixin Cheng, chief executive of ZTE’s American division, said in an interview.

He said that with software becoming more sophisticated and data networks speeding up for watching videos, people just want bigger screens.

Reception to big-screen phones is still relatively muted in the United States. The NPD Group, a research firm, said that out of the 121 million smartphones sold in the United States last year, only 3.3 million were 5.3 inches or larger, what NPD considers a phablet. In the fourth quarter, phablets represented only 4 percent of United States smartphone sales, NPD said.

That is largely because Apple, the No. 1 phone maker in the United States, has refrained from making a bigger iPhone. Some analysts say they are skeptical that large phones will take off in the United States unless Apple releases one.

Rumors abound that Apple is already planning to release at least one bigger iPhone this year. Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has said the company would consider releasing one only when the technology was good enough to meet Apple’s high standards for quality. Starting with the sixth-generation iPhone, Apple increased the size of the iPhone screen to four inches, up from 3.5 inches in the earlier models — still considerably smaller than many devices coming from its Asian rivals.

Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to comment for this article. But the global market data, along with the traction that Apple’s Asian competitors are gaining, show a clear opportunity for Apple to expand sales with a bigger iPhone, perhaps among affluent customers in China, where the company hopes to be a more dominant player.

Apple could position a bigger iPhone as a premium product, costing even more than its current high-end iPhone, said Milton Pedraza, chief executive of the Luxury Institute, a research firm. It could be marketed toward wealthy older customers who would enjoy a bigger screen because their vision is becoming worse and their fingers are not as dexterous, he said.

Laurence Isaac Balter, chief market strategist at Oracle Investment Research, which has clients that own Apple shares, thinks it is necessary for Apple to introduce a larger phone. It would clearly appeal to people who want just one device instead of both a phone and a tablet, he said.

“The fact that today many Apple users walk around with an iPad Mini and an iPhone is ludicrous,” Mr. Balter said. “In the end the manufacturer that delivers the one device that does it all will be the winner.”

Lenovo, the Chinese company that is buying the handset division of Motorola from Google, said that there seemed to be no turning back from supersizing smartphones in markets around the world.

Liu Jun, executive vice president for Lenovo’s mobile business group, said: “Simply put, more and more people are using their smartphones for entertainment, and people like viewing their photos, TV shows and movies on a larger hand-held screen.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 27, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Handset Makers Go Big on Smartphones. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Online Orders for New iPhones Exceed 4 Million

By Brian X. Chen September 15, 2014 3:31 pmSeptember 15, 2014 3:31 pm

Photo

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, announcing the new iPhones last week.

Early signs show that bigger iPhones are already leading to bigger sales for Apple.

The company on Monday said that early orders for the new iPhones — the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus — topped four million in the first 24 hours that they became available for order online over the weekend. That is double the number of early orders that came in for the iPhone 5 when it first went on sale online two years ago.

Both new iPhones unveiled last week are significantly larger than previous models. The iPhone 6 screen measures 4.7 inches diagonally and the iPhone 6 Plus screen measures 5.5 inches. The earlier iPhone 5S had a four-inch screen. The new phones arrive in stores on Friday.

By increasing the screen size of the iPhone, Apple was responding to a broad market trend: Consumers, especially those in China, are gravitating toward bigger and bigger screens on smartphones, just as they did with televisions.

Some financial analysts are optimistic that the early orders will amount to record-breaking iPhone sales over all. Maynard Um, an analyst for Wells Fargo, said that Apple was on track to meet expectations for sales of millions in the “low teens” range in the first weekend. That would be much higher than the nine million in first-weekend sales last year for the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C.

It can be easy to lose perspective on what those numbers mean. For comparison, Motorola Mobility shipped 6.5 millionÂ smartphones in the first three months of the year. Apple’s iPhones are expected to sell at least double that number in just their first weekend in stores.

Toni Sacconaghi, a financial analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein, said that although the recently introduced Apple Watch and mobile payments service may create new revenue streams for Apple, the company’s financial situation remains fundamentally unchanged: Its financial earnings still lean heavily on sales of the iPhone, which accounts for about 70 percent of Apple’s profit.

Still, it remains unclear, Mr. Sacconaghi said in an email, whether the new iPhones will ultimately help the company’s profits.

“Can Apple sustain iPhone margins in the face of higher costs on both new phones (larger screen, battery, more memory, better processor, etc.) and a price increase on only the larger offering?” he said.

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International Business

Release of iPhone 6 Delayed in China

By SHANSHAN WANG and NEIL GOUGHSEPT. 10, 2014

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BEIJING — Apple is facing a potential setback in China, one of its biggest and fastest-growing markets, after the much-anticipated introductions here of the new iPhone models were delayed.

On Wednesday, Apple told China’s three big state-owned mobile service providers that it would not release the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in mainland China on Sept. 19, when sales start elsewhere. The carriers had already booked advertising campaigns for the phones.

The move set off consternation among Apple’s partners in China, as well as with consumers who had been eagerly awaiting the introductions. Apple did not explain the delay, executives at the carriers said, but it appeared the phones had not received approval from Chinese regulators to go on sale.

The Chinese leadership and the state-controlled news media grew wary of foreign technology providers after revelations last year by Edward J. Snowden of American cyberspying. In July, CCTV, the main state-controlled television network, broadcast a report saying that the iPhone could represent a threat to China’s national security. The accusations were promptly rejected by Apple.

Photo

Apple introduced its iPhone 6, left, and larger iPhone 6 Plus on Tuesday.

Apple’s staff in China appeared to have been caught off-guard by the last-minute change of plans, with one executive saying on Wednesday that all of the company’s stores in Beijing and Shanghai had been preparing for sales to begin on Sept. 19. The executive spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Representatives of Apple told the Chinese mobile carriers only that “there are some details which are not ready,” according to a sales manager at China Telecom, who declined to be named. “Apple completely let us down without prior notice,” the manager added.

Apple declined to comment on Wednesday, as did representatives for China’s three main mobile carriers, which also include China Mobile and China Unicom. Apple’s Chinese website carried a statement saying only that the date of the iPhone 6’s availability would “be updated soon.”

News reports in China on Wednesday said the iPhone 6 had not yet been approved by the Ministry for Industry and Information Technology, which must sign off on the technology of devices like smartphones. No approval for the iPhone 6 could be found on the regulator’s website on Wednesday.

Initially, Apple tended to release new iPhones in the China market many months after they had been released elsewhere. That changed last year, when Apple started sales of the iPhone 5S and 5C models in China on Sept. 20, the same day as in the United States and other major markets.

In January, Apple began selling iPhones through China Mobile, the country’s dominant mobile carrier. It had previously reached sales agreements with the country’s other two biggest carriers.

Greater China — including the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan — is Apple’s fastest-growing major market and is the company’s third-biggest globally, after the Americas and Europe. Apple reported sales of $5.9 billion in greater China from April to June, a 28 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. By contrast, sales in other regions grew 1 to 6 percent. Greater China accounted for 16 percent of Apple’s total revenue in the three-month period, up from 13 percent a year earlier.

Apple was quick to respond when it was singled out by the CCTV report in July, which said an iPhone function that allowed a user’s location to be tracked could put state secrets at risk.

“We appreciate CCTV’s effort to help educate customers on a topic we think is very important,” Apple said in a statement responding to the report, rejecting accusations that the company tracks users’ locations. “We want to make sure all of our customers in China are clear about what we do and we don’t do when it comes to privacy and your personal data.”

“Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a back door in any of our products or services,” the statement said. “We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will. It’s something we feel very strongly about.”

Shanshan Wang reported from Beijing, and Neil Gough from Hong Kong.

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2014, on page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: IPhone 6 Sales Delayed in Big China Market. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Machine Learning

Apple and Amazon Take Baby Steps Toward Digital Sharing

By Molly Wood September 18, 2014 9:19 pmSeptember 18, 2014 9:19 pm

Photo

Apple's Family Sharing lets users share books, movies, music and apps with up to six members of your family who are logged in using their own iTunes accounts.

Quietly nestled in Apple’s new iOS 8 mobile operating system is a feature called Family Sharing.

It lets you share books, movies, music and apps that you’ve bought at iTunes, iBooks and the App Store with up to six members of your family who are logged in using their own iTunes accounts.

So if you bought a song, app or book you really like, and you want to share it with your spouse or child or maybe a sister, you can register their email addresses with Apple and enable limited sharing of digital media.

Amazon announced a similar feature on Wednesday called Family Library, although it applies only to digital books, apps, movies and TV, and audiobooks bought through Amazon or its Prime Instant Video service — not music. And the sharing is restricted to the accounts of two adults and four children.

In theory, these services sound like a great benefit because if you’re an Apple user you don’t have to let your family log in with your iTunes account.

And, at least with Apple’s service, you can share an MP3 with someone without worrying that you’re somehow infringing copyright by doing so.

But this seemingly generous allowance could also be viewed as a limit that’s a result of rigid copyright laws and licensing restrictions.

In the physical world, you can share a book or DVD or CD that you bought with as many friends and family as you like. You can even sell those items if you want, thanks to the first sale doctrine.

But digital media has been excluded from that doctrine, because, essentially, when you buy a digital song or movie or book, you’re being granted a license to use that media, but you don’t actually own it.

As a result, there are far more restrictions on what you can do with an MP3 than on what you can do with a CD.

The music, movie, TV and book industries have historically been resistant to anything that resembled the sharing of the digital versions of their goods. One recent example was Amazon’s attempt to let customers lend their digital books to friends for a limited time.

The lending process itself is byzantine: The recipient has it for just 14 days, finding the options to loan and return books is difficult, and that’s assuming you can find a title that is actually available to lend out.

Realistically, if you buy a Kindle book and then tell a friend how much you loved it, you’re either telling them to buy it themselves or offering to buy a gift certificate.

So, while Family Sharing and Family Library seem like a victory at first, “to me, this is really a failure of our copyright law,” said Corynne McSherry, who heads intellectual property policy research at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“It presupposes that the content owners should be able to have that kind of control over what they buy,” she said. “Copyright law isn’t changing with our times, because what doesn’t change is that people want to be able to give someone a copy of a book or song that they legally bought.”

“The fact is,” Ms. McSherry said, “that we need Amazon or Apple to have elaborate license agreements in order to make it possible for their customers to be able to do what they should be able to do anyway.”

The Family Sharing and Family Library features are already far more restrictive than, obviously, handing someone a book or CD.

In the short term, it will indeed be nice to be able to share a digital book or song with a partner or family member. But don’t lose sight of the fact that you’re being allowed to do so, with the assumption that the alternative would have made you a pirate.

And these new services also let Apple and Amazon track the way you and your family use and consume media — what you read, watch, listen to and download. It may be personal sharing, but it’s not all that private.

The world of digital media still hasn’t caught up to the simplicity of the physical world; this is a tiny step, but it’s still not quite enough.

Machine Learning, Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Copyrights and Copyright Violations, E-Books and Readers, iTunes, Music

Security

Home Depot Says Data From 56 Million Cards Was Taken in Breach

By Nicole Perlroth September 18, 2014 6:00 pmSeptember 18, 2014 6:00 pm

Photo

Home Depot said that hackers breached the company’s cash register systems in its United States and Canadian stores in April.

Updated, 8:21 p.m. | SAN FRANCISCO — Home Depot said on Thursday that the account information of 56 million cardholders was compromised in what is the largest known breach of a retail company’s computer network.

Home Depot said hackers breached the company’s cash register systems in its United States and Canadian stores in April. The hackers, the company said, used custom malware that was designed to evade traditional security tools and had not been previously used in other cyberattacks. The company said that it had since removed infected registers and closed off the hackers’ mode of entry and that it had been using new encryption systems in its American and Canadian stores for the last nine months.

Home Depot has been scrambling to investigate the breach since it became public on Sept. 8. It is unclear how the company missed signs of the attack after a breach last year at Target compromised 40 million cardholders’ information, and after the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security warned retailers in July that their systems were potentially compromised.

The company said its encryption project began in January but was not completed in its American stores until Saturday. It said encryption in its Canadian stores would not be completed until 2015.

Home Depot’s attack went unnoticed for five months. During that time, hackers found an entry into the company’s network, gained access to its in-store payment systems and installed malware to take payment data off the memory of the company’s registers during processing. The hackers then sent that data back to their servers abroad.

Home Depot said it would offer free identity protection and credit monitoring services to any customer who had used a credit or debit card at affected stores.

“We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and anxiety this has caused, and want to reassure them that they will not be liable for fraudulent charges,” Frank Blake, Home Depot’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Security experts and law enforcement say that hackers are actively scanning merchants’ networks for ways to gain remote access to their systems. The Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service recently estimated that more than 1,000 businesses in the United States had been infected with malware programmed to siphon payment card details from cash registers. They believed that many of these businesses did not know they were sharing customers’ credit card information.

Besides Home Depot and Target, companies that have been attacked by hackers include UPS, Goodwill, P. F. Chang’s, Sally Beauty, Michael’s and Neiman Marcus.

The only way to thwart such attacks, security experts say, is for merchants to adopt a new chip-based payment standard known as E.M.V., short for Europay MasterCard and Visa, the technology’s first backers. The technology makes it more difficult for criminals to use stolen account information to make purchases or create counterfeit cards.

Home Depot said that moving to E.M.V. required writing tens of thousands of lines of new software code and deploying it to 85,000 new PIN pads in its stores. It said on Thursday that E.M.V. already existed in its Canadian stores but would not be introduced in its United States stores until the end of the year. Credit card companies have set an October 2015 deadline for American retailers to upgrade their payment systems.

A version of this article appears in print on 09/19/2014, on page B3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Home Depot Confirms Largest Retail Data Breach.

Security, Blake, Frank, Computer Security, Cyberattacks and Hackers, Home Depot Inc

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Business Day

Target Missed Signs of a Data Breach

By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS and NICOLE PERLROTHMARCH 13, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

Target acknowledged on Thursday that its computer security system had alerted it to suspicious activity after hackers infiltrated its network last year, but the company ultimately decided to ignore it, allowing what would become one of the largest data breaches ever recorded to proceed without a hitch.

“With the benefit of hindsight, we are investigating whether, if different judgments had been made, the outcome may have been different,” Molly Snyder, a spokeswoman for Target, said in a statement.

Before the attack, Target installed security software designed by FireEye, a security firm based in Milpitas, Calif., according to two researchers who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing client confidentiality.

FireEye’s software, as it turns out, worked as designed. It isolates incoming web traffic and looks for suspicious activity. In Target’s case, the software sounded multiple alarms as criminals uploaded tools to siphon out customers’ credit and personal data.

“Like any large company, each week at Target there are a vast number of technical events that take place and are logged,” Ms. Snyder said. “Through our investigation, we learned that after these criminals entered our network, a small amount of their activity was logged and surfaced to our team. That activity was evaluated and acted upon.

“Based on their interpretation and evaluation of that activity, the team determined that it did not warrant immediate follow-up,” she said.

On Dec. 19, in the final days of the holiday shopping season, Target confirmed publicly that credit and debit card information for 40 million of its customers had been compromised. A few weeks later, the company said an additional trove of personal information, like email and mailing addresses, from some 70 million people had been exposed as well.

The company has said that when the news became public, its traffic and sales took an immediate and substantive hit, from which it has yet to fully recover. The company spent $61 million related to the breach in the fourth quarter, and executives have said they expect those charges to continue.

The security alerts were first reported by Bloomberg Businessweek.

Since the data theft at Target became public, several other retailers have acknowledged breaches of their own, including Neiman Marcus and the arts and crafts store Michaels. Those two breaches are believed to have come from the same Eastern European group that attacked Target, and may have attacked as many as six other retailers.

Last week, Beth M. Jacob, Target’s most senior technology executive, resigned from the company in what appeared to be a response to the breach and the company’s continuing investigation. She was the first high-level executive to leave after the attacks.

A version of this article appears in print on March 14, 2014, on page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: Target Missed Signs of a Data Breach. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Security NYT NOW

U.S. Finds ‘Backoff’ Hacker Tool Is Widespread

By Nicole Perlroth August 22, 2014 2:35 pmAugust 22, 2014 2:35 pm

Photo

In December, 40 million credit card numbers and 70 million addresses, phone numbers and additional pieces of personal information were stolen from the retail giant Target.

More than 1,000 American businesses have been affected by the cyberattack that hit the in-store cash register systems at Target, Supervalu and most recently UPS Stores, the Department of Homeland Security said in an advisory released on Friday.

The attacks were much more pervasive than previously reported, the advisory said, and hackers were pilfering the data of millions of payment cards from American consumers without companies knowing about it. The breadth of the breaches, once considered limited to a handful of businesses, underscored the vulnerability of payment systems widely used by retail stores across the country.

On July 31, Homeland Security, along with the Secret Service, the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center and their partners in the security industry, warned companies to check their in-store cash register systems for a malware package that security experts called Backoff after a word that appeared in its code. Until that point, Backoff malware and variations of it were undetectable by antivirus products.

Since then, seven companies that sell and manage in-store cash register systems have confirmed to government officials that they each had multiple clients affected, the government said Friday. Some of those clients, like UPS and Supervalu, have stepped forward, but most have not.

In all, the Secret Service estimated that more than 1,000 American businesses had been affected.

According to the Secret Service, criminals are actively scanning corporate systems for remote access opportunities — a vendor with remote access to a company’s systems, for example, or employees with the ability to work remotely — and then deploying computers to guess user names and passwords at high speeds until they find a working combination.

The hackers use those footholds to crawl through corporate networks until they gain access to the in-store cash register systems. From there, criminals collect payment card data off the cash register systems and send it back to their servers abroad.

Last year, in the largest known breach against a retailer’s payment system, hackers invaded Target for weeks without being detected. The hackers’ malware stole customers’ data directly off the magnetic stripes of credit and debit cards used by tens of millions of shoppers. Gregg Steinhafel, Target’s chief executive, and Beth M. Jacob, the company’s chief information officer, stepped down from their positions, largely because of the breach.

The Target breach exposed problems with the magnetic stripes on credit cards. Since then, banks and companies have taken a renewed interest in a chip-based smart card standard known as E.M.V., short for Europay-MasterCard-Visa, the technology’s first backers. Credit card companies have set an October 2015 deadline for American retailers to upgrade their payment systems.

“The weakness is the magnetic stripe,” said Avivah Litan, a security analyst for Gartner Research. “I can buy a mag stripe reader on eBay and easily read all the data from your credit card. It’s an antiquated technology from the ’60s.”

E.M.V. makes counterfeiting far more difficult than magnetic stripe cards, but analysts say they believe that most retailers will not meet the October 2015 deadline because of the cost to upgrade their terminals — from $500 to $1,000 per terminal, according to Javelin Strategy & Research.

With cash register malware rampant, however, they may have no choice.

Millions of American consumers’ payment card details are being sold on the black market, many of them taken from American companies that do not know their systems have been breached.

Unless companies search for Backoff on their systems, it can be difficult to identify. The Homeland Security report released on Friday recommends that companies contact their service providers, antivirus vendors and cash register system vendors to assess whether they have been compromised or are vulnerable to attack.

In its advisory in July, the Secret Service and Homeland Security recommended that companies limit the number of vendors with access to their internal network; require long, complex passwords that cannot easily be cracked by a computer; and lock employees and vendors out of their accounts after multiple login requests.

The agencies recommended that companies segregate crucial systems, like their cash registers, from corporate networks and install so-called two-factor authentication, which is a method that requires employees to enter a second, one-time password in addition to their usual credentials.

They also suggested that companies encrypt customers’ data from the moment their cards are swiped in the store, log all network activity and deploy security software that can alert technicians to unusual activity, like a cash register in a UPS Store in Tennessee communicating with a server in Russia.

Mike Isaac contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on 08/23/2014, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: U.S. Finds Hacker Tool Widespread.

Security, Cyberattacks and Hackers, Homeland Security Department, Secret Service, SUPERVALU INC, Target Corporation, United Parcel Service Inc

Policy

Net Neutrality Comments to F.C.C. Overwhelmingly One-Sided, Study Says

By Edward Wyatt September 18, 2014 4:36 pmSeptember 18, 2014 4:36 pm

WASHINGTON – More than 3.7 million comments poured into the Federal Communications Commission over the four months that it was seeking public input on its proposal for “Promoting and Protecting the Open Internet,” also known as net neutrality.

That demolished the previous record of 1.4 million comments – mostly complaints – that were filed after Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the halftime performance at the Super Bowl in 2004.

As in that case, a large percentage of the net neutrality comments came in the guise of form letters – but a smaller proportion than might be expected.

A study by the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for government transparency, found that at least 60 percent of a set of 800,000 net neutrality comments released in bulk by the F.C.C. were form letters written by organized campaigns. The foundation said that was “actually a lower percentage than is common for high-volume regulatory dockets.”

In highly debated federal rule-making processes like those involving the Keystone pipeline or the Affordable Care Act, often more than 80 percent of comments come in form-letter format.

“Typically we see a rule-making dominated by a few organized letter-writing campaigns,” said Andrew Pendleton, who co-wrote the Sunlight study with Bob Lannon. “A lot of people in this instance wrote a comment for themselves,” he said, probably spurred by the debate’s seeping into mass media, as net neutrality did with a segment on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.”

Over all, the comments studied were overwhelmingly one-sided. Less than 1 percent were clearly opposed to net neutrality. And about 5 percent had anti-regulation messages, although those included seemingly contradictory camps, one calling for consumer freedom and another advocating freedom for Internet service providers.

The F.C.C. data studied by the foundation was released on Aug. 5, two weeks after the initial deadline for comments. There was a second comment period, however, which ended Monday, and there is a good chance that a greater portion of anti-net-neutrality comments came in as organizers opposed to new regulations learned something from the efforts of their rivals.

There are, of course, gray areas in any such analysis. “It’s important to note,” the authors said, that while 1 percent of the input was clearly opposed to net neutrality, “the remaining 99 percent of comments include both comments supporting net neutrality and comments with no clear position on net neutrality, such as the full text of ‘War and Peace.’ ”

Federal Communications Commission, Net Neutrality, Regulation and Deregulation of Industry

State of the Art NYT NOW

Upgrading to iOS 8 on an Old Phone? Prepare for Trouble, but Do It Anyway

By Farhad Manjoo September 18, 2014 3:09 pmSeptember 18, 2014 3:09 pm

Photo

A new feature of iOS 8, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, is a keyboard with predictive typing suggestions.

Do you have an old iPhone or iPad? Have you been planning on upgrading to iOS 8, Apple’s newest operating system, which was made available this week? Are you excited about the switch, fancying a free way to have a better-looking interface with new features?

Well, tamp down your expectations. Turn your smile upside down. Your old phone or tablet probably isn’t going to run Apple’s latest operating system nearly as well as on the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. If you upgrade on an old iPhone, it might become slightly slower and more cumbersome. You might notice some frustrating visual stuttering, a poor old dog straining under the stress of learning new tricks.

And yet, despite all that: you should probably upgrade anyway.

This advice mainly concerns people who have the iPhone 4S or the iPad 2, the phone and tablet Apple released in 2011. These are the oldest devices that iOS 8 runs on — if you have anything older, you can’t upgrade anyway.

Upgrading old devices involves a cost-benefit analysis. Many of the headline benefits to iOS 8 are nice but not totally necessary. The operating system has a few better-designed apps, a new keyboard with typing suggestions, and Family Sharing, a way to legally share songs and movies between a small number of devices. The new OS also signals a new, more open Apple — it gives developers more access to create more powerful apps in the operating system, including support for third-party keyboards and password managers that rely on the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. Of course, if you have an iPhone 5 or 4S, you don’t even have a fingerprint scanner, so that’s no big deal to you.

What are the costs of upgrading? Performance. Ars Technica installed iOS 8 on the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2, and in both cases it found that apps opened up slightly more slowly under the new OS. It took about 2 seconds instead of 1 to open up Safari on a 4S running iOS 8 rather than 7. On the iPad 2, the Mail app took about a second longer to open on iOS 8 versus iOS 7. These may sound like small delays, but remember that they’ll add up — a second here and there as you move around the OS turns into valuable minutes of your day.

The problem isn’t just time, but also how the device feels as it chugs through your commands. Ars says that on both the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 running iOS 8, the interface responded less than smoothly to commands. “Screen rotation is stuttery, and any time some part of the OS needs to slide into place (text centering, apps minimizing), it can’t do it smoothly,” the site says of the iPad 2. Anandtech, which conducts deeply technical reviews of new hardware and software, said that on an iPad 3 — that is, not even the oldest Apple tablet that will run iOS 8 — “the software feels like it’s not even finished.”

All these sites come down somewhere in the middle on the question of upgrading. Ars says that you should upgrade to iOS 8 if you have an iPhone 4S, but not if you have an iPad. Anandtech recommends against upgrading for older tablets.

But there’s one feature that that I think sways the calculation in favor of the new OS: iOS 8 is more secure than iOS 7, especially from the prying eyes of authorities. Apple says that when you set a passcode on devices running iOS 8, the phone encrypts your data with a key that Apple has no access to. This means that your photos, texts, email, contacts, call history and other data can’t be accessed even if Apple is served with a warrant to provide that data. Security experts say that Apple has addressed several other important software vulnerabilities in iOS 8.

This does not mean your iOS 8 device is totally secure from the government — there are other ways to get at your data, especially if someone has access to the computer with which you sync your phone or tablet — but it does represent a big leap forward in security and privacy. Big enough, I think, to switch — even if everything won’t go smoothly.

Mobile, State of the Art, Apple Inc, iOS (Operating System), iPad, iPhone, Mobile Applications

Cloud Computing

Twilio to Send Multimedia to Phones

By Quentin Hardy September 18, 2014 11:00 amSeptember 18, 2014 11:00 am

Photo

“We believe photos and videos will be ubiquitous,” said Jeff Lawson, Twilio’s co-founder and chief executive.

The cloud just covered a little more of the old tech business.

Twilio, a company that offers cheap voice and short messaging services to mobile phones via Amazon Web Services, said on Thursday that it would offer businesses and software developers the ability to send multimedia.

Twilio currently enables things like call centers at an average price of a penny a minute. The notifications from Uber that a driver is coming, or Coca-Cola’s dispatches to its technicians are both run via Twilio. During recent protests on net neutrality, Twilio handled about 50,000 calls to members of Congress.

The new capability means that an airline could send a boarding pass to a phone. Other applications could include providing a photograph of a service worker on his way to a job, for higher security; displaying a product or a video of a vacation home to a phone; or sending coupons or loyalty cards to people after they spend a certain amount or enter a mall.

“This is going to create experiences that make using smartphones even more attractive,” said Jeff Lawson, Twilio’s co-founder and chief executive. “We believe photos and videos will be ubiquitous.”

That might explain how Twilio was able to persuade United States phone networks to carry its traffic. Twilio may perform its software magic inside Amazon Web Services, but it still has to get permission from big carriers like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile to carry the traffic to and from consumer devices.

“We’re helping the carriers give their subscribers the services they want,” Mr. Lawson said. “If Uber doesn’t work on your phone by now, it’s bad.” Put another way, the carriers may have to forsake charging a lot for every service, so as to keep customers on their expensive phone contracts.

The new video and image service works via MMS, which stands for multimedia messaging service. The older text services on Twilio worked on a different short message service, or SMS, system.

MMS services are currently available on phone networks, but can take months to procure and deploy, and cost at least $10,000 annually. Twilio charges people $1 a phone number, and then at most a couple of cents a message.

It can, on its debut, potentially work on millions of United States and Canadian phone numbers. What developers may do with the new capability will probably start to be known within a couple of months.

Mr. Lawson said Twilio would try to expand the network internationally, much the way its phone and text services are currently used. With 1,200 carriers globally, he acknowledged, this could take awhile.

Correction: September 18, 2014

An earlier version of this post incorrectly attributed a capability to Twilio. It uses multimedia messaging service to send video; it does not send video directly.

Cloud Computing, Amazon.com Inc, Cloud Computing, Lawson, Jeff, Twilio Inc

When Your App Is in the Cloud

By Quentin Hardy February 1, 2014 9:00 amFebruary 1, 2014 9:00 am

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Jeff Lawson, the co-founder of Twilio, a cloud-based company that facilitates communications services.

The telecommunications services business, worth about $1 trillion in annual, global sales, is starting to feel the effects of cloud computing, one of this era’s most important advances in high tech.

For the most part, the gear for telecom work comes from incumbents like Cisco or Avaya.

The more software-based alternatives for what is called “unified communications” are things like Microsoft’s Lync.

The telecom gear business has not been touched by the crushing economics of software delivered via cloud computing, the kind of low-price, high-versatility product that has caused so many problems for companies making business software, and for many traditional high-cost computer hardware makers.

But that’s starting to change.

Twilio is a cloud-based business that produces the means to create any number of communications services, primarily through servers it rents at Amazon Web Services. According to Jeff Lawson, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, the company has provisioned “millions and millions” of phone numbers in over 40 countries. Revenue last year was about $50 million, more than double the year before, he said.

Twilio generally sits in the background while larger companies use its technology to quickly create things like customer call centers, collaborative communications networks or text and image-messaging functions.

Another company, called Tropo, also allows for faster deployment of communications applications, while others create cloud-based call centers. Plivo may be Twilio’s most direct competitor, with cloud-based voice services that can be added to apps. Netflix, among others, uses Plivo for its internal phone system.

When Uber texts clients to tell them their cab is five minutes away, or eHarmony links two strangers interested in dating, Twilio is in the background.

“Our average selling price is one penny a minute, versus multimillion-dollar boxes from the legacy equipment providers,” Mr. Lawson said.

As with much of the cloud business, the initial attraction is making things cheaper and faster to do. Mr. Lawson said Twilio beats the incumbents by 90 percent or more on both counts, but it’s hard to judge that claim independently (though even 50 percent would be impressive). A Cisco spokesman said the two products are not directly comparable, since Cisco’s product can do many more things.

What usually happens next with these cloud products, however, is where it gets more interesting.

Software developers find new things they can do, once factors like speed and cost become less limiting. Think of cognitive computing and supercomputing as a service, or Snapchat, the disappearing image-sharing business hosted on Google’s computers.

Put that capability on cloud-based applications, and you are likely to get a large number of new communications services.

Billing applications can have a feature that puts you directly in touch with a person if you want to dispute a charge, and the person on the other end of the call instantly sees the same charge. People at a sports event have had their season tickets scanned, and by linking that information to their mobile numbers, promotions for, perhaps, two beers for the price of one might be texted to their phones during the game. (How creepy this might seem is for society to work out.)

“Every company wants to do things with less friction and more customer awareness,” Mr. Lawson said. “Communications companies have historically worked on a development cycle of decades – the cloud takes that to weeks.”

Down the road, the most likely competition for Twilio is Google, Amazon or another cloud provider that wants to offer its own communications applications. Google has email, texting and video, but so far these are pretty diffuse offerings, and Google’s cloud service has offered ways for developers to tie into Twilio.

Amazon Web Services, which seems to be in an ever-increasing number of services and features, so far seems content to have Twilio inside its system, as one more thing developers on Amazon can use. They could partner with it, build their own version or copy it. What is unlikely to happen is for the phenomenon to stop.

Cloud Computing, Internet, Amazon.com Inc, Cloud Computing, Telephones and Telecommunications, Twilio Inc

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News Corp. and Google in a War of Words

By Mark Scott September 18, 2014 7:42 amSeptember 18, 2014 7:42 am

LONDON – Is Google a pirate? Does Rupert Murdoch really love hamsters?

Those questions were at the center of a heated war of words on Thursday after News Corporation accused Google of being “a platform for piracy and the spread of malicious networks, all while driving more traffic and online advertising dollars to Google.”

And Google’s response? “Phew, what a scorcher. Murdoch accuses Google of eating his hamster!”

Confused? Maybe you need to Google it.

But for many Britons, at least, the allusion to a 1986 headline in the Murdoch tabloid The Sun was instantly recognizable: â€œFreddie Starr Ate My Hamsterâ€�

The article claimed that Mr. Starr had eaten a pet, although the British entertainer has repeatedly denied the episode ever took place.

Photo

The cover of The Sun, a Murdoch tabloid, on March 13, 1986.

By riffing on one of Britain’s most famous tabloid headlines, Google’s tongue-in-cheek response to News Corporation’s accusations was an attempt to play down an antitrust case that the search engine is battling in Europe.

In a letter to the departing European antitrust chief, Joaquín Almunia, News Corporation, whose publications include The Wall Street Journal and The Times of London, said that it was against the proposed antitrust settlement between European authorities and Google.

“The company has evolved from a wonderfully feisty, creative Silicon Valley start-up to a vast, powerful, often unaccountable bureaucracy,” Robert Thomson, News Corporation’s chief executive, said in a letter to the European Commission. “This development reflects the exponential evolution from a company that is open to one that is selectively closed and willing to exploit its dominant market position to stifle competition.”

The settlement, which the European Commission said this month did not go far enough to resolve antitrust concerns, was an effort to give Google’s rivals greater prominence in search engine results.

The name-calling between News Corporation and Google follows criticism from several European publishers that say the search engine holds too much power over how information is found online.

Publishers including Lagardère Active of France and search engines including Microsoft, whose Bing product holds a small market share in Europe, have demanded that Europe’s antitrust authorities rethink the proposed settlement with Google that has been in the works for five years.

“We are afraid of Google,” Mathias Döpfner, chief executive of Axel Springer, a German publishing giant, said in a letter to Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, earlier this year. “I must state this very clearly and frankly, because few of my colleagues dare do so publicly.”

While other publishers have taken an active – and vocal – role in the antitrust case, News Corporation had been relatively quiet, until now. In his letter, Mr. Thomson said Google routinely altered search engine results for its own benefit and permitted copyright abuse that did not respect publishers’ online rights.

Not everyone, however, agreed with News Corporation. Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at the City University of New York, said the publishers were trying to lobby governments to “get unfair advantage on Google because, simply put, they have failed in the marketplace on their own.”

“The Internet has defeated them. They are crying uncle,” Mr. Jarvis added in a blog post.

Almunia, Joaquin, Antitrust Laws and Competition Issues, Computers and the Internet, Europe, European Commission, Google Inc, London (England), Murdoch, Rupert, News Corporation, Search Engines, Thomson, Robert J

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Pressure Grows on E.U. Regulator to Rethink Google Settlement

By JAMES KANTERJULY 23, 2014

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Without a settlement, Google could be fined up to 10 percent of its nearly $6 billion in annual global sales.

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BRUSSELS — During the past five years, Google has taken a gingerly approach to fighting its antitrust battles in the European Union, nurturing a working relationship with Joaquín Almunia, the bloc’s competition commissioner, and patiently presenting him with three sets of proposals to settle antitrust complaints that it favored its own business over that of rivals in search results.

But lately pressure has mounted on Mr. Almunia to delay — or even jettison — parts of a carefully crafted antitrust settlement. It is a worrisome development for Google that could spin out an investigation into its search engine and advertising business for many years to come in Europe, where attitudes to American technology giants have hardened as concerns about their market power and use of private information have mushroomed.

“The political demands in Europe for scalps from Google is enormous, including in the area of antitrust enforcement,” said Nicolas Petit, a law professor at the University of Liège in Belgium.

Mr. Almunia is expected to make a final decision on the Google case in September. He could still complete the provisional deal he announced in February and ignore the flurry of new complaints that have landed on his desk in recent months. But a more aggressive decision by Mr. Almunia, derailing that proposed settlement, would be far from a complete surprise.

Without a settlement, Google could be fined up to 10 percent of its nearly $6 billion in annual global sales. Fines have never gone that high, but such penalties look set to rise.

Asked about opposition to the settlement, including from consumer groups and even Mr. Almunia’s colleagues, Google pointed to a comment by a senior executive welcoming the provisional deal. The company had “offered to make significant changes to the way Google operates in Europe,” Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, said in February after the settlement announcement.

For months, rivals of Google — including longstanding complainants like Microsoft — and those not associated with Microsoft’s campaign, like Yelp, an American company that lets people find and review local services like restaurants, plumbers or pharmacies — have complained that the current deal will do very little to make the online search market more competitive.

Publishing companies like Lagardère Active in France and Axel Springer in Germany also have weighed in against the proposed settlement. The case has even become an issue in how to decide the makeup of the next European Commission, the bureaucracy that enforces Europe’s antitrust policy.

Looming over Mr. Almunia are hearings that his successor will face at the European Parliament. Many lawmakers want tougher action against Google rather than a five-year deal that would forestall scrutiny of important areas of Google’s business until the end of the decade. That could add to pressure on Mr. Almunia to abandon the settlement and allow his successor to make a decision.

Ramon Tremosa i Balcells, a member of the Parliament from Catalonia who sits on the Parliament’s powerful economics and monetary affairs committee, said his message to Mr. Almunia’s successor on the case was: “You cannot close this for some years.”

The “fast evolution” in search, particularly in mobile search, obliged Mr. Almunia’s successor “to get answers now to the worries that European enterprises and Yelp from the United States are also raising in this case,” he said.

An important factor pushing Mr. Almunia to consider reversing course involves perceived shortcomings of a proposed settlement that, at its heart, was intended to give rivals more prominence on the search page. Google has already gone much further with its concessions in Europe than in a similar case where the Federal Trade Commission in the United States decided early last year that the company had not broken antitrust laws.

But according to a summary of a study testing the deal that Yelp showed a variety of European Commission officials beginning in March, and that was made available this week by a person who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the information still was not public, the so-called display remedy would do very little to address a crucial problem identified by Mr. Almunia during his investigation: Google’s ability to give its services preferential treatment.

Yelp said it first responded to investigative inquiries from the European Commission in early 2011, making the company a longstanding participant in the proceedings. In the examples from Yelp’s evidence shared with the commission this year, the current deal would still steer about half of users’ clicks to areas of a search page managed by Google Plus Local, a direct Yelp competitor, while less than 2 percent of clicks would go to the system proposed by Mr. Almunia, according to the Yelp study.

And according to Yelp’s formal complaint, filed May 27, consumers would still be highly unlikely to get better information on what they are looking for as a result of the settlement.

Google was making “it more difficult to find and access information located on competitive properties like Yelp even when those properties feature information that is more relevant to consumers than Google’s own,” the complaint said.

To solve the issue, Yelp called on the regulators to pressure Google to use the results from Yelp or others like TripAdvisor to power Google’s specialized search products, like Google Plus Local, when those results do a better job of helping users pinpoint local services on maps and listings.

In its private meetings with the commission during the spring, Yelp showed that a search powered by Google’s own organic product, rather than Google Plus Local, determined that TripAdvisor would return options for seven hotels with 3,192 user reviews for the query “hotels Bilbao Spain.”

By comparison, Google Plus Local would return seven hotels but with just 113 reviews.

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Daily Report: Space Race Between Billionaires Heats Up as Bezos Venture Seeks Foothold

By The New York Times September 18, 2014 6:35 amSeptember 18, 2014 6:35 am

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The space race is shaping up as a matchup of billionaires, with Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, facing off against Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, over the future of human spaceflight, Jad Mouawad reports.

Blue Origin, a private space company owned by Mr. Bezos, said on Wednesday that it had agreed to work with a joint venture run by Boeing and Lockheed Martin to build new engines for their Atlas 5 rockets.

That venture, called United Launch Alliance, has sent nearly all United States spy and military satellites into space in the last decade, but a rise in tensions with Russia this year after its annexation of Crimea has forced the venture to look for a replacement. In May, Russia threatened to stop delivering the engines, known as RD-180s, in response to American sanctions against top Russian officials, though there has been no evidence yet that it will follow through.

By working with Blue Origin to build new American-made engines, Boeing and Lockheed sidestep the politically sensitive issue of the Russian RD-180 engines on the Atlas 5 for NASA and military missions in the future. The move also throws Mr. Bezos directly into the contentious battle that Mr. Musk has been waging to force SpaceX into the business of launching military satellites.Read more »

Bezos, Jeffrey P, Musk, Elon, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Tesla Motors Inc

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A Bezos Company Will Make Engines for Rockets

By JAD MOUAWADSEPT. 17, 2014

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The space race is shaping up as a matchup of billionaires, with Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, facing off against Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, over the future of human spaceflight.

Blue Origin, a private space company owned by Mr. Bezos, said on Wednesday that it had agreed to work with a joint venture run by Boeing and Lockheed Martin to build new engines for their Atlas 5 rockets.

That venture, called United Launch Alliance, has sent nearly all United States spy and military satellites into space in the last decade, but a rise in tensions with Russia this year after its annexation of Crimea has forced the venture to look for a replacement. In May, Russia threatened to stop delivering the engines, known as RD-180s, in response to American sanctions against top Russian officials, though there has been no evidence yet that it will follow through.

News that Blue Origin would assume a bigger role in space launches came as NASA on Tuesday announced it had picked Boeing and SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station and replace the retired space shuttle program. Boeing plans to use Atlas 5 rockets for its manned spacecraft, while SpaceX will use its existing rocket, the Falcon 9, to propel its new capsule. The first flights could take place as early as 2017.

Photo

Jeff Bezos, right, the founder of Blue Origin, and Tory Bruno, chief of United Launch Alliance, with a model rocket engine.

By working with Blue Origin to build new American-made engines, Boeing and Lockheed sidestep the politically sensitive issue of the Russian RD-180 engines on the Atlas 5 for NASA and military missions in the future.

It also throws Mr. Bezos directly into the contentious battle that Mr. Musk has been waging to force SpaceX into the business of launching military satellites. In April, Mr. Musk sued the Air Force to reverse an $11 billion contract awarded to U.L.A. to launch about 35 satellites over five years, citing the hazard of using Russian engines.

The move angered Air Force officials who have been working to certify SpaceX for future launches and are eager to introduce competition into the business to reduce launch costs.

News that the Atlas 5 rocket will eventually be using American engines made by Mr. Bezos’s company is likely to be welcomed by the Air Force and congressional leaders.

U.L.A. started using the Russian RD-180 engines for the Atlas 5 rockets since the 1990s as part of a deal reached after the end of the Cold War to improve technological cooperation with Russia. The engines have proved to be extraordinarily reliable as well as cheaper than anything available in the United States.

U.L.A. also uses another rocket, the Delta 4, whose engines are made in the United States. It has launched more than 80 satellites for defense and spy agencies with perfect success record in the last decade. U.L.A. has said it had enough RD-180 engines on hand to last for two years.

“The team at Blue Origin is methodically developing technologies to enable human access to space at dramatically lower cost and increased reliability,” Mr. Bezos said in a statement.

Blue Origin and U.L.A. said they planned to build the new engine in four years and begin full-scale testing in 2016 with first flights in 2019.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Bezos Company Will Make Engines for Rockets. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Apple Says iOS 8 Update Keeps Data Private, Even From the Police

By Brian X. Chen September 17, 2014 11:11 pmSeptember 17, 2014 11:11 pm

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Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, announcing features in the company’s new mobile operating system, iOS 8, in June.

Apple wants to make clear that it wants nobody snooping around in your device, not even the police.

The company said Wednesday night that its latest software system, iOS 8, included deep protection of the information stored on Apple mobile devices. So deep, in fact, that Apple says it has become technically impossible for it to comply with government warrants asking for customer information like photos, email, messages, contacts, call history and notes, to be extracted from devices.

The company said all this information was under the protection of a customer’s passcode, the four-digit number used to log in to the device. In the past, Apple was able to extract certain types of information from devices, even when they were locked with a passcode, in response to a valid search warrant.

The new security in iOS 8 protects information stored on the device itself, but not data stored on Apple’s cloud service. So Apple will still be able to hand over some customer information stored on iCloud in response to government requests.

Apple announced the revised privacy policy on its new privacy webpage, apple.com/privacy, which included a letter written by Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief.

“Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data,” the company said on the new webpage. “So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.”

Christopher Soghoian, a principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said Apple’s new privacy policy reflected the revelations of the government surveillance programs revealed in documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden. “The public has said they want companies to put their privacy first, and Apple has listened,” Mr. Soghoian said.

The new webpage includes explanations of what types of information Apple does and does not collect, and why. It also lists Apple’s latest so-called transparency reports, which break down how, when and why it handles requests from law enforcement or government agencies seeking information about customers.

In addition, the webpage teaches consumers how to turn on important security features, like two-step verification, to protect themselves from hackers.

In his letter, Mr. Cook emphasized that Apple was unlike other Internet companies that benefit from collecting customer data and sharing it with third parties, like advertisers.

“Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products,” he said. “We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers.”

Apple’s ability to protect customer information was openly questioned after a number of celebrities discovered that hackers broke into their Apple accounts, stole nude or provocative photos, and posted those photos on the Internet.

After that episode, Mr. Cook said the company would strengthen some security measures for iCloud, and work harder to educate consumers on protecting their accounts.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment beyond the statements in Mr. Cook’s letter.

A version of this article appears in print on 09/18/2014, on page B3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Apple Update Keeps Data Private, Even From Police.

Privacy, Apple Inc, Cloud Computing, Cook, Timothy D, iOS (Operating System), Privacy, Surveillance of Citizens by Government

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Technology |NYT Now

Nude Photos of Jennifer Lawrence Are Latest Front in Online Privacy Debate

By MIKE ISAACSEPT. 2, 2014

Inside

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Perez Hilton has made a career of posting anything and everything about celebrities and their lives. On Tuesday, he thought better of it.

Mr. Hilton helped a trove of nude celebrity photos spread like wildfire across the Internet over Labor Day weekend. The photos, which included images of the actress Jennifer Lawrence and the model Kate Upton, became available after someone — and who did it is unknown — posted the pictures to 4chan and Reddit, two hugely popular anonymous online message boards. There they quickly became trading fodder among the sites’ regulars.

On Sunday, after the photos were posted to these message boards, Google searches for the term “Jennifer Lawrence” skyrocketed, according to data from Google Trends.

The images are hardly the first nude celebrity pictures to make their way online. But their publication has touched off a larger discussion on the state of privacy and civil liberties on the Internet. Some privacy advocates are focusing on the role that big tech companies play in policing — or not policing — users who repeatedly push the boundaries of taste, or those who post controversial content like the videos of the beheadings of the journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

Mr. Hilton and others are even soul-searching about viewing and posting questionable content.

Continue reading the main story

Jennifer Lawrence & Me (And My Thoughts On What Happened)

Mr. Hilton published a video on YouTube, in which he expressed remorse that he had publicized the photos. “I view this as a good opportunity to learn from and grow from, and to make some changes going forward,” he said.

His regrets were echoed across Twitter, where actors like Seth Rogen and Lena Dunham urged others not to share or view the images out of respect for the celebrities’ privacy. On Reddit, moderators of the forums featuring the images questioned whether they should take down the pictures. (They are still up.)

Continue reading the main story

Remember, when you look at these pictures you are violating these women again and again. It's not okay.

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) Aug. 31, 2014

For privacy advocates, though, the responsibility lies with the big tech companies that host this kind of content.

The episode “should be treated like a sex crime, a privacy invasion taken to an extreme,” said Jules Polonetsky, executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum, an advocacy group based in Washington. “Sites allowing the sharing of these pictures can and should be taking proactive action to remove these pictures.”

Recently, Twitter came under fire for its loose stance on what is permissible on its network of 271 million monthly users when Robin Williams’s daughter quit the service after being attacked via Twitter messages about her father’s death.

And after the terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria posted to YouTube videos of the beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, two American journalists, some called for more stringent guidelines on the services. Many users urged people to take matters into their own hands, advocating not viewing the video.

Continue reading the main story

Let’s remember Foley by passing this picture around, and not screengrabs of the YouTube video. pic.twitter.com/JLLCgjUHbL

— Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) Aug. 18, 2014

“We respect Steven Sotloff and won’t air images of his death, or him in a jumpsuit,” Al Jazeera, the media network based in Doha, Qatar, said in a statement posted to its public relations Twitter account on Tuesday, using the hashtag “#ISISmediaBlackout.” “We suggest all media do the same.”

Continue reading the main story

If you’re going to share a picture of Steven Sotloff, plz share this one showing him during happier times. @acarvin pic.twitter.com/l4UiGPTzJV

— Joanne (@joanneatom) Sept. 1, 2014

(The New York Times chose to run the photograph because it felt it was an important image that told the story, Dean Baquet, the executive editor, said.)

Twitter, YouTube and Reddit take a decidedly hands-off approach to suppressing content that appears on their networks, relying instead on users to flag objectionable material that may or may not end up being taken down. “YouTube has clear policies that outline what content is acceptable to post on YouTube, and we remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.

On Reddit, the photos were quickly embraced. At least one forum was dedicated to discussing and trading them.

Reddit did not respond to a request for comment. In the past, the site’s policy has been to allow its users to police themselves, letting self-appointed community moderators decide what is appropriate to appear on the site.

The F.B.I. acknowledged what it called the “unlawful release” of the pictures, but would not comment further.

When the photos began to surface on the web, some news reports suggested that Apple’s online storage service, iCloud, had been breached.

But Apple firmly denied this speculation, saying on Tuesday that while at least some celebrity accounts were individually attacked, the episode was not the result of any widespread attack on Apple’s software products.

“None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems,” Nat Kerris, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved.”

A spokeswoman for Ms. Lawrence, who verified that the photos of her client were real, said she was in touch with law enforcement authorities and would prosecute those who posted the stolen pictures.

Twitter, YouTube and others may ultimately decide to take a more active approach to policing user-generated content. Twitter has already shown some signs of change. But this is a fine line to tread, as these companies have long trumpeted their democratic approach to unfettered online speech.

If these services were altered significantly, civil liberties advocates fear it could inhibit how people are able to express themselves online.

“While a rule against hate speech might prevent rape threats, it could also stifle political speech,” said Jillian C. York, a director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties organization. “Companies have demonstrated that they can’t be trusted as arbiters of speech.”

Instead, Ms. York said, Internet users themselves should be able to do a better job of self-policing. “We should encourage companies like Twitter and Facebook to put tools in place that allow users to more easily filter out content and block abusive individuals,” she said.

For some, though, the damage has already been done.

On Sunday, the actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead reacted on Twitter to nude pictures of her that were leaked on 4chan and Reddit.

Continue reading the main story

To those of you looking at photos I took with my husband years ago in the privacy of our home, hope you feel great about yourselves.

— Mary E. Winstead (@M_E_Winstead) Aug. 30, 2014

Ms. Winstead said she was abandoning the Internet for the time being, because of a barrage of personal attacks on Twitter after the photos surfaced online.

“I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this,” she said.

Brian X. Chen and Quentin Hardy contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 3, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Nude Photos, Privacy Collides With Wild Web. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Security

Apple Says It Will Add New iCloud Security Measures After Celebrity Hack

By Brian X. Chen September 4, 2014 11:32 pmSeptember 4, 2014 11:32 pm

Photo

Apple’s iCloud lets users sync media across various devices.

Apple said on Thursday that it would strengthen its security measures after a recent episode where hackers broke into the Apple accounts of a number of celebrities, stole their nude photos and leaked them on the Internet.

The company said it would add alerts to tell people about activities that could be signs of a break-in.

Customers will receive emails and alerts called push notifications, which are messages that show up prominently on iPhones and iPads, when someone tries to change the password for their iCloud account, upload their backed-up account data to a new device or log into their accounts for the first time from an unknown device, the company said. The notifications will be added in two weeks.

In the past, Apple customers were receiving emails only when someone changed their account password or logged in from a new device. They received no notification or email when someone loaded an iCloud backup onto another device.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the news in an interview with the company’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook. A company spokesman declined to comment further than what was stated in the interview.

Over Labor Day weekend, nude photos of celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence and the model Kate Upton spread on the Internet like wildfire. Early news reports pointed to a widespread breach of iCloud, Apple’s online storage service, as a possible source of the leak.

However, Apple earlier this week said that after a 40-hour investigation, the company concluded that there was no breach of its data servers. The company has said it discovered a number of celebrity accounts were compromised by targeted attacks, using methods like phishing or correctly answering security questions to obtain their passwords. It said it was working with law enforcement officials to investigate the case.

A version of this article appears in print on 09/05/2014, on page B2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: After Celebrity Hack, Apple to Add Security Measures.

Privacy, Security, Apple Inc, Cloud Computing, Computer Security, Cyberattacks and Hackers, iCloud

Tech - Gadgetwise

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- Machine Learning: Review and Video: With Big New iPhones, It’s What’s Inside That Counts

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- With Apple Pay and Smartwatch, a Privacy Challenge

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- Gadgetwise: A Teardown of the Phantom 2 Vision Plus Drone from DJI

- Q&A: How to Sign Up for a Skype Number

- Using Your Phone to See Paris in a Whole New Light

- Bits Blog: Answers to Questions About Apple’s Announcements, Including the Watch and iPhone 6

- State of the Art: With iPhone 6 and Smartwatch, Apple Is Back and Better Than Ever

- With Apple Pay, a Push Into Mobile Payments

- The iPhone 6 Goes Big, as Apple Aims Small With a Smartwatch

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Personal Tech

Reporting Bad Behavior to Facebook

SEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Q&A;

By J. D. BIERSDORFER

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Q. If I report hate speech from a “friend” on Facebook to the site, does that person get notified that I filed a complaint?

A. Facebook does not notify the person you reported and its Help Guide states that your complaint is anonymous. Once the site reviews your report and can acknowledge that the post in question violates its own set of Facebook Community Standards, it contacts the offending party without providing any personal information about you. Keep in mind, though, that the person may be able to guess who filed the complaint, depending on your level of engagement with the person.

Facebook’s standards do allow “clear attempts at humor or satire” that might otherwise be considered a threat against someone; comedy routines, song lyrics and bad jokes fall under this umbrella. True “hate speech” is not allowed on the site and is defined by Facebook as “content that attacks people based on their actual or perceived race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or disease.”

Facebook’s help section has answer to many common questions regarding violations to the site’s policies and how to report things you find, including broken features on the site.

Finding Quiet Time with a Kindle Fire

Q. I seem to have signed up for a lot of alerts from the apps on my Kindle Fire HDX, but they often interrupt me when I’m trying to read. How do I turn these off?

A. Like other tablets, Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX can alert you to things like new email or an updated weather forecast, but you can quickly turn off all of these notifications by turning on the Quiet Time function. Just swipe down from the top edge of the Kindle’s screen to open the Quick Settings menu and tap the Quiet Time icon.

When it is enabled, Quiet Time hides incoming app notification messages and squelches their alert sounds on the Kindle. To restore notifications after you are done reading, swipe down to the Quick Settings menu and tap the Quiet Time icon to turn it off.

You can also set up Quiet Time to turn on automatically at certain times of day (or night), or when you are using the Kindle Fire HDX to read a book. Just swipe down from the top of the Kindle’s screen again to open the Quick Settings menu, and then tap the Settings icon on the right side of the row. On the Settings screen, tap Notifications & Quiet Time.

Next, choose the Quiet Time option from the menu. In the Quiet Time settings, you can set up a schedule for Quiet Time, or have it activate itself automatically when you have a book open. Back on the Notifications & Quiet Time screen, you can also turn off notifications from certain apps you do not want to hear from again.

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Personal Tech | Gadgetwise

Shopping for Flair? The Moto X Smartphone Fits the Bill

By MOLLY WOODSEPT. 17, 2014

Inside

Photo

The new Moto X is $99 with a contract.

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MOST phones look about the same. Without a case, they are flat rectangles with slightly rounded edges and they come in black, white and occasionally gold.

With its new Moto X smartphone, Motorola is hoping that noticeable custom design and some clever software features will woo Android shoppers looking for something a little different.

This Moto X is actually the second generation. The first one, released in August 2013, was the first phone produced after Google acquired Motorola Mobility for almost $13 billion. Despite good design and innovative features, the phone had some middling specs and a disappointing camera. It also cost the same as phones like the iPhone 5S and Galaxy S5, and buyers were put off.

Now, Motorola is in the process of being sold to Lenovo for $2.9 billion. But the company still managed to make the new Moto X an appealing option.

The phone offers top-of-the-line specs, a lovely 5.2-inch display, a sleek, premium design that still fits in a pocket and has extras that make it fun to use. And it is priced lower than other flagship phones. It is $99 with some contracts.

Motorola is also taking advantage of its Google relationship by promising quick updates to the Android operating system. And Motorola hasn’t cluttered the Android interface with custom touches the way Samsung and HTC do. (Although AT&T; managed to install eight separate apps on my review device.)

That means it’s very close to running “pure Android,” which is what fans of the operating system call the clean, uncluttered version that runs on Google’s Nexus phones. As a result, the phone is faster and easier to navigate than Samsung phones with their proprietary TouchWiz interface and myriad extra apps.

The phone itself is comfortably shaped with a rounded back cover that makes it easier to grip. It’s lightweight, and its materials and construction feel solid and pleasing.

The phone’s design is immensely customizable, too. On the company’s Moto Maker website, you can choose from 25 different backs, including plastic covers in different colors as well as wood, bamboo and leather (for $25 extra). You can also customize some of the front of the phone, and add engraving.

My review unit came with a dark brown leather back that smelled like a leather shop and lent the phone a distinctive air.

Depending on the carrier, you can buy the leather, black plastic or bamboo models in the store or order a custom design from color palates displayed in the store.

Inside the body, the Moto X has the same processor as the one found in the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One M8, and performance is noticeably snappy.

Photo

The phone comes in 26 colored plastic covers, as well as wood, bamboo and leather.

It has a good-size battery that delivers a comfortable day’s worth of use. The 5.2-inch display is large and bright, but there’s hardly any bezel on either side of the phone, so the phone still feels trim.

And the phone’s software incorporates gestures for silencing incoming calls, displaying some notifications and activating the camera. You hold it in your hand and twist your wrist to immediately launch the camera (This feature was in the last model, as well).

Some options are a little gimmicky. I could never get the proper distance to decline a call by waving my hand. But the camera twist works well and the 13-megapixel camera itself is much improved and faster, although it’s slower to focus than its competition, especially the new iPhones.

I liked its ambient notifications mode, which shows icons for incoming mail or texts. Tapping the icon previews the message content without unlocking the phone.

Other software improvements include the Moto Voice controls, which are fuller featured than Android’s built-in voice commands. You can create a custom phrase to wake up the phone, like, “O.K., manservant.” And phrases like “What’s up?” elicit a spoken list of recent activity, like emails and calendar appointments.

Software called Motorola Connect lets you see and send text messages and answer or decline calls from your computer. Apple’s new desktop and mobile operating systems offer a similar feature called Continuity. On the Moto X, you turn on the app on your phone, then download an extension to the Chrome browser. The feature works on Macs or PCs, but only in the Chrome browser. It’s extremely useful.

Over all, the Moto X is an appealing phone, especially for people who want their devices to sport a distinctive design. And it’s inexpensive. It may get buried in a sea of bigger names, but those seeking a little variety should seek it out.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Shopping for Flair? Moto X Fits the Bill. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Personal Tech | App Smart

Let the Phone Be Your Political Adviser

By KIT EATONSEPT. 17, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|1:49

App Smart | Keeping Track of Politics

App Smart | Keeping Track of Politics As we head into election season, Kit Eaton reviews three apps that will help you stay on top of news, analysis, and when politicians are using double-speak to make their points. Video Credit By Dallas Jensen and Kit Eaton on Publish Date September 17, 2014.

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LIKE it, loathe it or tolerate it with gritted teeth, politics influences our daily lives. One way to keep on top of the latest in political intrigue is on your smartphone.

In the United States, one of the best ways to stay informed on political affairs comes directly from the top: The White House, the official app, free on iOS and Android. It offers access to many news events, like news conferences in the briefing room.

You may have expected it to be an awkward designed-by-committee affair, but it is easy to navigate. Just keep in mind that the information provided comes from the White House’s perspective.

To get a different view, check out The Congressional Record. This app looks and feels much more old-fashioned than the White House offering, and it hasn’t been updated in quite a while. It still works, though, giving you access to official congressional publications, including a Daily Digest page, a summary of recent discussions. Don’t expect layman summaries or glibly worded commentaries, though. It’s free on iOS.

For a faster-paced summary of American politics, Politics Today, free on iOS, is a fabulous option. It gathers information from many Twitter feeds, giving a sense of the ever-evolving nature of information on social networks.

Summaries are split into broad categories like “news,” “liberal voices,” “conservative politicians” and so on. Tapping one of these categories takes you to a list of recent news articles and other online resources; tapping on a list item takes you to the source. It’s easy to find a political news item on a topic that interests you.

But all that information in such tiny type can be a little confusing to parse. And keep in mind that the app needs an Internet connection to get up-to-date info.

Countable also offers political news, with a few interactive extras. In addition to short summaries of recent bills in the House and Senate, it also lists some arguments for and against the measure. You can even directly contact your senator or representative to express your views on a pending bill. Countable is slick, easy to use and could definitely help inform your opinions. It’s free for iOS.

For a different viewpoint on global political issues, I also love The Economist. This works best on iPad, but it’s also available for Android. The app itself is free, but for full access to the content you need to buy a subscription, which costs upward of $7 depending on the option you choose.

Check the accuracy of a politician’s comments with PolitiFact Mobile, $2 on iOS and Android. Here you will find the Truth-O-Meter, a measure of the truthfulness of a politician’s recent statements.

The group running the app is a division of The Tampa Bay Times. The statements are fact-checked and then given a neat summary and some eye-pleasing graphics. You can see the most recent ratings, choose to see only truths or lies, or view ratings listed by person or subject.

PolitiFact is fun, fascinating and at times depressing. Most important, the app reminds listeners to think for themselves when hearing political arguments, and not to rely only on the word of a politician or other political commentator.

If you’re interested in thinking even more deeply about those statements, consider learning some of the ways politicians can shape their stories with Logical Fallacies, $1 on iOS. This app teaches you to recognize questionable arguments. Consider, for example, the statement “Milk is essential for healthy bones.” (It’s not. Calcium is good for bones, and milk contains calcium, but so do many other foods.)

On Android, the app Rhetological Fallacies is a bit simpler, but it does summarize all the ways logic can be twisted by clever words. It includes examples and is free.

Enjoy getting political with these apps, and remember that Charles de Gaulle once pointed out that “politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”

Quick Call

Angry Birds Stella is the latest spinoff of the Angry Birds series. It’s marketed with female characters and a lot of pink colors, but if you find the whole idea of catapulting irate avians at some naughty pigs fun, then you’ll enjoy it. It’s free on iOS and Android and for Kindle Fires.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Let the Phone Be Your Political Adviser. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Personal Tech |NYT Now

With the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple Aims for Versatility

SEPT. 17, 2014

Inside

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Play Video|2:59

The iPhone 6: Is Bigger Better?

The iPhone 6: Is Bigger Better? The iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6 rival the competition in sheer size. But when it comes to taking advantage of those bigger screens, Molly Wood says, Apple’s new phones don’t always measure up. Video Credit By Rebekah Fergusson and Vanessa Perez on Publish Date September 16, 2014. Image CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Farhad Manjoo

STATE OF THE ART

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It’s time to make peace with the term phablet.

Sure, the tech industry could have come up with a prettier, less jarring way to refer to smartphones that are big enough to be used as tablet computers. But phablets deserve their own unforgettably descriptive name. They aren’t simply large-screen phones. They are a distinctly new type of computing device, a machine that is often more useful, and more versatile, than either smartphones or laptops.

Phablets could even become the dominant computing device of the future — the most popular kind of phone on the market, and perhaps the only computer many of us need.

Now, I’ve long been on the record as hating big phones. But this week I decided to try using the latest one, Apple’s new iPhone 6 Plus, with its 5.5-inch display, as my primary, all-purpose computer — a machine for work, fun and everything in between. I had to make occasional stops at my laptop to write my articles, but I ended up spending about 80 to 90 percent of my computing time with Apple’s big phone.

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Comparing New iPhone Sizes

Apple’s new phones cater to a growing appetite among consumers for bigger screens.

4-in.

4.7-in.

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

4-in.

4.7-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

I didn’t exactly prefer this lifestyle; if you’ve got the resources and patience to buy a laptop, smartphone and tablet, go for it. But if an alien race swooped down on the planet and forced earthlings to use only a single computer, I’d choose the iPhone 6 Plus. If you’re looking for one machine for everything, a phablet like this isn’t a bad way to go.

Apple doesn’t use the P-word, but the 6 Plus, which goes on sale on Friday, is larger than the original Samsung Galaxy Note, the device that came out in 2011 and is generally credited as being the first phablet. (The latest Note has a 5.7-inch screen.) It’s obvious why Apple had to make a phablet, a device that its executives and fans had long made fun of. Despite the awkwardness of holding a device as large as a cafeteria tray up to your ear, phablets made by Samsung and other companies have become a huge global hit. Phablets are already more popular than laptops and desktops, and they’ll almost certainly begin outselling tablet computers soon, too.

Their popularity might reflect the unimportance of the phone part of the phablet: Who makes phone calls anymore? Instead, some market-watchers argue, a significant number of the world’s population either can’t afford or can’t manage a tech future in which we all own three devices — a PC, a tablet and a phone. Lots of people want a single machine that can fulfill most of their computing needs.

On the other hand, a phablet presents many trade-offs. Depending on the job you have, there’s a good chance it isn’t nearly as comfortable for sustained work as your PC. As I wrote in my review of Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 earlier this year, many of the tasks we call “work” usually require a great physical keyboard, and obviously the iPhone 6 Plus doesn’t have that built in.

What’s more, though it’s quite thin, the 6 Plus is about 27 percent taller and 32 percent wider than Apple’s old flagship, the iPhone 5S. That makes it something of a monster in your pocket. There were times this week when I reached for my old iPhone 5S and fell in love again with that device’s seductively compact design. (Apple also introduced a new small phone, the iPhone 6, with a 4.7-inch screen; my colleague Molly Wood reviewed both iPhones earlier this week.)

Yet what it lacks in pocketability, the iPhone 6 Plus makes up for in usability and accessibility. Your phablet, like your phone, is a machine you always have with you, but like a tablet, it has a screen big enough to let you accomplish many more productive tasks. And unlike a laptop, it’s instantly available. Pull it out of your pocket and begin working anywhere.

Over the last week I used the 6 Plus to do just about everything I normally do with my phone and my laptop. Every morning I’d wake up, then slump into my phablet-friendly office, also known as my bed, couch or some other recline-friendly bit of furniture I could find. There I’d stare and tap at my screen all day long. This was sort of bizarre; my house is full of computers, and at least early in my experiment, I often had to restrain myself from grabbing a laptop to get stuff done.

But I persevered, and soon I found myself falling into the habits of a phablet-only life. I caught up with email, researched my articles, read lots and lots of stuff on the web, worked with a few spreadsheets and, with the help of an add-on physical keyboard, even tried to write some of my articles on the 6 Plus.

Photo

I found that the 6 Plus has two advantages over smaller smartphones, and one primary advantage over rival phablets. Typing is much easier on the 6 Plus compared to small phones. When you hold the 6 Plus with two hands in portrait mode — that is, vertically — and type with your thumbs, there’s a perfect fit.

Using the iPhone’s built-in on-screen keyboard or an on-screen keyboard made by Swype, I found myself jotting emails much more quickly than I have on traditional smartphones. Unfortunately, in landscape mode — holding the phone horizontally — the effect was ruined; as Molly also found, the 6 Plus is much too wide to type on comfortably.

The other obvious advantage over smaller phones is screen size. The 6 Plus’s display is big enough to transform activities that are a bit unpleasant on small smartphones into tasks that are nearly comfortable to perform on a phone. These tasks range from watching movies to reading documents to scrolling through spreadsheets to sorting through email — anything where the display counts, and where you’re eager to save your eyes.

The 6 Plus’s advantage over other phablets is also pretty obvious: It runs Apple’s iOS, an operating system that is still far more intuitive and user-friendly than the interfaces that rivals like Samsung have built into their phones.

It’s true, as Molly notes, that unlike Apple, Android phonemakers have added many extra software features to take advantage of phablets’ larger displays, including the ability to run two apps on a screen at once. But I’ve found many such features gimmicky; it’s not often that I need to watch a video and sort through email at the same time.

What’s more important is iOS’s fundamental usability advantage over rivals. Apple’s operating system is easier to understand and easier to get around than Android, and app developers still devote most of their resources to creating the best apps for iOS first.

One oft-mentioned risk of the 6 Plus, for Apple, is that the big phone will displace sales of Apple’s tablets. But the Plus could actually be a blessing. Apple sells the 6 Plus to carriers for prices starting at $750; the high-definition iPad Mini starts at $399.

But to customers who sign up for a cellular contract, the 6 Plus appears cheaper than the iPad — it’s just $299. In other words, if you choose a big iPhone over an iPad, Apple will be selling you a more expensive device at price that looks cheaper to you. So that’s the other big thing about phablets: They can make money for tech companies.

Email: farhad.manjoo@nytimes.com; Twitter: @fmanjoo

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A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Finding Virtue in a Phablet. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Personal Tech | Gadgetwise

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 Isn’t for Everybody

By FARHAD MANJOOJUNE 17, 2014

Inside

Photo

The Microsoft Surface Pro 3 is an intriguing cross between a tablet and a laptop.

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FOR the better part of a month, I’ve been trying to replace the laptop that I use for my daily work, an Apple MacBook Pro, with Microsoft’s new tablet computer, the Surface Pro 3. I say “trying” because that’s what it has felt like; this is a machine that I’ve had to put a lot of work into adjusting to, in the hope that, at some point, I’d get used to it and see some kind of payoff.

In the end, I didn’t see that payoff. My time with Microsoft’s new tablet computer began with a feeling of minor annoyance and eventually leveled off into a sense of settling for something less than ideal. I never felt fully at ease with the Surface Pro 3, and I’m typing this review on the MacBook.

But don’t let my experience put you off from trying the Surface Pro 3. In fact, I encourage you to think of this review as something like a George Costanza breakup: Dear Surface Pro 3 — we’re not right for each other, but it’s not you, it’s me.

There is probably an audience out there that will love the light, stylish and surprisingly powerful Surface Pro 3. I suspect it isn’t a huge audience, but it may not be a tiny one.

Photo

The new Surface’s keyboard appears to be sturdier than the one in previous versions of the device.

Like previous incarnations of Microsoft’s Surface line, the device is an intriguing cross between a tablet and a laptop. Like an iPad, it’s a thin slab of glass that you navigate by touch. But the Pro 3 also has a very skinny cover that doubles as a keyboard and trackpad; with its built-in kickstand, which has been improved in this version of the device, you can fashion the machine into something that feels like a laptop.

If you’ve yearned for a single device that’s as portable as an iPad but can also run programs that are usually found on a Windows laptop, the new Surface Pro might be for you. Because it comes with a stylus, it might also be especially useful for artists or others who are fond of pen-based computing.

But the Surface Pro 3 is not for me, for one very specific reason that might resonate with you, too. Its keyboard and trackpad just aren’t as good as those found in many laptops, and certainly not in high-end laptops like the MacBook Air, the Apple machine that Microsoft has held up as its main competition for the new tablet.

At a minimum, the Surface Pro’s input devices require a period of adjustment. That’s why I spent several weeks with the Surface before writing this. I kept waiting for something to click, for my brain and my fingers to get used to the keys and the trackpad.

But nothing clicked. The Surface Pro’s trackpad is finicky; it’s not great at detecting multiple-finger inputs (like two-finger scroll) and because it’s substantially shorter than a laptop’s trackpad, you’ll find yourself hitting keys instead of the pad. (Microsoft says new software that’s on its way will fix the two-finger scroll problem.)

I did find the new Surface’s keyboard to be sturdier than the one in previous versions of the device. Also, because the new kickstand allows the Surface’s screen to be set up at a variety of viewing angles, the machine can be positioned on your lap or another uneven surface, just like a laptop.

But still, the whole keyboard-kickstand balancing act felt unsteady compared with a laptop’s rigid frame. There was a slight, annoying bounce of the keyboard case when I typed, and in tight places — airplane and train seats — the machine was an ergonomic catastrophe of moving parts.

To me, these flaws were damning. Over the last couple of years, I’ve offloaded most of my more passive computing tasks — like idly browsing the web or scanning email and Twitter — to my phone. That means when I reach for my laptop or desktop, I’m usually looking to do intensive work, which requires excellent input devices. If your laptop requirements resemble mine — if you write a lot, manage many windows, or work with large, scrolling documents like spreadsheets — the Surface Pro 3 isn’t your best bet.

On the other hand, if you’re mainly looking for a tablet that can sometimes be used as a computer, you may be O.K. with the Surface’s keyboard and trackpad. I’d suggest at least going to a Microsoft Store to check it out.

But be warned: The Surface Pro 3 starts at $799, plus $130 for Type Cover. An iPad Air costs $499; a third-party iPad keyboard can be had for around $100. So the only reason to choose the Surface Pro over an iPad Air is if you truly can’t do without Windows programs.

As I said, there are probably a few people for whom that’s true. Don’t worry, Surface Pro 3. You’ll find someone who loves you. Just not me.

A version of this review appears in print on June 19, 2014, on page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 Isn’t for Everybody. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Personal Tech |NYT Now

Review and Video: With Big New iPhones, It’s What’s Inside That Counts

SEPT. 16, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|2:59

The iPhone 6: Is Bigger Better?

The iPhone 6: Is Bigger Better? The iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6 rival the competition in sheer size. But when it comes to taking advantage of those bigger screens, Molly Wood says, Apple’s new phones don’t always measure up. Video Credit By Rebekah Fergusson and Vanessa Perez on Publish Date September 16, 2014. Image CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Molly Wood

MACHINE LEARNING

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Bigger. Bigger. Bigger.

The new Apple iPhones going on sale this week, the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, have crisper screens, faster processors and sharper cameras.

And, as you might have heard, they are also bigger than previous iPhones — the 6 Plus by a long shot — joining the stampede toward bigger handsets.

But after almost a week of trying the phones, it became clear that the hardware was not the best part of the package. In its quest to deliver bigger phones to a market clamoring for them, Apple has made one phone that is actually a little too small and one that’s a little too big. (Apple lent The New York Times an iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus under the condition that a review would be not be published before Tuesday at 9 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.)

The best part of the new phones is actually the new software inside, which is available for some older models, too, starting on Wednesday. The software, iOS 8, combines some of the advanced features of Android with Apple’s ease of use and reliability.

Because of the software, it’s hard to see many iPhone fans straying from Apple, even if they don’t buy new iPhones immediately.

The iPhone 6 is a 4.7-inch device, up from four inches on the iPhone 5 and 5S. It’s a little wider than those phones, too.

Those dimensions make it slightly smaller than the top Android and Windows devices on the market, helping it fit easily in jeans pockets. Compared with a Samsung Galaxy S5 or the HTC One (M8), though, the iPhone 6 screen feels constrained. The iPhone 6 starts at $200 with a new contract.

Continue reading the main story

Comparing New iPhone Sizes

Apple’s new phones cater to a growing appetite among consumers for bigger screens.

4-in.

4.7-in.

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

4-in.

4.7-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

The iPhone 6 Plus is a behemoth. It has the same size display as the LG G3, at 5.5 inches, but is significantly taller. It’s longer even than the Galaxy Note 3, which has a 5.7-inch display. It starts at $300 with a new contract.

Both the 6 and 6 Plus get thinner, flatter and more rounded shapes than their predecessors, losing the squared-off sides on the more recent models. The effect looks sleek, but feels slippery. Dropping seems imminent as you stretch your thumb across the larger screens.

Apple takes some small steps to mitigate the finger stretch with a feature called Reachability, which lets you touch (not press) the home button twice to shift the screen down to the bottom half of the display.

The feature works nicely for one-handed scrolling and finding app icons, but it doesn’t do much else. If you’re in an email, for example, you can’t get access to any actions like Reply or Archive.

Apple could have taken a cue from other makers of so-called phablets (a blend of the words “phone” and “tablet”) and come up with powerful ways to take advantage of those bigger screens.

For example, the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 4 will let users resize app windows using a finger or stylus and view multiple windows simultaneously on its 5.7-inch display, as on a desktop computer. The 5.5-inch LG G3 lets you open two apps at once and resize them as you like.

The iPhones do include some tricks created for bigger phones, like a zoom feature that lets you subtly increase the size of app icons and text in native apps.

And when you turn the phones sideways, into landscape mode, the keyboard in the built-in apps like Mail and Messages has more options — a microphone, undo key, period and comma and others on the iPhone 6, and even more on the iPhone 6 Plus, like dedicated copy and paste keys.

Photo

The iPhone 6 Plus is very large and has the same size display as the LG G3, at 5.5 inches, but is significantly taller.

Those extra iPhone 6 Plus keys disappear if you choose the zoomed display, however. And the iPhone 6 Plus is so big that in landscape mode, I had a hard time reaching the keys to type.

Even the built-in Apple keyboard doesn’t get any extra keys when holding the phone upright, the way the Samsung and LG keyboards include number keys above the letters, and period and comma keys.

As for the features that people love about their iPhones, they only get better. The iPhone 6 cameras, for example, are outstanding.

Both rear-facing cameras have new sensors that deliver faster autofocus, better face detection and the ability to capture high-resolution panoramas. The faster focus is immediately obvious, even in casual use.

The iPhone 6 Plus in particular uses optical image stabilization to deliver better photos in low light and reduce overall shake and blur. Sadly, that nice feature is not on the iPhone 6.

And filmmakers are swooning over the iPhones’ high-definition video, faster frame rates (which lead to smoother video) and higher-quality slow-motion capture. Cinematic video stabilization helps smooth out video taken while moving and a time lapse mode snaps a shot every second or so and stitches them together.

Of course, all the videos and photos look great on the bigger screens, especially the iPhone 6 Plus. For camera buffs, that bigger phone is likely to be a must-have.

Call quality on the new phones is excellent and I found battery life on the smaller iPhone 6 to be impressive. I went almost two full days without a charge. Battery life on the iPhone 6 Plus is more like a day of constant use and not much more, but that’s not terrible on a phone that size.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|2:23

Apple’s Cook Unveils Bigger iPhones

Apple’s Cook Unveils Bigger iPhones Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, and Philip W. Schiller, a senior vice president, introduced two new iPhones on Tuesday with sharper and larger displays. Video Credit By Reuters on Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

The real magic, though, happens because of Apple’s new operating system.

The iOS 8 software doesn’t look greatly different, but many refinements make it more powerful and flexible. Some of the features catch up to competitors and some are totally new.

The upgrade adds iCloud Drive, for example, which lets you more easily share documents across devices, as you can with Dropbox or Google Drive. A Family Sharing feature will let you share your purchased books, movies, music and some apps with up to six family members, so they don’t have to log in to your account to watch a movie or use an app you have purchased.

After OS X Yosemite, the new operating system for Macs, is released in October, Apple’s Continuity feature will let you view incoming text messages across all devices, hand off documents between a phone and computer and send a text or make a call from your Mac.

Smaller improvements — expiring messages and voice memos, Spotlight searches that include web results, and recently used contacts that show up when you double-press the home button to switch between or close apps — add up to a refined mobile OS.

Some of the features aren’t perfect, and many of the sexier features are still down the road. Right now, for example, the Health app simply doesn’t do much. It depends on integration with third-party apps (scheduled for release with the phones) and the coming Apple Watch.

The new operating system comes on the new phones and can be installed this week on the iPhone 5S, 5 and 4S. People who have those phones and whose two-year cellphone contracts have not yet expired can rest easy. They will get many of the best features of this year’s upgrade cycle.

The slim new iPhones aren’t a big-screen slam-dunk, but they work well, as we have come to expect from Apple. Ultimately, it’s what’s on the inside that keeps them just in front of their competitors.

Email: molly.wood@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @mollywood

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A version of this article appears in print on September 17, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: With New iPhones, What’s Inside Counts. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Personal Tech

Defragmenting the Hard Drive on a Windows PC

SEPT. 17, 2014

Inside

Q&A;

By J. D. BIERSDORFER

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Q. Do you still have to defragment the hard-disk drive on a Windows 8.1 computer to keep it from running slow?

A. Microsoft still recommends regular maintenance like defragmenting your drive to improve the PC’s performance. With Windows 8.1, however, the Disk Defragmenter tool that came with previous Windows versions is now called Optimize Drives. In the default Windows 8.1 setting, it runs automatically once a week and uses the optimization method that works best for the type of drive in your computer.

You can still run the program manually, or change the frequency of the automatic optimization sessions to daily or monthly. To find the Optimize Drives tool, point to the screen’s upper-right corner and move the cursor down to pop open the Charms menu; on a touch-based computer, you can also swipe in from the right edge of the screen with a fingertip to open the Charms. Choose Search on the Charms menu, type in “defragment” and select “Defragment and optimize your drives.”

The Optimize Drives box opens and displays a list of drives or partitions on the PC, along with each one’s current state of fragmentation, when it was last optimized and the type of drive. Select the drive you want to use and click the Optimize button; you can also choose the Analyze button to see if the drive needs optimization. Click the Change Settings button if you want to adjust the maintenance schedule.

Microsoft has more information about optimizing drives in Windows 8.1 at bit.ly/NbX94M.

Backing Up an iPhone’s Photos

Q. I don’t want to back up my iPhone’s photos to iCloud anymore, but where are they stored on the computer if I back up there?

A. When you use the USB cable that came with the phone and connect it to a Mac or Windows PC, the computer should treat the iPhone like a camera and offer to pull in copies of the pictures to your regular photo program or folder, like iPhoto on the Mac or the My Pictures folder in Windows. If you get an alert box asking if you want to delete the images from the handset after you import them, say no — unless you want to clean up some space on the iPhone. Apple has detailed instruction for importing photos to the Mac and most versions of Windows at support.apple.com/kb/HT4083.

If you have turned off iCloud backup completely in your iPhone’s settings and want a way to back up its contents closer to home, Apple’s iTunes program backs up the iPhone’s Camera Roll, contacts, calendar events, bookmarks, call history and more to your computer. You can find details for doing so at support.apple.com/kb/ht4946.

TIP OF THE WEEK The Google Play store has more than a million apps, but not all of them are appropriate for younger children. If you would like to restrict the type of content that can be downloaded on a device running Android 4.4, open the Google Play app and tap the icon in the upper-left corner. Select Settings from the menu and then tap “Content filtering” on the next screen.

In the “Allow apps rated for” box, tap the limitation you want to set. Apps that fall under the “Everyone” category should not collect user information or contain objectionable material, making them suitable for younger children. The next level, “Low maturity,” includes apps that may contain mild cartoon violence and collection location information.

The “Medium maturity” and “High maturity” settings gradually increase the amount of adult material, social-media features and data collected from the user. Tap the OK button when you have chosen the level of content you want to allow.

Apple’s iOS software has similar parental controls in the Settings area. J.D. BIERSDORFER

Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to QandA@nytimes.com. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Defragmenting the Hard Drive on a Windows PC. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Personal Tech |NYT Now

Review and Video: With Big New iPhones, It’s What’s Inside That Counts

SEPT. 16, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|2:59

The iPhone 6: Is Bigger Better?

The iPhone 6: Is Bigger Better? The iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6 rival the competition in sheer size. But when it comes to taking advantage of those bigger screens, Molly Wood says, Apple’s new phones don’t always measure up. Video Credit By Rebekah Fergusson and Vanessa Perez on Publish Date September 16, 2014. Image CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Molly Wood

MACHINE LEARNING

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

Bigger. Bigger. Bigger.

The new Apple iPhones going on sale this week, the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, have crisper screens, faster processors and sharper cameras.

And, as you might have heard, they are also bigger than previous iPhones — the 6 Plus by a long shot — joining the stampede toward bigger handsets.

But after almost a week of trying the phones, it became clear that the hardware was not the best part of the package. In its quest to deliver bigger phones to a market clamoring for them, Apple has made one phone that is actually a little too small and one that’s a little too big. (Apple lent The New York Times an iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus under the condition that a review would be not be published before Tuesday at 9 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.)

The best part of the new phones is actually the new software inside, which is available for some older models, too, starting on Wednesday. The software, iOS 8, combines some of the advanced features of Android with Apple’s ease of use and reliability.

Because of the software, it’s hard to see many iPhone fans straying from Apple, even if they don’t buy new iPhones immediately.

The iPhone 6 is a 4.7-inch device, up from four inches on the iPhone 5 and 5S. It’s a little wider than those phones, too.

Those dimensions make it slightly smaller than the top Android and Windows devices on the market, helping it fit easily in jeans pockets. Compared with a Samsung Galaxy S5 or the HTC One (M8), though, the iPhone 6 screen feels constrained. The iPhone 6 starts at $200 with a new contract.

Continue reading the main story

Comparing New iPhone Sizes

Apple’s new phones cater to a growing appetite among consumers for bigger screens.

4-in.

4.7-in.

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

4-in.

4.7-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

The iPhone 6 Plus is a behemoth. It has the same size display as the LG G3, at 5.5 inches, but is significantly taller. It’s longer even than the Galaxy Note 3, which has a 5.7-inch display. It starts at $300 with a new contract.

Both the 6 and 6 Plus get thinner, flatter and more rounded shapes than their predecessors, losing the squared-off sides on the more recent models. The effect looks sleek, but feels slippery. Dropping seems imminent as you stretch your thumb across the larger screens.

Apple takes some small steps to mitigate the finger stretch with a feature called Reachability, which lets you touch (not press) the home button twice to shift the screen down to the bottom half of the display.

The feature works nicely for one-handed scrolling and finding app icons, but it doesn’t do much else. If you’re in an email, for example, you can’t get access to any actions like Reply or Archive.

Apple could have taken a cue from other makers of so-called phablets (a blend of the words “phone” and “tablet”) and come up with powerful ways to take advantage of those bigger screens.

For example, the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 4 will let users resize app windows using a finger or stylus and view multiple windows simultaneously on its 5.7-inch display, as on a desktop computer. The 5.5-inch LG G3 lets you open two apps at once and resize them as you like.

The iPhones do include some tricks created for bigger phones, like a zoom feature that lets you subtly increase the size of app icons and text in native apps.

And when you turn the phones sideways, into landscape mode, the keyboard in the built-in apps like Mail and Messages has more options — a microphone, undo key, period and comma and others on the iPhone 6, and even more on the iPhone 6 Plus, like dedicated copy and paste keys.

Photo

The iPhone 6 Plus is very large and has the same size display as the LG G3, at 5.5 inches, but is significantly taller.

Those extra iPhone 6 Plus keys disappear if you choose the zoomed display, however. And the iPhone 6 Plus is so big that in landscape mode, I had a hard time reaching the keys to type.

Even the built-in Apple keyboard doesn’t get any extra keys when holding the phone upright, the way the Samsung and LG keyboards include number keys above the letters, and period and comma keys.

As for the features that people love about their iPhones, they only get better. The iPhone 6 cameras, for example, are outstanding.

Both rear-facing cameras have new sensors that deliver faster autofocus, better face detection and the ability to capture high-resolution panoramas. The faster focus is immediately obvious, even in casual use.

The iPhone 6 Plus in particular uses optical image stabilization to deliver better photos in low light and reduce overall shake and blur. Sadly, that nice feature is not on the iPhone 6.

And filmmakers are swooning over the iPhones’ high-definition video, faster frame rates (which lead to smoother video) and higher-quality slow-motion capture. Cinematic video stabilization helps smooth out video taken while moving and a time lapse mode snaps a shot every second or so and stitches them together.

Of course, all the videos and photos look great on the bigger screens, especially the iPhone 6 Plus. For camera buffs, that bigger phone is likely to be a must-have.

Call quality on the new phones is excellent and I found battery life on the smaller iPhone 6 to be impressive. I went almost two full days without a charge. Battery life on the iPhone 6 Plus is more like a day of constant use and not much more, but that’s not terrible on a phone that size.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|2:23

Apple’s Cook Unveils Bigger iPhones

Apple’s Cook Unveils Bigger iPhones Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, and Philip W. Schiller, a senior vice president, introduced two new iPhones on Tuesday with sharper and larger displays. Video Credit By Reuters on Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

The real magic, though, happens because of Apple’s new operating system.

The iOS 8 software doesn’t look greatly different, but many refinements make it more powerful and flexible. Some of the features catch up to competitors and some are totally new.

The upgrade adds iCloud Drive, for example, which lets you more easily share documents across devices, as you can with Dropbox or Google Drive. A Family Sharing feature will let you share your purchased books, movies, music and some apps with up to six family members, so they don’t have to log in to your account to watch a movie or use an app you have purchased.

After OS X Yosemite, the new operating system for Macs, is released in October, Apple’s Continuity feature will let you view incoming text messages across all devices, hand off documents between a phone and computer and send a text or make a call from your Mac.

Smaller improvements — expiring messages and voice memos, Spotlight searches that include web results, and recently used contacts that show up when you double-press the home button to switch between or close apps — add up to a refined mobile OS.

Some of the features aren’t perfect, and many of the sexier features are still down the road. Right now, for example, the Health app simply doesn’t do much. It depends on integration with third-party apps (scheduled for release with the phones) and the coming Apple Watch.

The new operating system comes on the new phones and can be installed this week on the iPhone 5S, 5 and 4S. People who have those phones and whose two-year cellphone contracts have not yet expired can rest easy. They will get many of the best features of this year’s upgrade cycle.

The slim new iPhones aren’t a big-screen slam-dunk, but they work well, as we have come to expect from Apple. Ultimately, it’s what’s on the inside that keeps them just in front of their competitors.

Email: molly.wood@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @mollywood

Every weekday, get the latest news and analysis about the technology industry delivered to your inbox. Sign up for the Bits Tech Update here.

A version of this article appears in print on September 17, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: With New iPhones, What’s Inside Counts. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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State of the Art

Why Doesn’t the Apple Watch Have Wireless Charging? Because It Probably Wouldn’t Work Very Well.

By Farhad Manjoo September 10, 2014 8:01 pmSeptember 10, 2014 8:01 pm

Photo

Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, introducing the company’s smartwatch on Tuesday.

The Apple Watch will not allow for wireless charging. To charge the device, you’ve got to connect it to a charging cable.

Sure, it is a very nice charging cable. A magnetic connector automatically aligns a circular charging plate with the watch, so you don’t have to fiddle with plugging anything in, as you do with many other smartwatches on the market. I tried charging the watch a few times during a short demo, and I found the process to be pretty quick and hassle free. You do have to remove the watch from your wrist to charge it, though, which would be annoying if you had to charge it often. Apple has not said how long the device’s battery will last between charges.

But why doesn’t the watch charge wirelessly, just by placing it on some kind of charging pad, perhaps even while you’re wearing it?

One issue is that there’s some confusion about what “wireless” charging means. The Apple Watch uses magnetic induction charging, which is the same technology that early reports said it would use. Technically, this means no electric wire connects the watch to the charger. Instead, an electric current is passed between a set of magnetic coils in the charging plate and the watch.

Induction charging is often referred to as “wireless” charging, and other wireless charging technologies, like the Qi charging system used by a variety of devices that feature wireless charging, use this same technology. Those devices use a kind of charging plate or mat; you place your phone on the mat and it begins to charge.

Photo

Why couldn’t Apple use the same system for the watch? One theory concerns the watch’s shape.

Because the watch has a band, it wouldn’t necessarily lie flat on a mat when you set it down. And if it didn’t lie flat, it wouldn’t start charging. That illustrates the main problem with induction wireless charging; to work well, it needs very close range and precise alignment between the device and the charger, which often restricts how you can move the device while it’s being charged. So, in theory, the advantage of a wireless charging mat is that you could just throw your watch on your nightstand and have it start charging. But in reality, induction charging might be too finicky to allow for such careless placement.

As my colleague Molly Wood wrote this year, some other wireless charging technologies allow for more flexibility in how you arrange your devices. And as Nick Bilton reported a few weeks ago, start-ups are working on advanced systems that let you charge your phone or watch while you’re several feet away from a charger. But none of these look likely to take off soon because the technologies aren’t too practical and no solution has achieved mass acceptance.

Which means that for the foreseeable future, you can expect to be stuck with lots of ways to charge your gadgets. Soon, Apple will have three different kinds of charging systems — one cord for the Mac, one for the iPhone and iPad, and one for the Watch. Many competing companies use standard USB connectors, but even those have begun to come in different shapes. Samsung’s new phones and tablets, for instance, carry the USB Micro B charging port, which is only partially compatible with older Micro USB cables. The old cable can fit into the new gadgets, but you won’t get full data transfer speed. (The new cable can’t fit into your old gadgets.) And just about every smartwatch and fitness band I’ve used has had its own unique charging adapter.

So what I’m saying is, there’s no hope. Get used to carrying a lot of charging cables around. And have fun plugging things in. You’ll be doing a lot of it.

Correction: September 11, 2014

An earlier version of this post referred incorrectly to the compatibility of the USB Micro B charging port and Micro USB cables. The Micro USB cables will fit in the charging port, although users will not get the full speed available with Micro B technology; it is not the case that they are incompatible.

State of the Art, Wearable Computing, Apple Inc, Apple Watch, Samsung Group, Wearable Computing, Wireless Communications

Mobile

Wireless Charging: Still Plenty of Kinks in the Cord

By Molly Wood February 17, 2014 12:35 pmFebruary 17, 2014 12:35 pm

Photo

The iQi is a new, Indiegogo-funded wireless charging kit for the iPhone.

As personal devices proliferate — smartphones, wearable fitness bands, Kindles, tablets, smart glasses — our charger collections are starting to look like the electrical outlet in the movie “A Christmas Story.”

Wireless charging to the rescue? Not quite. The concept has been caught in a slow-moving standards war.

That’s not to say wireless charging capabilities aren’t starting to creep into devices. Google’s Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 phones and Nexus 7 tablet support wireless charging, and Google even makes its own wireless charger with the Nexus name. The Motorola Droid Maxx supports wireless charging, while a few other Android phones sort of do: the LG G2 only offers it on the Verizon model, and Samsung Galaxy S4 owners can spend $90 on an official wireless charging back cover and pad.

Several charging covers are available for other Android phones and for many Nokia phones, like the Lumia 1020. There’s even a new, Indiegogo-funded wireless charging kit for iPhone, called the iQi.

So, interest is growing, but why don’t more devices have wireless charging capability built in? The primary reason is, like so many things in tech, conflicting standards. Until last week, there were three separate groups pushing wireless charging standards. And phone, tablet and wearable makers are hesitant to tie their devices to a specific charging tech.

The Wireless Power Consortium backs the Qi (pronounced “chee”) standard used in the iQi and in the accessories mentioned above, as well as the Nexus line. Qi is arguably the wireless charging leader, and support for the specification is built into some 400 devices from almost 200 different companies.

If you’ve seen Powermat chargers in Starbucks and McDonald’s, those support the Power Matters Alliance standard. A third specification comes from Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP), which has Qualcomm as a founding member. Last week, though, the alliance and A4WP announced a merger, bringing the three major standards-bearers down to two.

Confused yet?

The two organizations employ similar, but not identical magnetic charging technologies: A4WP’s newer resonance charging lets you charge multiple devices on a single charging pad without worrying too much about where they’re placed. The alliance, on the other hand, uses inductive charging, which requires more precise placement for a device to charge properly.

Qi chargers use the more restrictive inductive charging, but the consortium showed off resonance charging devices at International CES in Las Vegas in January, and the standard supports the more flexible charging technique.

But other companies hope to sidestep the standards slog with their own innovations.The Israeli start-up Humavox is pushing a new, wireless charging technology based not on magnetic induction, but on radio frequency. Its Eterna platform employs an extremely tiny receiver, originally designed for hearing aids, and a transmitter that can work in any kind of charging receptacle, from a pad to a bowl to a portable charging box.

Humavox wants to license its technology, rather than build products. But it’s been showing off prototype devices including one it calls a “Nest,” which is basically a small white bowl into which you can casually toss a jumble of fitness bands and phones and charge them in about the same amount of time as a charging cable.

The technology seems promising as a demonstration, primarily because the idea of tossing devices into a bowl for charging is endlessly appealing. But as with all platforms, success depends on adoption. Humavox says it’s working with a few partners making semiconductors and health-related devices, but consumer brands are still slow to come around.

It’s hard to say whether Humavox’s entry will make things even more confusing or give manufacturers a good option. At least one other company, Ossia, is working on a wireless charging technology that uses radio frequencies, and there may be more in the works.

So for now — and please pardon the pun — wireless charging is still as tangled as the cords next to my bedside table.

Mobile, Start-ups, Wearable Computing, Cellular Telephones, Google Inc, LG Electronics, New Models, Design and Products, Qualcomm Inc, Samsung Group, Smartphones, Tablet Computers, Verizon Communications Inc, Wearable Computing, Wireless Communications

Mobile NYT NOW

Wireless Charging, at a Distance, Moves Forward for uBeam

By Nick Bilton August 6, 2014 10:00 amAugust 6, 2014 10:00 am

Photo

Meredith Perry shows off a concept prototype of uBeam, a wireless charging platform that uses ultrasound to send electricity to devices through the air.

LOS ANGELES — When Meredith Perry, 25, started studying astrobiology at the University of Pennsylvania, her career goal was to eventually find life on other planets. Instead, Ms. Perry accidentally stumbled upon something even more exciting: the ability to charge portable electronics, like cellphones and laptops, wirelessly using ultrasound.

To do this, Ms. Perry created a technology that can take electricity, convert it into sound and send that audio through the air over ultrasound. Then a receiver attached to a portable electronic device catches the sound and converts it back into electricity.

The technology makes it possible for a device to move freely around a room, in a pocket or purse, while constantly charging.

Ms. Perry’s company, uBeam, announced on Wednesday that it took an early prototype concept of this technology, first developed for Ms. Perry’s college innovation competition, and turned it into a fully functional prototype that the company now plans to build for consumers.

“This is the only wireless power system that allows you to be on your phone and moving around a room freely while you’re device is charging,” Ms. Perry said in an interview. “It allows for a Wi-Fi-like experience of charging; with everything else you have to be in close range of a transmitter.”

The uBeam charging stations will be thin, measuring no more than 5 millimeters thick. These transmitters could be tacked to walls like wallpaper or made into decorative art to beam electricity to devices. Smartphones and laptops could then be equipped with thin receivers able to convert audio and charge the devices.

The technology could also bring significant changes to how devices are designed: Gadgets that work with uBeam could have thinner batteries and constantly receive power. Battery technology has barely changed over the last few decades, with device makers relying on incremental improvements to battery power, in combination with more energy-efficient electronics.

“If wireless power is everywhere, then the size of your battery can shrink because it’s always charging.” Ms. Perry said. “You’ll never need a cord again, and you won’t need international charging adapters.”

The uBeam products will be on store shelves within the next two years, the company said. Ms. Perry said that the company planned to make two different charging products at first. One will be built for smaller rooms, like homes and offices, and the other, for much larger uBeam chargers, will be industrial-size for stadiums, airports, hotels, conference halls and music venues.

The company also announced Wednesday that it had stumbled upon the ability to be able to send highly secure data through its charging stations. This means that uBeam’s technology could be used for the so-called Internet of Things, where everyday objects are capable of communicating over the Internet.

The uBeam charging capabilities do have some serious limitations, including the power transmitters’ inability to beam through walls. This means that unlike Wi-Fi hotspots, where a single device can transmit Internet to an entire house or small office, uBeam users would have to buy transmitters for each room.

There is also the question of adoption. Short-range wireless battery charging technology has been around for years, yet people have been slow to add it to their home or office. But uBeam says that will change because its technology can transmit farther distances, and because the company expects to have the transmitters in many places that people visit.

“We’re going to sell directly to consumers, and we’ll sell them to restaurant chains and hotels — we are going to saturate the market with uBeam transmitters,” Ms. Perry said. “In addition to your local coffee shop saying it has free Wi-Fi, it will also say it has free uBeam.”

The company is filing 18 patents related to wireless charging and ultrasound with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It is also in the process of closing a Series A round of financing, in addition to an earlier $1.7 million seed round from Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive; Founders Fund; and Andreessen Horowitz.

Mobile, Batteries, Inventions and Patents, Los Angeles (Calif), Perry, Meredith, uBeam, Ultrasonic Imaging and Sonograms

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Technology |NYT Now

With Apple Pay and Smartwatch, a Privacy Challenge

By BRIAN X. CHEN and STEVE LOHRSEPT. 10, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|1:30

Introducing Apple Watch

Introducing Apple Watch Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, introduced a smartwatch, a wearable device that combines health and fitness tracking with communications. Video Credit By Reuters on Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

No one has considered Apple a serious data company, until now.

For years, Apple has offered Internet services like email and online calendars. But Tuesday, with the introduction of health-monitoring technology and a new service that will allow people to buy things wirelessly with some Apple devices, the Cupertino, Calif., company positioned itself as a caretaker of valuable personal information, like credit card numbers and heart rates.

Talk about unfortunate timing. Just last week, a number of celebrities, including the Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence, discovered that hackers broke into their Apple accounts, stole nude or provocative photos, and posted those photos on the Internet. Even though Apple found no widespread breach of its online service, the company’s ability to protect its customers’ private information — for perhaps the first time — was openly questioned.

Against that background, Apple faces two threats to its new services: one from hackers always looking for clever ways to steal financial information, and another from regulators increasingly interested in ensuring that information gleaned from health monitoring devices stays private.

Photo

The Apple Watch introduced this week will be available next year, with its new payment service, Apple Pay.

So Apple executives, in a two-hour presentation and in media interviews Tuesday, were careful to explain what the company planned to do with the information users were sharing through the health-monitoring capabilities of a smartwatch called the Apple Watch, which will be available next year, and its new payment service, Apple Pay.

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said in an interview that in contrast to companies like Amazon and Google that relied on tracking user activity to serve ads or sell things, Apple still primarily made money from selling hardware. With Apple Pay, which will be available next month, Apple does not store any payment information on the devices or on Apple’s servers. It simply acts as a conduit between the merchant and bank.

“We’re not looking at it through the lens that most people do of wanting to know what you’re buying, where you buy it at, how much you’re spending and all these kinds of things,” he said. “We could care less.”

Jeff Williams, Apple’s head of operations, noted that for the Apple Watch, Apple is forbidding app developers from storing any health information on Apple’s iCloud service. He added that all health information logged by the watch would be encrypted on the device and users would decide which apps had access to the data.

Some security experts are already pleased by what they see of Apple’s payment system. Apple Pay relies on a technology called near-field communication to exchange information wirelessly between devices. The new payment system could also drive faster adoption of a chip-based security feature called EMV, for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, the companies that first backed the technology.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|0:25

Molly Wood on Mobile Payments

Molly Wood on Mobile Payments Times technology columnist Molly Wood says consumers may see a rise in the use of mobile payments now that the iPhone has a chip that will work at tap-to-pay payment terminals. Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditSoftcard, via PR Newswire

EMV is more secure than the magnetic stripes on credit cards because a new string of numbers is created for each purchase, making it difficult for hackers to use a stolen number for another purchase or to counterfeit credit cards. The technology has been widely adopted in Europe, but American banks have been slow to use it.

Tom Pageler, the chief information security officer at the computer security company DocuSign, said EMV — which Apple Pay uses — could help avoid recent giant breaches at retailers like Target, where the information of 40 million cardholders was stolen.

“If we move to EMV, all that data will be useless to criminals,” Mr. Pageler said.

The Apple Watch will add to a field of health-monitoring devices that is largely unregulated. Personal health sensors, like Fitbit and Jawbone, are not deemed medical devices by the Food and Drug Administration. And personal health data collected by individuals for their own use is outside the federal laws controlling the use of patient information.

But regulators are closely watching this fast-growing market, and the Apple Watch will only add to the scrutiny. The F.D.A. has issued a list of mobile applications for which it has warned that it will “exercise enforcement discretion.” The list includes software used by individuals to log personal data on activity and exercise, food consumption and sleep patterns, and make suggestions about health and wellness.

Photo

Health information logged by the Apple Watch will encrypted. Users decide who has access to the data.

The key, privacy advocates say, is the practices that govern how personal data is handled and analyzed by the device makers and software developers. “The Achilles’ heel for privacy and consumer protection are apps connected to marketing, where the information can be gathered and used,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “I do not believe safeguards are in place to protect consumer health information that will be gathered for profiling and targeting.”

Apple has made it clear to developers of health apps that it wants to protect privacy. Last week, it updated its guidelines for app developers, stating that apps working with HealthKit, Apple’s new set of tools for tracking fitness and health statistics, may not use the personal data gathered for advertising or data-mining uses other than for helping manage an individual’s health and fitness, or for medical research.

The guidelines also say that app developers cannot share data with third parties without the user’s consent.

“I think Apple is certainly aware of the privacy issues with health data,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “But whether it really enforces those guidelines to uphold its privacy commitments will be the real test.”

Mark A. McAndrew, a partner with the law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, which works with health and science clients, questioned whether Apple had the tools and resources to keep developers in check. Apple already has over one million apps to monitor in its App Store for iPhones and iPads, and occasionally questionable apps get published.

“It may not be as much of an Apple issue as much as it is, How do you police the app developers?” Mr. McAndrew said.

Correction: September 13, 2014

An article on Thursday about Apple’s privacy challenges, using information from a company representative, described incorrectly restrictions on where app developers can store health information collected by the company’s forthcoming Apple Watch. While the information cannot be stored on Apple’s iCloud service, there are no restrictions on other cloud storage. It is not the case that developers cannot store the data “on cloud computing services.”

Brian X. Chen reported from San Francisco, and Steve Lohr from New York. Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting from San Francisco.

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A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: With New Apple Products, a Privacy Challenge. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Technology |NYT Now

Nude Photos of Jennifer Lawrence Are Latest Front in Online Privacy Debate

By MIKE ISAACSEPT. 2, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

Perez Hilton has made a career of posting anything and everything about celebrities and their lives. On Tuesday, he thought better of it.

Mr. Hilton helped a trove of nude celebrity photos spread like wildfire across the Internet over Labor Day weekend. The photos, which included images of the actress Jennifer Lawrence and the model Kate Upton, became available after someone — and who did it is unknown — posted the pictures to 4chan and Reddit, two hugely popular anonymous online message boards. There they quickly became trading fodder among the sites’ regulars.

On Sunday, after the photos were posted to these message boards, Google searches for the term “Jennifer Lawrence” skyrocketed, according to data from Google Trends.

The images are hardly the first nude celebrity pictures to make their way online. But their publication has touched off a larger discussion on the state of privacy and civil liberties on the Internet. Some privacy advocates are focusing on the role that big tech companies play in policing — or not policing — users who repeatedly push the boundaries of taste, or those who post controversial content like the videos of the beheadings of the journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

Mr. Hilton and others are even soul-searching about viewing and posting questionable content.

Continue reading the main story

Jennifer Lawrence & Me (And My Thoughts On What Happened)

Mr. Hilton published a video on YouTube, in which he expressed remorse that he had publicized the photos. “I view this as a good opportunity to learn from and grow from, and to make some changes going forward,” he said.

His regrets were echoed across Twitter, where actors like Seth Rogen and Lena Dunham urged others not to share or view the images out of respect for the celebrities’ privacy. On Reddit, moderators of the forums featuring the images questioned whether they should take down the pictures. (They are still up.)

Continue reading the main story

Remember, when you look at these pictures you are violating these women again and again. It's not okay.

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) Aug. 31, 2014

For privacy advocates, though, the responsibility lies with the big tech companies that host this kind of content.

The episode “should be treated like a sex crime, a privacy invasion taken to an extreme,” said Jules Polonetsky, executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum, an advocacy group based in Washington. “Sites allowing the sharing of these pictures can and should be taking proactive action to remove these pictures.”

Recently, Twitter came under fire for its loose stance on what is permissible on its network of 271 million monthly users when Robin Williams’s daughter quit the service after being attacked via Twitter messages about her father’s death.

And after the terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria posted to YouTube videos of the beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, two American journalists, some called for more stringent guidelines on the services. Many users urged people to take matters into their own hands, advocating not viewing the video.

Continue reading the main story

Let’s remember Foley by passing this picture around, and not screengrabs of the YouTube video. pic.twitter.com/JLLCgjUHbL

— Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) Aug. 18, 2014

“We respect Steven Sotloff and won’t air images of his death, or him in a jumpsuit,” Al Jazeera, the media network based in Doha, Qatar, said in a statement posted to its public relations Twitter account on Tuesday, using the hashtag “#ISISmediaBlackout.” “We suggest all media do the same.”

Continue reading the main story

If you’re going to share a picture of Steven Sotloff, plz share this one showing him during happier times. @acarvin pic.twitter.com/l4UiGPTzJV

— Joanne (@joanneatom) Sept. 1, 2014

(The New York Times chose to run the photograph because it felt it was an important image that told the story, Dean Baquet, the executive editor, said.)

Twitter, YouTube and Reddit take a decidedly hands-off approach to suppressing content that appears on their networks, relying instead on users to flag objectionable material that may or may not end up being taken down. “YouTube has clear policies that outline what content is acceptable to post on YouTube, and we remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.

On Reddit, the photos were quickly embraced. At least one forum was dedicated to discussing and trading them.

Reddit did not respond to a request for comment. In the past, the site’s policy has been to allow its users to police themselves, letting self-appointed community moderators decide what is appropriate to appear on the site.

The F.B.I. acknowledged what it called the “unlawful release” of the pictures, but would not comment further.

When the photos began to surface on the web, some news reports suggested that Apple’s online storage service, iCloud, had been breached.

But Apple firmly denied this speculation, saying on Tuesday that while at least some celebrity accounts were individually attacked, the episode was not the result of any widespread attack on Apple’s software products.

“None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems,” Nat Kerris, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved.”

A spokeswoman for Ms. Lawrence, who verified that the photos of her client were real, said she was in touch with law enforcement authorities and would prosecute those who posted the stolen pictures.

Twitter, YouTube and others may ultimately decide to take a more active approach to policing user-generated content. Twitter has already shown some signs of change. But this is a fine line to tread, as these companies have long trumpeted their democratic approach to unfettered online speech.

If these services were altered significantly, civil liberties advocates fear it could inhibit how people are able to express themselves online.

“While a rule against hate speech might prevent rape threats, it could also stifle political speech,” said Jillian C. York, a director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties organization. “Companies have demonstrated that they can’t be trusted as arbiters of speech.”

Instead, Ms. York said, Internet users themselves should be able to do a better job of self-policing. “We should encourage companies like Twitter and Facebook to put tools in place that allow users to more easily filter out content and block abusive individuals,” she said.

For some, though, the damage has already been done.

On Sunday, the actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead reacted on Twitter to nude pictures of her that were leaked on 4chan and Reddit.

Continue reading the main story

To those of you looking at photos I took with my husband years ago in the privacy of our home, hope you feel great about yourselves.

— Mary E. Winstead (@M_E_Winstead) Aug. 30, 2014

Ms. Winstead said she was abandoning the Internet for the time being, because of a barrage of personal attacks on Twitter after the photos surfaced online.

“I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this,” she said.

Brian X. Chen and Quentin Hardy contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 3, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Nude Photos, Privacy Collides With Wild Web. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Technology |NYT Now

The iPhone 6 Goes Big, as Apple Aims Small With a Smartwatch

By BRIAN X. CHENSEPT. 9, 2014

Inside

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|1:30

Introducing Apple Watch

Introducing Apple Watch Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, introduced a smartwatch, a wearable device that combines health and fitness tracking with communications. Video Credit By Reuters on Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

CUPERTINO, Calif. — After three years as chief executive of Apple, Timothy D. Cook is starting to crystallize his vision for the company.

Apple on Tuesday introduced a highly anticipated smartwatch, which combines health and fitness monitoring with mobile computer capabilities like maps. The company also introduced two iPhones with larger screens.

The smartwatch, named the Apple Watch, is a miniature computer strapped around the wrist and is the first product made under Mr. Cook’s leadership that branches Apple into a new type of product: a device in the growing field of fitness-tracking computers that can be worn on or around the body.

Although the Apple Watch is the company’s first wearable computer, it enters a crowded field. Samsung, Pebble and Sony lead the pack of companies producing these new devices, and sales are growing quickly. But the devices are nowhere near as popular as smartphones. IDC, the research company, estimates that 19 million smartwatches will ship in 2014, much lower than the 1.2 billion smartphones that it expects will ship this year.

Continue reading the main story

Comparing New iPhone Sizes

Apple’s new phones cater to a growing appetite among consumers for bigger screens.

4-in.

4.7-in.

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

4-in.

4.7-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

And despite the fanfare with which the news media has greeted Apple’s first wearable device, analysts have expressed mixed views about its potential to become mainstream. Can the smartwatch be a late entrant to a market but eventually dominate as Apple did several times before under its former chief, Steven P. Jobs?

“Jobs made that work with the iPod,” said Carl Howe, an analyst at the Yankee Group. “He certainly made it work with the iPhone. Question is, Are they going to be able to do the same thing with a watch? I wouldn’t bet against them at this point.”

Mr. Cook said in an interview that the new watch indicated that the company was still innovative.

“For us, it’s never been about being first. It’s been about being the best,” he said. “And I think we just launched the Apple watch that is sort of in a category by itself that will redefine what people expect of products in the category.”

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|0:27

Molly Wood on Smartwatches

Molly Wood on Smartwatches Times technology columnist Molly Wood says Apple has a chance to make smart watches a hit. Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditRebekah Fergusson for The New York Times

The new iPhones are significant upgrades for Apple’s smartphone lineup, still by far the company’s largest source of profit. They cater to a growing appetite among consumers for bigger screens, similar to what happened with televisions.

And they are a rare instance of Apple’s following market trends instead of creating them; Samsung, Apple’s chief rival, has captured a major share of the smartphone market with large phones.

Apple displayed the products in front of a packed auditorium here at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts, the same spot where the company introduced the Macintosh in 1984.

Apple said that to use the Apple Watch, someone must also use one of its more recent iPhones.

Continue reading the main story

For Wrists, an Upgrade

In Apple’s new Watch, consumers get a pulse monitor, quick access to messages and the time.

Apps are in new, organic layout.

Spin this to zoom in.

Push to go the home screen.

Use this button to access contacts.

Sensors can differentiate between a ‘tap’ and a ‘press’, and detect your pulse.

.955 in.

1.65 in.

There are six

interchangeable bands.

1

2

.955 in.

1.65 in.

3

1. Spin this to zoom in and push to go the home screen. 2. Use this button to access contacts. 3. There are six interchangeable bands.

The watch will have a strong focus on health. An app called Fitness tracks statistics for different exercises, like bicycling or running, an accelerometer tracks movements and a heart rate sensor helps measure the intensity of workouts.

The watch has a rectangular screen for a face with a flexible display and comes in two sizes. A crown on the side acts as a digital dial, which can be turned to zoom in; tapping the crown returns to the main menu. The watch can be attached to six strap styles, like stainless steel and leather.

The smartwatch can run various apps, like a calendar, map navigation and a music player.

The smartwatch will rely on so-called inductive charging to replenish the battery. Some consider it a form of wireless charging, but technically, it still requires a magnet that attaches to the back of the watch from another device.

Photo

The iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus, right.

The watch will take advantage of Siri, Apple’s tool for controlling the device with voice commands. Pushing on the crown activates Siri, and a command like “What movies are playing nearby?” will prompt the watch to load show times for nearby theaters.

Apple also said it would release a tool kit for software developers to build apps for the watch. It said many companies had already made such apps, including W hotels, Pinterest and BMW.

James McQuivey, a consumer technology analyst at Forrester Research, said the Apple Watch had already accomplished one thing, even though the device will not be in stores until 2015.

“It has firmly established the smartwatch as a category, one with unique properties requiring a unique solution, as opposed to a miniature smartphone pushed down onto your wrist,” he said.

Photo

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, demonstrating Apple Pay, which uses the iPhone 6, the larger iPhone 6 Plus and the Apple Watch.

Apple said that there would be three versions of the watch — Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport and Apple Watch Edition — and that pricing would start at $350.

Employees working on the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, have said that Apple wanted to introduce the product last year, but had to wait until this year to finish developing the hardware and software and to give developers time to make apps for the device.

Mr. Cook said Apple took its time to figure out how to devise a software interface that made sense on a small screen, among other challenges.

“You don’t want a phone strapped to your wrist. That’s not what the consumer wants,” he said.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|0:25

Molly Wood on Mobile Payments

Molly Wood on Mobile Payments Times technology columnist Molly Wood says consumers may see a rise in the use of mobile payments now that the iPhone has a chip that will work at tap-to-pay payment terminals. Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditSoftcard, via PR Newswire

The two new iPhones, the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, measure 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches diagonally; the most recent iPhones measure 4 inches.

Both iPhones have an aluminum back. Despite larger screen sizes, the bodies are thinner than those of past iPhones.

To deal with concerns that a bigger phone will make using the phone with one hand difficult, Apple created the feature Reachability. Double tapping the physical button makes the picture slide down so that a user can reach over with one hand to tap something.

The processor inside the new iPhones is about 25 percent faster than the previous version, Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, said. The iPhones have slightly better battery life than the previous iPhone, and they include new wireless capabilities to get faster Internet speeds from cellular networks.

In addition, they support making phone calls over a Wi-Fi network and have an improved camera with a sensor that reads light and does quicker autofocus.

The starting price of an iPhone 6 with a contract is $200, while that for an iPhone 6 Plus is $300. They go on sale Sept. 19.

With the new iPhones and watch, Apple is moving deeper into the world of mobile payments. Apple demonstrated Apple Pay, a feature that allows users to pay for things in retail stores with the devices. The feature relies on near-field communication, or N.F.C., a technology that lets devices exchange information wirelessly over very short distances.

After rising initially, Apple shares ended the day down slightly.

The set of products should be the first of more to come this year. In May, Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of Internet services, said the products that the company planned to introduce this year made up the “best product pipeline that I’ve seen in my 25 years at Apple.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 2014, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Apple Goes Big With iPhone 6, and Small With a Smartwatch. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Technology

With Apple Pay, a Push Into Mobile Payments

By MIKE ISAACSEPT. 9, 2014

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Molly Wood on Mobile Payments

Molly Wood on Mobile Payments Times technology columnist Molly Wood says consumers may see a rise in the use of mobile payments now that the iPhone has a chip that will work at tap-to-pay payment terminals. Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditSoftcard, via PR Newswire

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Tech evangelists have predicted for years a world in which people paid for retail goods with the wave of a smartphone, or the push of a smartphone button. For nearly as long, this so-called mobile wallet has yet to catch on.

Now, the biggest technology player of them all — Apple — thinks it has the formula for making it happen.

On Tuesday, Apple announced that it planned to offer its own version of a mobile wallet, teaming up with retailers like Target and restaurants like McDonald’s, as well as the three major credit card companies. That means that consumers will soon be able to buy a Big Mac or a laundry detergent with the tap of a new Apple iPhone or a new smartwatch, also announced on Tuesday.

The product, Apple Pay, will almost certainly give Apple a leg up on mobile payments, which Forrester Research expects to reach $100 billion in the United States over the next five years. But it remains to be seen whether people are ready to turn their paying over to a digital device, and whether Apple will be able to keep the edge for long.

Photo

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, demonstrating Apple Pay, which uses the iPhone 6, the larger iPhone 6 Plus and the Apple Watch.

Apple’s solution, waving the phone, is little different from previous efforts. But Apple hopes that its promises about security, including that credit card information will not be stored on the smartphones or devices or on Apple’s servers, will convince consumers that it is safer than using a credit card. “We’re totally reliant on the exposed numbers and the outdated and vulnerable mag stripe,” said Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, at an event in Cupertino, Calif., on Tuesday. “Which all of us know aren’t so secure.”

The timing may be right, too. Merchants are up against a mandate to swap out their payment terminal infrastructure to accept a more secure chip form of transaction by the end of next year. If enough people want to use Apple Pay, merchants could have the incentive to install hardware to process mobile transactions, long one of the hurdles to the rise of paying with phones.

Mr. Cook said that Apple Pay would be available only on the company’s two new smartphones, the iPhone 6 and the larger iPhone 6 Plus, and the Apple Watch, a wearable computing device Apple plans to sell in 2015.

But the move has implications far beyond Apple and those devices. If Apple Pay can make more people use their smartphones to pay for things, it could push companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft to reach similar deals with retailers and credit card companies, making mobile payments more widespread.

“Lots of companies have tried this before, but our security and the Apple payment experience will be the two biggest drivers here,” said Charles W. Scharf, chief executive of Visa, which is teaming with Apple in the initiative, as are MasterCard and American Express.

Apple Pay fits into Apple’s existing Passbook app, which allows users to store coupons, tickets and merchant loyalty cards digitally. Using a stored credit card, customers wave their phone in front of a terminal to pay. The payment is delivered to the terminal using a technology called near-field communication, or N.F.C., via a chip embedded in Apple’s new iPhones.

Tens of thousands of retailers in the United States, including Whole Foods Market and Macy’s, will accept it. And because of a partnership with Stripe, a payments processing start-up, Apple Pay can help small app developers use the service to power their transactions.

Other major tech companies have tried mobile wallets and struggled. Google, for example, introduced its wallet product, which also uses N.F.C. technology, in 2011. And a consortium of American mobile carriers have backed Softcard, another app-based smartphone wallet.

Both options have been hamstrung by complications. Google Wallet worked only on specific phones, using specific cellular networks, and with specific credit card issuers. And paying with a phone has been no easier or more valuable than swiping a credit card at the register.

“The mistake that many wallet providers have made in the past is focusing too much on technology and not on the value for the customer,” said Denée Carrington, an analyst with Forrester Research. “The consumer doesn’t care if it’s N.F.C. or a bar code. They just want to get through the line quickly and easily.”

But privacy and security have been major concerns as well. Recent hacker attacks of Target and Home Depot, among other retailers, have exposed the data of millions of consumers. And even Apple has had problems with the security of its iCloud storage system; celebrities whose individual accounts were hacked recently saw their private nude photos spread across the Internet.

Tom Pageler, the chief information security officer at DocuSign, a company that manages digital transactions, said that Apple’s payment system seemed to be more secure than the current system. He said the N.F.C. technology would also help payment companies identify unusual purchases; using smartphone data, they will be more easily able to identify a purchase made outside a customer’s usual location, for example.

Still, even if Apple’s new product increases consumers’ appetites for mobile wallet, merchants will need to take part.

“The onus is on retailers to drive mobile payment adoption,” said Josh Beck, a research analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. “Brick and mortar sales are challenged. If Apple and others can pitch a real value proposition for merchants, then you could see the retailers push mobile payments in their stores.”

That value is not clear today. But in the future, mobile wallet providers could make it more attractive for merchants and customers, perhaps pairing special offers, discounts or loyalty coupons.

And for now, at least, analysts believe if there is any company to persuade consumers of the mobile wallet’s value, it is Apple.

“Apple is likely able to create a sort of harmonious ecosystem that Google wasn’t able to do,” said Ms. Carrington of Forrester.

Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Ambitious Bet on More Than Devices. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Personal Tech

Troubleshooting a Balky Trackpad

SEPT. 12, 2014

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Q&A;

By J. D. BIERSDORFER

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Q. How hard is it to replace an unresponsive trackpad on a Windows laptop? Is it a do-it-yourself job or one that requires an expensive professional?

A. The ease or difficulty in swapping out an old trackpad for a new one depends on the design of the laptop model, availability of parts and your comfort level with fiddling around under the machine’s hood. Opening up the laptop’s case may void your warranty if it is still valid — and if the warranty is still good, you may be able to get a free or inexpensive repair from a service provider authorized by your laptop’s manufacturer.

Some laptop makers (like HP) can be quite helpful, even offering videos and step-by-step instructions for basic repairs on their websites. You may also be able to get an idea of the process by searching YouTube for how-to videos related to your model, or searching for guides on the iFixit repair site.

Before you start hunting for replacement parts and taking the computer apart, though, you might want to run through a few diagnostic steps to make sure the unresponsive behavior from the trackpad is not because of a software issue. (Giving the trackpad a good cleaning may help, too.)

First, check your laptop’s manual or manufacturer’s website to see if there is a keyboard shortcut that enables and disables the trackpad when pressed. On some models, for example, pressing the Function and F7 keys can activate or deactivate the trackpad.

No luck? If you are not comfortable navigating Windows by keyboard shortcuts, find a spare mouse or other input device and plug it in so you can use the laptop, and then check the Windows Device Manager (as well as the Control Panel) to make sure the trackpad is enabled; you may want to check the BIOS settings as well.

Downloading and installing fresh drivers from the support area of the manufacturer’s website might fix the problem if the old drivers were damaged or out of date. If you have multiple USB devices connected to the laptop, try unplugging everything, rebooting the machine and trying the trackpad again to see if one of the other devices was interfering.

The Pros and Cons of Scanner Apps

Q. What’s the advantage of buying a scanning app for my phone when I can just take a picture of the document or business card I need to capture?

A. Like camera programs, most scanner apps let you crop the results and adjust image contrast, and you can email the scanned documents right from your phone. But you can do more with a dedicated scanner app. For example, many mobile scanning programs can save the captured images as PDF files.

Some apps can also synchronize files with online storage sites like Dropbox or save scanned receipts into another program that tracks expenses. Some scanning apps — particularly ones that are intended for capturing business cards — use optical character recognition software to automatically convert the picture of the card or document to editable text. Once the text from an image has been converted with software, it can be pulled into a word-processing program on the mobile device, or even converted into a regular contact file in the phone’s address book.

Most major phone platforms have at least a few mobile scanning apps to sample and many have ad-supported free versions if you do not want to part with $5 or $10 for a premium app. If you have an Android phone, you probably already have an app that can scan documents: Google Drive.

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Devices

A Smartwatch, iPhone 6 and More: Highlights and Analysis From Apple’s Keynote

By Molly Wood September 9, 2014 8:00 amSeptember 9, 2014 8:00 am

Photo

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, announced the Apple Watch.

Apple on Tuesday announced two new versions of the iPhone, the 6 and the 6 Plus, both with bigger screens than their predecessors. It also introduced a payments system that integrates with its smartphones.

With a nod to the late Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief, Timothy D. Cook, also teased the crowd that one more thing would be coming.

Company executives then announced Apple Watch, a wearable device, which is its first new product under Mr. Cook’s leadership.

See below for highlights and analysis from Apple’s presentation.

3:00 P.M. Cook Wraps Up Event

And Mr. Cook ends the event in a manner that has quickly become familiar: by showing a video.

So that is a wrap. New phones, new payment system, new smartwatch from Apple. Nothing totally unexpected.

What remains unknown, though, is whether these new devices, especially the watch, and the payment service will take off among consumers. No company has yet had a big hit with a smartwatch, and company after company has stumbled with mobile payments.

— Molly Wood

Mobile

T-Mobile’s Latest Freebies Revolve Around Wi-Fi

By Brian X. Chen September 10, 2014 8:09 pmSeptember 10, 2014 8:09 pm

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John Legere, chief executive of T-Mobile, which is placing a strong emphasis on Wi-Fi.

Over the last year and a half, T-Mobile has lured millions of customers to its network with the help of giveaways, like unlimited music streaming and free international roaming.

On Wednesday, T-Mobile said it was giving away more features, this time related to Wi-Fi.

The company said it had teamed up with Gogo, a provider of in-flight Wi-Fi, to offer T-Mobile subscribers free access to texting and voicemail service on airplanes equipped with Gogo’s service. Users will receive the messages and voicemail over the Wi-Fi connection. (Many modern messaging and voicemail services, like the iPhone’s iMessage and visual voicemail, rely on an Internet data connection rather than the traditional cellular network.)

It also said its customers could get a free base station that plugs into a broadband Internet connection to create a miniature cell tower inside their homes, which will help improve service in areas with spotty coverage. Customers first have to put down a $25 deposit for the device, and once they are done using it or do not want it anymore, they get the money back.

T-Mobile also said it would be the first carrier to support Wi-Fi calls, a new feature in Apple’s coming iPhone 6. It allows users to place high-quality phone calls with each other over a Wi-Fi connection. That could help in areas where phone calls made over the cellular network drop frequently.

T-Mobile executives said in an interview that the Wi-Fi offerings benefited the company by attracting more subscribers to its network. But it also lets the company offload some of the traffic from its cellular network onto Wi-Fi services, which helps free up some congestion.

“Is there any question that having Wi-Fi networks everywhere and the cellular network combined is better than either one of them alone?” John Legere, T-Mobile’s chief executive, said in an interview.

Mobile, Apple Inc, Gogo LLC, Legere, John J, T-Mobile US Inc, Wireless Communications

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Technology |NYT Now

T-Mobile Offers iPhone Tests and Unlimited Music Streaming

By BRIAN X. CHENJUNE 18, 2014

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John Legere at T-Mobile’s event Wednesday night. He said a possible merger with Sprint would “absolutely” intensify innovation.

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T-Mobile US, the fourth-largest American phone carrier, has spent the last year and a half introducing aggressive new offerings to lure customers. Late Wednesday, the company said it would add to those offerings with unlimited streaming music and the ability to test-drive an iPhone.

The company’s moves have helped attract millions of people to T-Mobile. And they have also impressed federal antitrust regulators, who have publicly patted themselves on the back for resisting a potential merger between T-Mobile and AT&T; in 2011.

Now, T-Mobile is in talks with Sprint, the third-largest carrier, for a $32 billion merger. A deal could be announced this summer.

The innovative programs being introduced by T-Mobile could test regulators’ resolve. If having four major carriers has helped push the companies to compete for customers, as some antitrust regulators believe, why approve consolidation?

William J. Baer, the chief of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, noted in a speech this year that the effect of regulators blocking the AT&T; and T-Mobile merger was “driving enormous benefits in the direction of the American consumer.”

Photo

John Legere, chief of T-Mobile, which is in merger talks with Sprint, said consolidation would “absolutely” intensify innovation.

“Since AT&T; terminated its effort to eliminate T-Mobile as a rival, T-Mobile has spearheaded increased competition in wireless services,” Mr. Baer said. He cited, as one example, T-Mobile’s $4 billion investment in improving its cellular network.

But John J. Legere, T-Mobile’s chief executive, said in an interview on Wednesday that innovation and competition would only intensify with a merger.

“What we’re doing is we’re showing the United States’ wireless users and the industry a glimpse of what competition looks like,” he said. “We’re making a demonstration that could continue. Would consolidation help that? Absolutely.”

T-Mobile said on Wednesday that it had teamed up with popular streaming music services including Pandora, Slacker Radio, Spotify, Rhapsody and Apple’s iTunes Radio. Music streamed from those services will not be counted against a user’s data plan.

All T-Mobile customers subscribed to its current plans, called Simple Choice, will be eligible for the free streaming.

T-Mobile also said that it would introduce UnRadio, a new online radio service with Rhapsody. Unlike many traditional Internet radio services, UnRadio will be an ad-free service that allows people to listen to specific songs and skip others as much as they want. It will be free for customers subscribed to T-Mobile’s unlimited data plans and $4 a month for other T-Mobile customers.

The carrier also announced an exclusive arrangement with Apple, offering the ability to try out an iPhone on T-Mobile’s network for a week, with no obligations to keep the phone after the trial or to pay a restocking fee to return it. (Verizon used to offer a similar program for testing out phones on its network, but discontinued it in 2009.)

In January, the company said it would cover the early termination fees for consumers who leave their carrier. It has also eliminated other consumer frustrations, like strict two-year contracts or hefty fees incurred from using a smartphone overseas.

As a result, T-Mobile has added millions of new customers to its network over the last year, and its competitors have been forced to react. For example, AT&T; and Verizon, the top two carriers, now both offer similar phone plans to match T-Mobile’s contract-free option.

On Tuesday, Mr. Legere took to Twitter to express annoyance about one of his competitors, AT&T.; Mr. Legere was commenting on a report that AT&T; would be the exclusive service provider for a much-anticipated smartphone from Amazon. He pointed out that when two big companies team up, consumers are left with fewer choices.

“When #big (@ATT) and #bigger (@Amazon) get together, the industry feels a whole lot smaller,” Mr. Legere tweeted. “The odd thing is, big + bigger = fewer options for customers.”

Opponents to the merger have made the same argument that Mr. Legere did about Amazon and AT&T;: That if T-Mobile and Sprint teamed up, it would amount to less competition and fewer choices for consumers.

“No matter how they dress up this deal, it still amounts to a reduction in competition,” said Susan P. Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and author of “Captive Audience,” a book about mergers in the telecommunications industry. “We’ll be moving from four to three nationwide wireless carriers.”

Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has also noted how the blocked T-Mobile and AT&T; merger has improved competition in the mobile business.

“Look at what happened,” he said in an address last year. “Following the signal that the F.C.C. is committed to a competitive mobile marketplace, both T-Mobile and Sprint have been able to attract significant investment capital to build out their networks and increase competition in the mobile industry.”

Although T-Mobile has also grown significantly since it began offering its new plans, some say the company is on shakier footing than the droves of new subscribers might suggest. In the first quarter this year, despite adding over two million new subscribers, T-Mobile posted a loss of $151 million, in contrast to a profit of $106 million in the same quarter a year ago.

“I think there’s a compelling argument that the only way these two companies can compete in the medium to long term is to combine to take on Verizon and AT&T;,” said Jan Dawson, an independent telecom analyst for Jackdaw Research. “The challenge is that everyone sees what T-Mobile is doing today as evidence that it doesn’t need Sprint, but I think it’s frankly unsustainable.”

Mr. Legere said T-Mobile would need scale and resources to compete over the long term. There are multiple ways to achieve that, he said, including teaming up with another carrier.

“I think it’s a long dialogue, and I think everything we’re doing is a positive” in demonstrating that competition can exist in this market, Mr. Legere said.

Edward Wyatt contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on June 19, 2014, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: T-Mobile Offers iPhone Tests and Unlimited Music Streaming. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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T-Mobile to Make It Cheaper to Make Calls While Abroad

By BRIAN X. CHEN

Published: October 9, 2013

Cellphone plans are a little like languages: they don’t always translate well in foreign countries.

Often, travelers have to pay an extra $100 to their provider to get any cell service abroad. Or they must sign up for a short-term plan with a carrier in the country they are visiting.

T-Mobile US, one of the largest phone carriers in the United States, wants to change that. The company on Wednesday said it was eliminating the charges that a customer normally paid to use their phone number and data service in a foreign country, called roaming fees.

John Legere, T-Mobile’s chief executive, said in an interview that travelers had long been shocked by exorbitant cellphone bills after they traveled, so many people now just leave their phones off.

He said the point of the change was to help the people who would pay $100 for service abroad. But it was also to help “the people who fear turning their phone on.”

T-Mobile customers will be automatically enrolled in the free-roaming agreement on Oct. 31. Those who subscribe to the company’s plan, called Simple Choice, can take their smartphone to a foreign country and pay 20 cents a minute for voice calls. Text messages and data will be unlimited.

The free roaming benefit will apply to about 100 countries, including France, Spain, China, Japan and Russia.

The plan is the latest aggressive move from T-Mobile, which has been on a campaign to disrupt the American wireless industry over the last year. The company has said its goal is to eliminate the things that make people angry with their phone companies.

In March, the company shifted from requiring customers to sign two-year contracts. And in July, the carrier offered an option for customers to upgrade to a new phone after as little as six months, instead of waiting two years. The company also continues to offer unlimited data plans, which AT&T and Verizon Wireless discontinued long ago for new customers.

The changes are working. In August, T-Mobile reported that it had gained 1.1 million customers in the last quarter, its largest growth in four years.

The elimination of roaming fees raises a question: if the customers don’t have to pay the fee, then who will? Mr. Legere said he expected customers to continue joining T-Mobile in droves, which will more than make up for the money that could have been made from charging roaming fees.

“We just changed the game to where our coverage map is now the world,” Mr. Legere said. “Our network is now by far a much bigger coverage area than AT&T and Verizon combined.”

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Personal Tech | Gadgetwise

An Eye in the Sky, Accessible to the Hobbyist

A Teardown of the Phantom 2 Vision Plus Drone from DJI

SEPT. 10, 2014

Inside

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Look to the sky and say “Cheese!”

Taking photos and videos from a flying drone has quickly emerged as a popular hobby, allowing for often stunning images from new perspectives.

One of the latest drones designed to capture these images is the Phantom 2 Vision Plus, a $1,300 machine made by DJI. The drone, which has four propellers, comes equipped with a camera attached to the bottom that can record high-resolution images and high-definition video.

The Phantom comes with many other features for visual storytelling. A user can control the device using a remote control hooked up to an iPhone or Android smartphone, where live video from the drone’s camera can be streamed. By using images supplied to the smartphone, pilots can navigate the drone even when it is out of a direct line of sight.

Continue reading the main story

Phantom 2 Vision Plus

PROPELLERS

To stabilize motion, two propellers spin clockwise (black hub), and two spin counterclockwise (gray).

Maximum flight speed: 33.5 m.p.h.

Maximum ascent speed: 13.4 m.p.h.

Body width: 11.4 in.

Weight: 2.7 lbs.

GPS RECEIVER

On the underside of the shell, it determines the position and height of the quadcopter.

VIDEO TRANSMITTER

Sends an HD video signal to the remote control and app.

FLIGHT CONTROLLER

Acts as the brains of the Phantom when it is in the air. Contains a gyroscope and an accelerometer.

PROPELLER MOTOR

COMPASS (not shown)

ELECTRONIC SPEED CONTROLLER

One for each motor. Controls the speed and direction of how the propeller spins. Also controls the onboard LED lights.

Gathers geomagnetic information that helps the GPS calculate the drone’s position and height.

LANDING GEAR

3-AXIS GIMBAL

CAMERA

Steadying the Camera

The Vision Plus features a stabilized camera mount called a gimbal. Motors on each of its three axes allow the camera to remain steady as the drone moves. For example, if the drone rolls clockwise, the gimbal automatically rotates the camera a corresponding amount counterclockwise to help produce smooth video.

Moving the Phantom

In response to commands from the flight controller, motors speed up or slow down to effect maneuvers.

VIBRATION ABSORBER

BRACKET

Attaches to the bottom of the drone.

Spin

faster

Spin

slower

PAN MOTOR

Rotates the camera left and right.

MICRO-SD CARD READER

ASCEND

All four motors spin at the same high speed to keep the copter level as it flies higher.

Stores videos and photos.

Remote Control

Includes a mount for a smartphone and a range extender that allows the phone to communicate with the drone up to 2,300 feet away.

TILT MOTOR

Points the camera up and down. Only one controllable by the user.

ROTATE (YAW)

Opposing motors slow down or speed up. The difference in torque causes rotation.

ROLL MOTOR

SMARTPHONE

RANGE

EXTENDER

MOVE FORWARD

The two forward motors slow, tilting the front down, causing the drone to move forward.

CAMERA

Takes still images up to 14.4 megapixels and HD video up to 1920 x 1080 pixels.

Phantom 2 Vision Plus

Maximum flight speed: 33.5 m.p.h.

Maximum ascent speed: 13.4 m.p.h.

Body width: 11.4 in.

Weight: 2.7 lbs.

GPS RECEIVER

PROPELLERS

Attached to the underside of the shell. Determines the position and height of the quadcopter.

To stabilize motion, two propellers spin clockwise (black hub), and two spin counterclockwise (gray).

ELECTRONIC SPEED CONTROLLER

FLIGHT CONTROLLER

Acts as the brains of the Phantom when it is in the air. Contains a gyroscope and an accelerometer.

One for each motor. Controls the speed and direction of how the propeller spins.

VIDEO TRANSMITTER

Sends an HD video signal to the remote control and app.

Steadying the Camera

The Vision Plus features a stabilized camera mount called a gimbal. Motors on each of its three axes allow the camera to remain steady as the drone moves. For example, if the drone rolls clockwise, the gimbal automatically rotates the camera a corresponding amount counterclockwise to help produce smooth video.

VIBRATION ABSORBER

PAN MOTOR

MICRO-SD CARD READER

TILT MOTOR

Points the camera up and down. Only one controllable by the user.

ROLL MOTOR

CAMERA

Takes still images up to 14.4 megapixels and HD video up to 1920 x 1080 pixels.

Remote Control

Includes a mount for a smartphone and a range extender that allows the phone to communicate with the drone up to 2,300 feet away.

SMARTPHONE

RANGE

EXTENDER

Moving the Phantom

In response to commands from the flight controller, motors speed up or slow down to effect maneuvers.

Spin faster

Spin slower

ASCEND

All four motors spin at the same high speed to keep the copter level as it flies higher.

ROTATE (YAW)

Opposing motors slow down or speed up. The difference in torque causes rotation.

MOVE FORWARD

The two forward motors slow, tilting the front down, causing the drone to move forward.

Source: DJI Technologies

SEPT. 10, 2014

FRANK O’CONNELL/THE NEW YORK TIMES; PHOTOS BY TONY CENICOLA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

People flying the Phantom 2 can capture images at different angles by using an app to control the camera. And compared with previous drones from DJI, the Phantom 2 has a removable battery and smarter flight software.

Flying it is far easier than flying previous remote control helicopters or aircraft, thanks in part to the drone’s intelligence. If a user lets go of the controls, for instance, the Vision will use a GPS device to position itself. That GPS device will also help stabilize the aircraft from external forces, like strong gusts of wind. And the device can be programmed to move to specific points in the air over time.

It is easy to imagine how the Vision Plus could be put into the hands of people who want to document sports or other events, or even those who might want to photograph the exteriors of buildings.

The camera does not record audio, but most external sounds would be drowned out by the loud whizzing of the props and their electric motors anyway. And besides, those taking videos at a wedding — one of the many new popular uses for drones — will probably want to set them to “Electric Boogie” anyway.

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2014, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: An Eye in the Sky, Accessible to the Hobbyist. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Personal Tech | Q&A;

How to Sign Up for a Skype Number

By J. D. BIERSDORFERSEPT. 9, 2014

Inside

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Finding Mac Files

With Spotlight

Q. Please tell me how to adjust Spotlight on my Mac OS X 10.9.4 to reveal the location of a Word document or a folder. I know that I can open the document by just clicking on the name of the file in Spotlight but how can I trace it in the Finder?

A. Spotlight, the built-in search program that comes with Mac OS X, can still show you the actual locations of the files it finds in OS X 10.9.4. If you are searching for documents in the Mac’s Finder by pressing the Command-F keyboard shortcut (or pressing the Option-Command-Space Bar shortcut) to open the search window, go to the Finder’s View menu and choose Show Path Bar. When the path bar is turned on, the exact hard-drive location of a selected item is displayed along the bottom of the open search window.

If you are using Spotlight by clicking the magnifying-glass icon up in the Mac’s menu bar (or pressing the Command-Space Bar keyboard shortcut), and have a list of results in front of you, use the cursor or arrow keys to highlight the item you want. A small thumbnail preview of the item appears on the left side of the Spotlight list, and when you hold down the Command and Option keys, the Mac reveals the location of the file at the bottom of that preview window.

If you already have a file open on screen and want to see where it lives on the Mac’s hard drive, right-click (or hold down the Command key and click) on the file name in the title bar. A small window opens from the title bar to reveal the file’s exact location on your Mac.

Signing Up

For a Skype Number

Q. I know I can make calls between computers and devices with my Skype account, but can I get a number I can use to pick up regular telephone calls there from family members who don’t use Skype?

A. Skype, the Microsoft service that lets you make audio and video calls over the Internet, does offer “Skype Numbers” you can buy and give out to acquaintances who do not have Skype accounts and just want to call you directly from landlines and cellphones. With a Skype Number assigned to a certain area code, people in that area can even call you when you are traveling internationally — and pay local rates. Skype Numbers cost $5 a month when you sign up for a year.

To get a Skype Number, sign into your account on the Skype website; clicking “Manage account” in the Skype program takes you there too. In the “Manage features” area of your account page, click the Skype Number button and “Get a Skype Number,” select your country and follow along to fill in payment details and other information.

TIP OF THE WEEK If you have ever wondered how many people might see or interact your posts on Twitter, you can now tap into Twitter’s Analytics Dashboard to get an idea of your reach. To get there, log into your Twitter account and go to https://analytics.twitter.com.

On your Analytics page, you get a list of your past tweets and the amount of “impressions” (the number of times other users saw the post on Twitter) and “engagements” (the total number of times another user has interacted with the post, like replying or retweeting it, or clicking on links). The Analytics page has several charts that visually depict your impressions and engagements, as well as general facts about your followers — like their gender and geographic location. Twitter has more information about using the analytics dashboard at https://analytics.twitter.com/about. J. D. BIERSDORFER

Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to QandA@nytimes.com. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually.

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2014, on page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: How to Sign Up for a Skype Number. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Personal Tech

Using Your Phone to See Paris in a Whole New Light

By KIT EATONSEPT. 10, 2014

Inside

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App Smart | Guides to Visiting Paris

App Smart | Guides to Visiting Paris Kit Eaton reviews three apps that will help you better navigate Paris, from its transit system to the Louvre. Video Credit By Dallas Jensen on Publish Date September 10, 2014.

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PARIS is my favorite city, and this time of year is my favorite time to be there. Exploring the ancient city is easier than ever, with the help of apps.

Paris’s public transit network is vast and excellent, and the company behind it — RATP — also offers one of the best aids for navigating the system. Visit Paris by Metro, free on iOS and Android, is nicely designed. You can search for locations from the home page, or use buttons to learn about other travel options, like taking the night buses or getting to and from airports. It also provides street, train and Metro maps, and information on tickets.

Best of all, since the Paris Metro system can be daunting, the app can help route you through station stops and changes you need to get to your destination. Map data can be downloaded for use offline, so you don’t use up your cellphone data allowance. It even includes useful summary information on tourist attractions.

The app is unfussy, free, works in English and is easy to use. RATP, the main transit app, also free on iOS and Android, helps users avoid transit stoppages and delays. But that app really is for commuters and it lacks many of the tourism features.

For a general guide app, TripAdvisor’s Paris City Guide is a great choice. It’s free as a stand-alone app on Android, and as a downloadable selection in TripAdvisor’s free iOS app Offline City Guides.

This offering has detailed information on landmarks, transit, venues and hotels, and many user reviews to help you know what previous visitors thought. It also works offline, and is handy when you are wandering around the city. It even has a system to help point you in the direction of a chosen destination.

The app follows TripAdvisor’s design, of which I’m not a big fan. The bold colors and the overly fussy buttons and menus make the app visually confusing. But it has a lot of data, and it gets many positive reviews in the app store.

For an alternative tourist guide app on iOS, Paris Travel Guide and Offline City Map by Ulmon is good, and it is free. It has many of the same options as TripAdvisor’s app, like mapping and user reviews, but has a cleaner design. On Android, Ulmon’s app is still free but it’s just called Paris Travel Guide.

For a different Paris tourist experience, the free PocketGuide Travel Guide is an interesting option. This is an audio guide that will take you on walking routes through the city as it tells you about Paris’s rich history.

Tour topics are available for select regions of the city, or audio guides will cover specific topics like modern architecture. They link to your phone’s GPS so you can see where you are and what nearby features you’re hearing about.

Though the app is free to download and use, on iOS you can buy the Paris guide within the app from a long list of different cities for $6, and it will work offline. On Android, the Paris guide is available as a stand-alone app, with the same free and for-purchase options.

A trip to the Louvre is often considered a must-do for Paris visitors. The official Musée du Louvre app, which is free on iOS, has 500 images of the museum’s artworks, information on the art and building itself and data on events at the museum. It’s also easy to use and attractively designed.

Of course, speaking a little French is always a great idea when in Paris, and I love the free Babbel Android and iOS apps. They’re great for quickly learning some French, particularly if you start a few weeks before your trip. Subscribing to all lessons costs upward of $10, though.

If you prefer just to try saying some simple phrases as you tour, the free SpeakEasy app on iOS is ideal. It’s easy to find the phrases you want, and there are audio guides so you can get your pronunciation right. This is great if you want to avoid that confused “Quoi?” look from a Parisian. There’s a simpler French-specific Android version.

Quick Call

One of my favorite astronomy apps, Star Walk, now has a new edition for curious children: Star Walk Kids. This app uses cartoonlike graphics to make understanding the night sky easier, and, like its grown-up version, displays information about stars and planets in the right place as you point your phone to the sky. It’s $3 on iOS.

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2014, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: See the City of Lights in a Whole New Light. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Devices NYT NOW

Answers to Questions About Apple’s Announcements, Including the Watch and iPhone 6

By Nicole Perlroth September 9, 2014 4:51 pmSeptember 9, 2014 4:51 pm

Photo

Apple's new Watch on display in Cupertino, Calif., on Tuesday.

Updated | There had been weeks of rumors and speculation about what Apple would announce. On Tuesday, we got a glimpse of the company’s new offerings, which included two bigger versions of the iPhone, as well as a smartwatch, dubbed Apple Watch.

During the announcement, readers submitted their questions on everything from how Apple’s new payment system will work to when the new phones would be available.

Below are responses to select questions, answered by Times reporters and editors:

Q.

Keith from Denver asks, “Is there a left-handed version of the watch, with the crown on the left side of the watch?”

A.

The Apple event only featured watches for right-handed users and we may not know definitively if there will be a left-handed watch until it becomes available early next year. Apple co-founder Steven P. Jobs was ambidextrous so one would hope Apple would cater to lefties as well, but an Apple employee tells us there is currently no left-handed version.

Q.

Several readers asked about the pricing for non-contract, unlocked phones.

A.

The new iPhone pricing presented by Apple today featured the cost of the devices when combined with a two-year cellular service contract. The iPhone 6 starts at $199 and goes to $299 and $399 depending on memory. The $199 offers 16 GB of memory; the $299 offers 64 GB of memory and the $399 model has 128 GB of memory, double the previous maximum of 64 GB. The iPhone 6 Plus starts at $299 with a two-year contract for 16 GB of storage and is $399 and $499 for 64 GB and 128 GB of storage, respectively.

Non-contract phones are significantly more expensive. Without a contract, the iPhone 6 costs $649 for 16 GB; $749 for 64 GB; and $849 for 128 GB. Without a contract, the iPhone 6 Plus costs $749, $849 and $949.

Both devices will become available on Sept. 19, and can be preordered on Sept. 12.

Q.

A reader asks, “As a petite woman I find that my old iPhone 4 is the maximum size that will fit in many of my pants pockets. The 5 is really stretching things (literally). Will Apple continue to provide smaller phones for smaller people? Would the health tracking features of the 6 work if the phone is in a bag rather than a pocket? Would I look like a kid trying on mommy’s watch even with the smaller iWatch?”

A.

Unfortunately for us petite women, it doesn’t appear Apple is going to make smaller phones any time in the near future. They will, however, continue to sell the iPhone 5C, but as my colleague Brian X. Chen reports, Apple is catering to the growing appetite for bigger smartphones.

IDC, the research firm, estimates that at least 20 percent of all smartphones shipped last year in China, the world’s largest smartphone market, were five inches or larger. IDC predicts that manufacturers this year will ship more â€œphabletsâ€�– smartphones with screens measuring more than 5.5 inches diagonally — than laptops.

To deal with concerns that a bigger phone will make typing with one hand difficult, some changes to the design of the iPhones’ user interface will allow people to type or use apps with just one hand; there will be a one-handed mode that can be switched on and off, two employees said.

As for the Apple watch, the watch case ranges from 38 mm to 42 mm, or about the size of a quarter and postage stamp.

Q.

Similarly, a reader in New York asks, “What are the actual dimensions of the new phones? I’m trying to get a sense of how tall/ wide they are. For example, I am trying to assess if the 5.5″ iPhone 6 Plus will be comfortable to hold!”

A.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are thinner and larger than the previous iPhone 5 models. Compared with the iPhone 5S display, which measures 4 inches diagonally, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus measure 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches diagonally, respectively.

Q.

Tess asks, “Do I need to carry my iPhone with me if I’m using the watch? Or is it independent of the watch?”

A.

Good question. Apple was pretty vague in its announcement. The Apple Watch pairs with the newer iPhones — including the iPhone 5, 5S, 5C and iPhone 6 — and pass information back and forth. If you don’t have your iPhone with you, basic watch functions like time and health and fitness tracking will work, but users will have limited functionality without their iPhones as far as messaging, music and other features.

Q.

A reader in Portland, Oregon asks, “Any sense of why Apple Pay won’t launch until October?”

A.

Since Apple Pay appears to only work with the latest versions of the iPhone — the 6 and 6 Plus — the delay is likely to give the phone time to propagate throughout the market and possibly also to give its merchant partners like Disney and Whole Foods time to implement the necessary near-field communication terminals and payment systems.

Q.

@nicoleperlroth @nytimes @nytimesbits What was in the big box/building outside Flint Center? — Suzanne Khan (@NDcarTwit) 9 Sep 14

A.

Bono, apparently.

Q.

Chris from Connecticut writes, “What ever happened with all the talk about sapphire screens?”

A.

So, about those sapphire screens. One publication reported that the new iPhone 6 models would incorporate sapphire screens that would be harder to shatter than glass. Not so. The new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are made with old-fashioned glass. However, the displays for the most basic Apple Watch and Watch Edition models will be protected by polished sapphire crystal. Apple chose the material because, next to diamond, it is the hardest transparent material on earth. The Apple Watch Sport, however, will be protected by Ion-X glass, which is lighter and makes more sense for running and other exercise.

Q.

David from New Jersey asks: “Does the new watch allow for NFC transactions? There’s a Passbook App on the watch, but the keynote was blank about it. If the watch does do NFC transactions, will it work with older iPhones. For example, if someone has an iPhone 5C or 5S, could they do NFC via the watch?”

A.

The iPhone 6 models and the new watches support near-field communication, or NFC, which allows devices to send information wirelessly over very short distances. Apple teamed up with American Express, Mastercard and Visa to support the NFC payment system, so that iPhone users can use their phone as a digital wallet.

Apple Pay will only work with the iPhone 5 models if the user has one of the newer watches, but won’t work until the watches are available early next year.

Security experts are cheering Apple’s move to NFC because it incorporates the chip-based smart card standard known as EMV — for Europay-Mastercard-Visa — the companies that first backed the technology. Security gurus say EMV is more secure than the magnetic strips on credit cards, because it uses a unique code for each purchase, making it exceedingly difficult — albeit not impossible —for hackers to use stolen card numbers for future purchases, or to counterfeit cards.

The influx of NFC-enabled iPhones could help jump-start mobile payments, which has yet to take off. Google released a digital wallet in 2011 with little success. And the unfortunately named Isis — a mobile wallet backed by three major carriers which was recently renamed Softcard — never caught on either.

Q.

Jordan Moore in Los Angeles, “Does the watch have an altimeter, like FitBit One, so you know how many flights of stairs or their equivalent you’ve climbed?”

A.

Apple did not specifically mention an altimeter. The company only said the watch will include all the capabilities of an all-day fitness tracker and a highly advanced sports watch. Here’s what Apple said it will measure specifically: An accelerometer that measures total body movement, a heart rate sensor, and an Activity app which shows how often you’ve stood up. The watch will use the GPS and Wi-Fi in your iPhone to track how far you’ve moved.

Q.

Sam from Boston writes, “Is watch water resistant or waterproof? They didn’t mention it, but if a $350 device I’m supposed to wear all day and through workouts isn’t, it seems like a deal breaker.”

A.

Apple did not mention whether its new watches will be water resistant or waterproof, but if Apple ads featuring hot models dripping sweat onto their new Apple Watch are any indication, then one hopes they will be! Otherwise, some models just broke a lot of brand new Apple Watches.

Q.

John from New York writes, “What’s the anticipated timing of a refresh on the iPad line? Is it reasonable to expect something before the 2014 holiday season? Thanks!”

A.

Apple typically upgrades their iPads once a year. The company has not upgraded the iPad since last October, so the rumor is we can expect an iPad upgrade before the holiday season.

Q.

Jon C from Albuquerque, New Mexico asks, “Will the iWatch have an ambient light sensor, like the Moto 360, to dim the display?”

A.

Apple didn’t mention an ambient light sensor, but we can expect some kind of sensor that detects motion or light to turn the device on.

Q.

Mike from New York asks, “Can it be that the lowest capacity iPhone 6 will have only 16 GB capacity, two GBs LESS capacity than my current iPhone 5? Will this make a noticeable difference to someone who does not view many videos or play any games on the phone?”

A.

No. If you don’t watch videos or download games on your phone, you will only have to worry about photo storage. And you definitely don’t have to worry about app sizes growing. As Phil Schiller noted on stage Tuesday, the current 1.3 million apps that work on earlier iPhones will automatically work on the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models.

Q.

John from Massachusetts asks, “Apple mentioned nightly charging requirement; how long does it take to charge? How long will it run with minimal use?”

A.

Great question. Apple executives did not mention battery life or charging times, possibly because the company is still trying to figure it out.

Q.

One reader from New York asks, “The Watch obviously doesn’t have a lock screen or require a passcode — so what happens if I lose my watch or it’s stolen? Won’t thieves have access to my apps, and my Apple Pay?”

A.

Great question. Several reporters asked Apple executives this very question at the event and the company did not offer any answers. If Apple does not offer any authentication on the Watch, the device will be ripe for theft and hacking.

Q.

Will Larche, a reader from the East Village asks, “Is it true that if I sprinkle lemon juice on them, they won’t brown so fast when cut?”

A.

Will, I believe you are looking for the NYT Cooking site.

Devices, Wearable Computing, Apple Inc, iPhone, Left-Handedness, Smartphones, Watches and Clocks, Wearable Computing

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Technology

Handset Makers Go Big on Smartphones

By BRIAN X. CHENFEB. 26, 2014

Inside

Photo

A vendor selling phone cases in Guangzhou, China. Samsung’s bigger-screen smartphones have sold well in Asian markets.

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BARCELONA, Spain — Smartphones are going against one of the long-held rules in portable electronics, that smaller is better.

Year by year, computers, storage devices and music players have shed size and weight. And for decades, it has been happening with cellphones, too.

But now cellphones, and smartphones in particular, are going the way of the television: They just keep getting bigger and bigger. And people keep buying them.

The trend became even more apparent this week, as handset makers introduced a number of big-screen smartphones — from five diagonal inches to more than seven inches — at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain.

Samsung Electronics, Sony and the Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, among others, are all betting that consumers find images and video to be more vivid and engaging on a bigger screen, and that they may prefer to carry a larger phone instead of both a smartphone and a tablet.

The turn to bigger screens is a sharp departure from the dominant strategy of phone makers just a few years ago, when critics often and loudly mocked devices with big screens, joking that people would never buy them because they would not fit in the pockets of tight hipster jeans, or because people would not want to be seen clutching big devices to their skulls.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|2:16

The Rise of the Phablet

The Rise of the Phablet Molly Wood says bigger may be better when it comes to smartphones. Video Credit By Clare Major on Publish Date February 26, 2014.

But Samsung, the No. 1 phone maker in the world, pushed hard on phones with bigger screens, and the effort has paid off with millions of units sold, particularly in Asia.

Samsung has said its research found that people liked bigger-screen phones because they wanted a device that was good for handwriting, drawing and sharing notes. Asian-language speakers found it easier to write characters on a device using a pen rather than typing.

Now Samsung and other phone makers believe they will find a more receptive audience outside Asia, too, including in the United States and Europe.

“The cultural difference is not much,” said Lee Young-hee, head of marketing for Samsung’s mobile division. “Most people like the bigger display — it’s more and more welcomed by people around the world.”

Demand for big-screen phones is clearly strong. IDC, the research firm, estimates that at least 20 percent of all smartphones shipped last year in China, the largest smartphone market in the world, were five inches or larger. It predicts that number will balloon to 50 percent by 2017.

IDC also recently predicted that the growth of tablet sales would slow this year, partly because many people are gravitating toward larger phones and shifting away from smaller tablets.

“In some markets consumers are already making the choice to buy a large smartphone rather than buying a small tablet,” said Tom Mainelli, an IDC research director who follows tablets.

The most extreme example of a big phone announced this week came from Huawei, which introduced the MediaPad X1, a smartphone with a seven-inch screen, usually a size used in tablets. Because the device has a phone connection, Huawei calls it a phablet.

Roland Sladek, a vice president for international media affairs at Huawei, said the company found that people liked to spend at least an hour a day on mobile devices, and that has driven the demand for larger screens.

Other makers are pushing slightly smaller versions. Samsung this week introduced the Galaxy S5, its latest flagship smartphone, which, at 5.1 diagonal inches, is just a smidge bigger than its predecessor. Sony unveiled the Xperia Z2, a 5.2-incher. ZTE introduced the Grand Memo II, a six-inch phone; last month it introduced the Boost Max, a 5.7-incher that the company hopes will help it gain some traction among American buyers.

Photo

Huawei this week introduced the MediaPad X1, a smartphone with a seven-inch screen, usually a size used in tablets.

“In the U.S., people live in the big house, drive a big car and I think they’ll also like big phones,” Lixin Cheng, chief executive of ZTE’s American division, said in an interview.

He said that with software becoming more sophisticated and data networks speeding up for watching videos, people just want bigger screens.

Reception to big-screen phones is still relatively muted in the United States. The NPD Group, a research firm, said that out of the 121 million smartphones sold in the United States last year, only 3.3 million were 5.3 inches or larger, what NPD considers a phablet. In the fourth quarter, phablets represented only 4 percent of United States smartphone sales, NPD said.

That is largely because Apple, the No. 1 phone maker in the United States, has refrained from making a bigger iPhone. Some analysts say they are skeptical that large phones will take off in the United States unless Apple releases one.

Rumors abound that Apple is already planning to release at least one bigger iPhone this year. Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has said the company would consider releasing one only when the technology was good enough to meet Apple’s high standards for quality. Starting with the sixth-generation iPhone, Apple increased the size of the iPhone screen to four inches, up from 3.5 inches in the earlier models — still considerably smaller than many devices coming from its Asian rivals.

Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to comment for this article. But the global market data, along with the traction that Apple’s Asian competitors are gaining, show a clear opportunity for Apple to expand sales with a bigger iPhone, perhaps among affluent customers in China, where the company hopes to be a more dominant player.

Apple could position a bigger iPhone as a premium product, costing even more than its current high-end iPhone, said Milton Pedraza, chief executive of the Luxury Institute, a research firm. It could be marketed toward wealthy older customers who would enjoy a bigger screen because their vision is becoming worse and their fingers are not as dexterous, he said.

Laurence Isaac Balter, chief market strategist at Oracle Investment Research, which has clients that own Apple shares, thinks it is necessary for Apple to introduce a larger phone. It would clearly appeal to people who want just one device instead of both a phone and a tablet, he said.

“The fact that today many Apple users walk around with an iPad Mini and an iPhone is ludicrous,” Mr. Balter said. “In the end the manufacturer that delivers the one device that does it all will be the winner.”

Lenovo, the Chinese company that is buying the handset division of Motorola from Google, said that there seemed to be no turning back from supersizing smartphones in markets around the world.

Liu Jun, executive vice president for Lenovo’s mobile business group, said: “Simply put, more and more people are using their smartphones for entertainment, and people like viewing their photos, TV shows and movies on a larger hand-held screen.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 27, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Handset Makers Go Big on Smartphones. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Technology |NYT Now

With iPhone 6 and Smartwatch, Apple Is Back and Better Than Ever

SEPT. 9, 2014

Inside

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Play Video|1:30

Introducing Apple Watch

Introducing Apple Watch Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, introduced a smartwatch, a wearable device that combines health and fitness tracking with communications. Video Credit By Reuters on Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Farhad Manjoo

STATE OF THE ART

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Four times before in its history, at media events planned with military precision, Apple introduced a new invention that radically altered how the technology industry conceived of its future. The company hopes it did that again for a fifth time on Tuesday by unveiling the Apple Watch, a stylish smartwatch that is the company’s first advance into a new product category since it created the iPad in 2010.

Yet in some ways, the most consequential headline at the event went unannounced. The biggest news was about the old Apple: It’s back, and it’s more capable than ever.

Any question about how well Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, is managing the reins of the world’s most valuable company will most likely be put to rest after Tuesday’s profusion of product announcements at the Flint Center in Cupertino, Calif., where Steve Jobs first showed off the Macintosh in 1984.

The announcements included two large-screen iPhones and a new electronic payment system that allows users to make purchases at stores through their phones.

Photo

Apple, under Mr. Cook, looks every bit as daunting to rivals as it did under its iconic co-founder, Mr. Jobs.

Both the new watch and the payment system, Apple Pay, appear to be of a level of polish that suggests the company still possesses the capacity to invent new products and services that can define an entire industry. And the two iPhones will most likely prove that Mr. Cook can still do what has long been Apple’s bread and butter: incrementally improving its top-performing products in ways that keep them just ahead of rivals.

But more important is that Apple, under Mr. Cook, is operating at a scale it never achieved under Mr. Jobs. It is creating more new hardware and software, and tying all of its products together more seamlessly than most of its rivals. In responding to customer demand to offer bigger phones, and in granting outside developers deeper access to its mobile operating system, Mr. Cook has also signaled a slightly more open philosophy at Apple. The firm is not as ideologically rigid about how people use its products as it once was.

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Comparing New iPhone Sizes

Apple’s new phones cater to a growing appetite among consumers for bigger screens.

4-in.

4.7-in.

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

4-in.

4.7-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

It remains to be seen whether Apple can make good on all of the promises it made on Tuesday. Its new phones will be out this month, and its payment system will be operational in October. The Apple Watch will not be in stores until next year.

After a hack last month that resulted in the leak of several celebrities’ private photos from their online Apple accounts, the company’s push to persuade people to use its devices to engage in commerce and to track their health may face skepticism.

Price is also a persistent question: From its phones to its new watch, which starts at $349, Apple is selling a digital lifestyle at a cost that exceeds that of many of its rivals.

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Apple’s Cook Unveils Bigger iPhones

Apple’s Cook Unveils Bigger iPhones Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, and Philip W. Schiller, a senior vice president, introduced two new iPhones on Tuesday with sharper and larger displays. Video Credit By Reuters on Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Yet many users won’t balk at paying for the convenience and prestige of using Apple’s products.

Apple set out to solve two problems with its media event, the importance of one of which Mr. Cook had been telegraphing in earnings calls for years.

First, it needed to make something — anything — new. One persistent criticism of Mr. Cook is that while he has been an able steward of Apple’s finances, he lacks the capacity to bring forth the kind of industry-defining new products for which Mr. Jobs was famous. Mr. Cook is “a master of spreadsheets, not innovation,” as Yukari Iwatani Kane, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, put it earlier this year in a book that became the high-water mark for Apple criticism.

Photo

Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, with the iPhone 6, left, and iPhone 6 Plus at an event in Cupertino, Calif., on Tuesday.

Never mind that this assessment of Mr. Cook often rang hollow, and seemed to deeply misunderstand how Apple operates. Though it has cultivated a reputation for frequently reinventing everything, what’s most remarkable about Apple’s history isn’t how many totally novel devices it has released, but how few.

Since the 1980s, Apple has invented four new computing platforms — the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad — that have been revolutionary. But in each of the intervening periods between new platforms, Apple looked remarkably similar to the company under Mr. Cook. Each year it put out slight, useful updates to existing products, features that were cheered by customers while roundly jeered by the tech press as yet more unimpressive incrementalism.

The ultimate success of Apple’s smartwatch, and its lasting utility to users, won’t be known for months or years to come. But its introduction ought to squash the charge that the company — and Mr. Cook — can’t invent anything new. At first blush, the devices look to be following in the footsteps of the original iPhone or iPad, which were not brand-new ideas but were just superior versions of what other products already did.

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Play Video|0:25

Molly Wood on Mobile Payments

Molly Wood on Mobile Payments Times technology columnist Molly Wood says consumers may see a rise in the use of mobile payments now that the iPhone has a chip that will work at tap-to-pay payment terminals. Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditSoftcard, via PR Newswire

As Mr. Cook described it, the smartwatch will perform functions similar to those of the many wrist devices that Apple’s competitors, including Samsung, have released over the last few years. At its most basic, the Apple Watch is a quick interface to your phone, allowing you to respond to messages or look up directions at a glance. It also tracks your activity, allowing you to monitor your workouts and daily level of activity.

Still — at least as Apple demonstrated it — what the watch does, it does better than its competitors, with more impressive hardware and a software interface that looks easier to use. The device is stunning to look at, with a variety of faces and watchbands that bear more in common with luxury jewelry than with gadgets. That’s far more than can be said of many ungainly watches and fitness bands that many other companies have put out.

Left unstated was any word on battery life, which has been a major shortcoming for other smartwatches. If it needs to be charged daily, or worse, in the middle of a day, users may resist.

Apple’s second aim at its media event was to shore up a persistent weakness in its iPhone lineup. While it commands the vast majority of the profits in the smartphone industry, Apple, in the last few years, has been losing some high-end business to rivals with bigger devices, especially its main competitor, Samsung, which has long been the leading purveyor of giant phones.

Apple had historically held out against the wave of giant phones. Mr. Jobs called them “Hummers,” referring to the large sport utility vehicle, and insisted that “you can’t get your hand around” large phones.

Now, though humanity has not been granted a new set of monster paws, Apple has relented. Its new phones are both wider and taller than any previous iPhones. The larger 5.5-inch model is positively gigantic, a device on which one would look fairly foolish trying to make a phone call.

You can call this Apple’s capitulation to market demand. You can also call it savvy. In one stroke, Apple has undercut one of the main reasons for Samsung’s ascendance at the high end of the smartphone market. That’s not a bad outcome for a device that was almost an afterthought at its launch event.

Email: farhad.manjoo

@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @fmanjoo

A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Apple Is Back, Strong as Ever. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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State of the Art

Apple After Jobs: Pretty Much the Same as Ever

By Farhad Manjoo March 20, 2014 9:18 pmMarch 20, 2014 9:18 pm

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In the two and a half years since Timothy D. Cook took over as Apple’s chief executive, the company’s annual revenue has grown by about 58 percent, and its profits by about 40 percent.

You could be forgiven, after reading “Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs,” for concluding that Apple is on the verge of going belly up. In the new book by Yukari I. Kane, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, the company is depicted as having radically declined after the death of its former impresario.

Under Timothy D. Cook, who took over as chief executive shortly before Steve Jobs died in October 2011, Apple “teeters at the edge of a reckoning,” Ms. Kane writes. Its executives, she adds, “cannot find their own way forward. They are tired. They are uncertain. The well of ingenuity has run dry.”

After the book’s release earlier this week, Mr. Cook said in a statement that it was “nonsense.”

He’s right.

There are two ways to assess how well Apple has done under Mr. Cook. You could look at its financial performance, which is boring but immensely instructive. Or you could do as Ms. Kane does and instead sift through all the noise and commentary surrounding the company — observers’ assessments of its shifting corporate culture, of its executives’ temperaments during product-launch events, or the fact that such arbiters of taste as Mitch Albom, the author of “Tuesdays With Morrie,” no longer care for Apple’s advertising.

For the most part, Ms. Kane sticks with these more subjective assessments, and she arrives at a familiar set of conclusions. She argues that Apple has forgotten how to innovate, that its products are too closed and expensive, and that it is failing to live up to its own well-honed hype. These aren’t novel critiques; they’ve been seen as evidence of Apple’s imminent failure throughout its history, even under Mr. Jobs. And there isn’t much evidence that they’re any more true now than they were in the past.

Let’s start with the numbers. In the two and a half years since Mr. Cook took over as Apple’s chief executive, the company’s annual revenue has grown by about 58 percent, and its profits by about 40 percent. That compares favorably with many of its rivals, including Google, whose profits increased by about 25 percent in the same period.

It’s true that the growth in sales of Apple’s biggest product, the iPhone, has slowed under Mr. Cook. Last holiday season, the company sold 51 million iPhones, an increase of about 38 percent since 2011, when Apple was selling the last iPhone that Mr. Jobs worked on.

That level of growth is slower than in periods under Mr. Jobs; for instance, between the holiday quarter of 2010 and the holiday quarter of 2011, iPhone sales rose by 130 percent. The iPhone’s growth under Mr. Cook has also lagged that of the wider smartphone industry, which means that Appleâ€™s market share has been in decline.

On the other hand, much of the growth in the wider smartphone business has occurred at the low end of the market. Consequently, under Mr. Cook, Apple’s share of the profits in the smartphone business has actually gone up. When Mr. Jobs ran the company, Apple raked in about two-thirds of all the worldâ€™s smartphone profits. Last holiday season, under Mr. Cook, analysts’ estimates put Apple’s share of smartphone profits at between 76 percent and 87 percent.

Taken together, what do these numbers tell you about Apple under Mr. Cook? They paint a picture of a company doing very well, if not as spectacularly as it did at certain times in the recent past. They suggest that while Apple’s growth might have slowed, it hasn’t stalled. The numbers certainly do not suggest a company in decline or at risk of imminent failure.

At worst, you can say that Apple has entered a period of stasis — though if stasis means earning 80 cents of every dollar of smartphone profits, that can’t be so bad.

And this analysis doesn’t even get to the deeper question, which is how well Apple would have performed during the last two and a half years under Mr. Jobs. We can never know that, of course, but it’s not unreasonable to assume that Mr. Jobs would have run into some of the same problems regarding market share and growth that have dogged Apple under Mr. Cook. And you can bet your iPhone that he would not have adopted some of the advice that Ms. Kane suggests Mr. Cook should now adopt to boost Apple’s fortunes — for instance, that Apple “open up its operating system and license the technology.”

What’s troubling about Ms. Kane’s book is that she barely pauses to look at Apple’s financial success since Mr. Jobs’ death. When she does consider the numbers, she strangely interprets Apple’s growth under Mr. Cook as evidence of his failure. There’s a suggestion that the numbers don’t matter because Mr. Cook’s domain is numbers: “Tim Cook was a master of spreadsheets, not innovation,” she writes. He has hired lots of M.B.A.s, so of course the business has performed well.

To really understand Apple’s supposed collapse, Ms. Kane wants us to consider other, more subjective bits of evidence. During Apple’s recent product launch events, its executives have taken shots at its competitors — evidence of the firm’s “insecurity,” she writes.

Mr. Cook is justifiably faulted for the fact that Apple released buggy apps like Maps and Siri and then, oddly, for the fact that he fired Scott Forstall, the executive in charge of those features. Mr. Cook’s high standards, Ms. Kane says, risks “stifling innovation.”

When Apple began selling the iPhone 5, the company billed the device as “The biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone,” a tagline that Ms. Kane describes as “uninspired” compared to the “bewitching” taglines that accompanied previous Apple launches. Some hits from Mr. Jobsâ€™ tenure include “The funnest iPod ever” and “If you don’t have an iPhone, well, you don’t have an iPhone.” Bewitching, eh?

Ms. Kane’s primary objection to Apple under Mr. Cook is that it hasn’t given us the proverbial “next big thing.” Since 2010, when it unveiled the iPad, Apple has only made incremental improvements to its devices, while competitors like Google have gone public with their plans for robots and self-driving cars and computerized eyeglasses. (Though they haven’t begun selling these doodads.)

This is a tired criticism, one that fundamentally misunderstands how Apple works. Apple has always created its next big things in secret. Unlike Google and Microsoft, it rarely publicizes its innovations before they’re ready.

The fact that we don’t know what Apple will do next could be evidence that it has run out of ideas. But you could have said the same thing late in 2001, just before it launched the iPod, or in 2007 just before it launched the iPhone, or in 2010 just before it launched the iPad.

Indeed, people did make such claims then, pointing each time to Apple’s slip into just making incremental improvements, and insisting each time that it meant Apple was done for. History hasn’t been kind to their predictions.

Could those critics be correct now? Sure. The technology industry is brutal, and Apple, like any other company, could fail. But the fact that Apple has gone four years without some category-defining new product isn’t evidence that Apple has lost its way. Instead, it mainly proves that Apple under Mr. Cook is operating just like Apple under Mr. Jobs.

That should be reassuring to anyone who cares about the future of the company.

State of the Art, Apple Inc, Computers and the Internet, Cook, Timothy D, Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs (Book), iPad, Jobs, Steven P, Kane, Yukari I, Smartphones, Software

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Technology

Handset Makers Go Big on Smartphones

By BRIAN X. CHENFEB. 26, 2014

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A vendor selling phone cases in Guangzhou, China. Samsung’s bigger-screen smartphones have sold well in Asian markets.

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BARCELONA, Spain — Smartphones are going against one of the long-held rules in portable electronics, that smaller is better.

Year by year, computers, storage devices and music players have shed size and weight. And for decades, it has been happening with cellphones, too.

But now cellphones, and smartphones in particular, are going the way of the television: They just keep getting bigger and bigger. And people keep buying them.

The trend became even more apparent this week, as handset makers introduced a number of big-screen smartphones — from five diagonal inches to more than seven inches — at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain.

Samsung Electronics, Sony and the Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, among others, are all betting that consumers find images and video to be more vivid and engaging on a bigger screen, and that they may prefer to carry a larger phone instead of both a smartphone and a tablet.

The turn to bigger screens is a sharp departure from the dominant strategy of phone makers just a few years ago, when critics often and loudly mocked devices with big screens, joking that people would never buy them because they would not fit in the pockets of tight hipster jeans, or because people would not want to be seen clutching big devices to their skulls.

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The Rise of the Phablet

The Rise of the Phablet Molly Wood says bigger may be better when it comes to smartphones. Video Credit By Clare Major on Publish Date February 26, 2014.

But Samsung, the No. 1 phone maker in the world, pushed hard on phones with bigger screens, and the effort has paid off with millions of units sold, particularly in Asia.

Samsung has said its research found that people liked bigger-screen phones because they wanted a device that was good for handwriting, drawing and sharing notes. Asian-language speakers found it easier to write characters on a device using a pen rather than typing.

Now Samsung and other phone makers believe they will find a more receptive audience outside Asia, too, including in the United States and Europe.

“The cultural difference is not much,” said Lee Young-hee, head of marketing for Samsung’s mobile division. “Most people like the bigger display — it’s more and more welcomed by people around the world.”

Demand for big-screen phones is clearly strong. IDC, the research firm, estimates that at least 20 percent of all smartphones shipped last year in China, the largest smartphone market in the world, were five inches or larger. It predicts that number will balloon to 50 percent by 2017.

IDC also recently predicted that the growth of tablet sales would slow this year, partly because many people are gravitating toward larger phones and shifting away from smaller tablets.

“In some markets consumers are already making the choice to buy a large smartphone rather than buying a small tablet,” said Tom Mainelli, an IDC research director who follows tablets.

The most extreme example of a big phone announced this week came from Huawei, which introduced the MediaPad X1, a smartphone with a seven-inch screen, usually a size used in tablets. Because the device has a phone connection, Huawei calls it a phablet.

Roland Sladek, a vice president for international media affairs at Huawei, said the company found that people liked to spend at least an hour a day on mobile devices, and that has driven the demand for larger screens.

Other makers are pushing slightly smaller versions. Samsung this week introduced the Galaxy S5, its latest flagship smartphone, which, at 5.1 diagonal inches, is just a smidge bigger than its predecessor. Sony unveiled the Xperia Z2, a 5.2-incher. ZTE introduced the Grand Memo II, a six-inch phone; last month it introduced the Boost Max, a 5.7-incher that the company hopes will help it gain some traction among American buyers.

Photo

Huawei this week introduced the MediaPad X1, a smartphone with a seven-inch screen, usually a size used in tablets.

“In the U.S., people live in the big house, drive a big car and I think they’ll also like big phones,” Lixin Cheng, chief executive of ZTE’s American division, said in an interview.

He said that with software becoming more sophisticated and data networks speeding up for watching videos, people just want bigger screens.

Reception to big-screen phones is still relatively muted in the United States. The NPD Group, a research firm, said that out of the 121 million smartphones sold in the United States last year, only 3.3 million were 5.3 inches or larger, what NPD considers a phablet. In the fourth quarter, phablets represented only 4 percent of United States smartphone sales, NPD said.

That is largely because Apple, the No. 1 phone maker in the United States, has refrained from making a bigger iPhone. Some analysts say they are skeptical that large phones will take off in the United States unless Apple releases one.

Rumors abound that Apple is already planning to release at least one bigger iPhone this year. Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has said the company would consider releasing one only when the technology was good enough to meet Apple’s high standards for quality. Starting with the sixth-generation iPhone, Apple increased the size of the iPhone screen to four inches, up from 3.5 inches in the earlier models — still considerably smaller than many devices coming from its Asian rivals.

Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to comment for this article. But the global market data, along with the traction that Apple’s Asian competitors are gaining, show a clear opportunity for Apple to expand sales with a bigger iPhone, perhaps among affluent customers in China, where the company hopes to be a more dominant player.

Apple could position a bigger iPhone as a premium product, costing even more than its current high-end iPhone, said Milton Pedraza, chief executive of the Luxury Institute, a research firm. It could be marketed toward wealthy older customers who would enjoy a bigger screen because their vision is becoming worse and their fingers are not as dexterous, he said.

Laurence Isaac Balter, chief market strategist at Oracle Investment Research, which has clients that own Apple shares, thinks it is necessary for Apple to introduce a larger phone. It would clearly appeal to people who want just one device instead of both a phone and a tablet, he said.

“The fact that today many Apple users walk around with an iPad Mini and an iPhone is ludicrous,” Mr. Balter said. “In the end the manufacturer that delivers the one device that does it all will be the winner.”

Lenovo, the Chinese company that is buying the handset division of Motorola from Google, said that there seemed to be no turning back from supersizing smartphones in markets around the world.

Liu Jun, executive vice president for Lenovo’s mobile business group, said: “Simply put, more and more people are using their smartphones for entertainment, and people like viewing their photos, TV shows and movies on a larger hand-held screen.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 27, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Handset Makers Go Big on Smartphones. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Technology

With Apple Pay, a Push Into Mobile Payments

By MIKE ISAACSEPT. 9, 2014

Inside

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Molly Wood on Mobile Payments

Molly Wood on Mobile Payments Times technology columnist Molly Wood says consumers may see a rise in the use of mobile payments now that the iPhone has a chip that will work at tap-to-pay payment terminals. Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditSoftcard, via PR Newswire

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Tech evangelists have predicted for years a world in which people paid for retail goods with the wave of a smartphone, or the push of a smartphone button. For nearly as long, this so-called mobile wallet has yet to catch on.

Now, the biggest technology player of them all — Apple — thinks it has the formula for making it happen.

On Tuesday, Apple announced that it planned to offer its own version of a mobile wallet, teaming up with retailers like Target and restaurants like McDonald’s, as well as the three major credit card companies. That means that consumers will soon be able to buy a Big Mac or a laundry detergent with the tap of a new Apple iPhone or a new smartwatch, also announced on Tuesday.

The product, Apple Pay, will almost certainly give Apple a leg up on mobile payments, which Forrester Research expects to reach $100 billion in the United States over the next five years. But it remains to be seen whether people are ready to turn their paying over to a digital device, and whether Apple will be able to keep the edge for long.

Photo

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, demonstrating Apple Pay, which uses the iPhone 6, the larger iPhone 6 Plus and the Apple Watch.

Apple’s solution, waving the phone, is little different from previous efforts. But Apple hopes that its promises about security, including that credit card information will not be stored on the smartphones or devices or on Apple’s servers, will convince consumers that it is safer than using a credit card. “We’re totally reliant on the exposed numbers and the outdated and vulnerable mag stripe,” said Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, at an event in Cupertino, Calif., on Tuesday. “Which all of us know aren’t so secure.”

The timing may be right, too. Merchants are up against a mandate to swap out their payment terminal infrastructure to accept a more secure chip form of transaction by the end of next year. If enough people want to use Apple Pay, merchants could have the incentive to install hardware to process mobile transactions, long one of the hurdles to the rise of paying with phones.

Mr. Cook said that Apple Pay would be available only on the company’s two new smartphones, the iPhone 6 and the larger iPhone 6 Plus, and the Apple Watch, a wearable computing device Apple plans to sell in 2015.

But the move has implications far beyond Apple and those devices. If Apple Pay can make more people use their smartphones to pay for things, it could push companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft to reach similar deals with retailers and credit card companies, making mobile payments more widespread.

“Lots of companies have tried this before, but our security and the Apple payment experience will be the two biggest drivers here,” said Charles W. Scharf, chief executive of Visa, which is teaming with Apple in the initiative, as are MasterCard and American Express.

Apple Pay fits into Apple’s existing Passbook app, which allows users to store coupons, tickets and merchant loyalty cards digitally. Using a stored credit card, customers wave their phone in front of a terminal to pay. The payment is delivered to the terminal using a technology called near-field communication, or N.F.C., via a chip embedded in Apple’s new iPhones.

Tens of thousands of retailers in the United States, including Whole Foods Market and Macy’s, will accept it. And because of a partnership with Stripe, a payments processing start-up, Apple Pay can help small app developers use the service to power their transactions.

Other major tech companies have tried mobile wallets and struggled. Google, for example, introduced its wallet product, which also uses N.F.C. technology, in 2011. And a consortium of American mobile carriers have backed Softcard, another app-based smartphone wallet.

Both options have been hamstrung by complications. Google Wallet worked only on specific phones, using specific cellular networks, and with specific credit card issuers. And paying with a phone has been no easier or more valuable than swiping a credit card at the register.

“The mistake that many wallet providers have made in the past is focusing too much on technology and not on the value for the customer,” said Denée Carrington, an analyst with Forrester Research. “The consumer doesn’t care if it’s N.F.C. or a bar code. They just want to get through the line quickly and easily.”

But privacy and security have been major concerns as well. Recent hacker attacks of Target and Home Depot, among other retailers, have exposed the data of millions of consumers. And even Apple has had problems with the security of its iCloud storage system; celebrities whose individual accounts were hacked recently saw their private nude photos spread across the Internet.

Tom Pageler, the chief information security officer at DocuSign, a company that manages digital transactions, said that Apple’s payment system seemed to be more secure than the current system. He said the N.F.C. technology would also help payment companies identify unusual purchases; using smartphone data, they will be more easily able to identify a purchase made outside a customer’s usual location, for example.

Still, even if Apple’s new product increases consumers’ appetites for mobile wallet, merchants will need to take part.

“The onus is on retailers to drive mobile payment adoption,” said Josh Beck, a research analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. “Brick and mortar sales are challenged. If Apple and others can pitch a real value proposition for merchants, then you could see the retailers push mobile payments in their stores.”

That value is not clear today. But in the future, mobile wallet providers could make it more attractive for merchants and customers, perhaps pairing special offers, discounts or loyalty coupons.

And for now, at least, analysts believe if there is any company to persuade consumers of the mobile wallet’s value, it is Apple.

“Apple is likely able to create a sort of harmonious ecosystem that Google wasn’t able to do,” said Ms. Carrington of Forrester.

Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Ambitious Bet on More Than Devices. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Technology |NYT Now

The iPhone 6 Goes Big, as Apple Aims Small With a Smartwatch

By BRIAN X. CHENSEPT. 9, 2014

Inside

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Play Video|1:30

Introducing Apple Watch

Introducing Apple Watch Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, introduced a smartwatch, a wearable device that combines health and fitness tracking with communications. Video Credit By Reuters on Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

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CUPERTINO, Calif. — After three years as chief executive of Apple, Timothy D. Cook is starting to crystallize his vision for the company.

Apple on Tuesday introduced a highly anticipated smartwatch, which combines health and fitness monitoring with mobile computer capabilities like maps. The company also introduced two iPhones with larger screens.

The smartwatch, named the Apple Watch, is a miniature computer strapped around the wrist and is the first product made under Mr. Cook’s leadership that branches Apple into a new type of product: a device in the growing field of fitness-tracking computers that can be worn on or around the body.

Although the Apple Watch is the company’s first wearable computer, it enters a crowded field. Samsung, Pebble and Sony lead the pack of companies producing these new devices, and sales are growing quickly. But the devices are nowhere near as popular as smartphones. IDC, the research company, estimates that 19 million smartwatches will ship in 2014, much lower than the 1.2 billion smartphones that it expects will ship this year.

Continue reading the main story

Comparing New iPhone Sizes

Apple’s new phones cater to a growing appetite among consumers for bigger screens.

4-in.

4.7-in.

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

4-in.

4.7-in.

iPhone 5s

iPhone 6

5.1-in.

5.5-in.

Samsung Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 Plus

And despite the fanfare with which the news media has greeted Apple’s first wearable device, analysts have expressed mixed views about its potential to become mainstream. Can the smartwatch be a late entrant to a market but eventually dominate as Apple did several times before under its former chief, Steven P. Jobs?

“Jobs made that work with the iPod,” said Carl Howe, an analyst at the Yankee Group. “He certainly made it work with the iPhone. Question is, Are they going to be able to do the same thing with a watch? I wouldn’t bet against them at this point.”

Mr. Cook said in an interview that the new watch indicated that the company was still innovative.

“For us, it’s never been about being first. It’s been about being the best,” he said. “And I think we just launched the Apple watch that is sort of in a category by itself that will redefine what people expect of products in the category.”

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Play Video|0:27

Molly Wood on Smartwatches

Molly Wood on Smartwatches Times technology columnist Molly Wood says Apple has a chance to make smart watches a hit. Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditRebekah Fergusson for The New York Times

The new iPhones are significant upgrades for Apple’s smartphone lineup, still by far the company’s largest source of profit. They cater to a growing appetite among consumers for bigger screens, similar to what happened with televisions.

And they are a rare instance of Apple’s following market trends instead of creating them; Samsung, Apple’s chief rival, has captured a major share of the smartphone market with large phones.

Apple displayed the products in front of a packed auditorium here at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts, the same spot where the company introduced the Macintosh in 1984.

Apple said that to use the Apple Watch, someone must also use one of its more recent iPhones.

Continue reading the main story

For Wrists, an Upgrade

In Apple’s new Watch, consumers get a pulse monitor, quick access to messages and the time.

Apps are in new, organic layout.

Spin this to zoom in.

Push to go the home screen.

Use this button to access contacts.

Sensors can differentiate between a ‘tap’ and a ‘press’, and detect your pulse.

.955 in.

1.65 in.

There are six

interchangeable bands.

1

2

.955 in.

1.65 in.

3

1. Spin this to zoom in and push to go the home screen. 2. Use this button to access contacts. 3. There are six interchangeable bands.

The watch will have a strong focus on health. An app called Fitness tracks statistics for different exercises, like bicycling or running, an accelerometer tracks movements and a heart rate sensor helps measure the intensity of workouts.

The watch has a rectangular screen for a face with a flexible display and comes in two sizes. A crown on the side acts as a digital dial, which can be turned to zoom in; tapping the crown returns to the main menu. The watch can be attached to six strap styles, like stainless steel and leather.

The smartwatch can run various apps, like a calendar, map navigation and a music player.

The smartwatch will rely on so-called inductive charging to replenish the battery. Some consider it a form of wireless charging, but technically, it still requires a magnet that attaches to the back of the watch from another device.

Photo

The iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus, right.

The watch will take advantage of Siri, Apple’s tool for controlling the device with voice commands. Pushing on the crown activates Siri, and a command like “What movies are playing nearby?” will prompt the watch to load show times for nearby theaters.

Apple also said it would release a tool kit for software developers to build apps for the watch. It said many companies had already made such apps, including W hotels, Pinterest and BMW.

James McQuivey, a consumer technology analyst at Forrester Research, said the Apple Watch had already accomplished one thing, even though the device will not be in stores until 2015.

“It has firmly established the smartwatch as a category, one with unique properties requiring a unique solution, as opposed to a miniature smartphone pushed down onto your wrist,” he said.

Photo

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, demonstrating Apple Pay, which uses the iPhone 6, the larger iPhone 6 Plus and the Apple Watch.

Apple said that there would be three versions of the watch — Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport and Apple Watch Edition — and that pricing would start at $350.

Employees working on the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, have said that Apple wanted to introduce the product last year, but had to wait until this year to finish developing the hardware and software and to give developers time to make apps for the device.

Mr. Cook said Apple took its time to figure out how to devise a software interface that made sense on a small screen, among other challenges.

“You don’t want a phone strapped to your wrist. That’s not what the consumer wants,” he said.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|0:25

Molly Wood on Mobile Payments

Molly Wood on Mobile Payments Times technology columnist Molly Wood says consumers may see a rise in the use of mobile payments now that the iPhone has a chip that will work at tap-to-pay payment terminals. Publish Date September 9, 2014. Image CreditSoftcard, via PR Newswire

The two new iPhones, the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, measure 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches diagonally; the most recent iPhones measure 4 inches.

Both iPhones have an aluminum back. Despite larger screen sizes, the bodies are thinner than those of past iPhones.

To deal with concerns that a bigger phone will make using the phone with one hand difficult, Apple created the feature Reachability. Double tapping the physical button makes the picture slide down so that a user can reach over with one hand to tap something.

The processor inside the new iPhones is about 25 percent faster than the previous version, Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, said. The iPhones have slightly better battery life than the previous iPhone, and they include new wireless capabilities to get faster Internet speeds from cellular networks.

In addition, they support making phone calls over a Wi-Fi network and have an improved camera with a sensor that reads light and does quicker autofocus.

The starting price of an iPhone 6 with a contract is $200, while that for an iPhone 6 Plus is $300. They go on sale Sept. 19.

With the new iPhones and watch, Apple is moving deeper into the world of mobile payments. Apple demonstrated Apple Pay, a feature that allows users to pay for things in retail stores with the devices. The feature relies on near-field communication, or N.F.C., a technology that lets devices exchange information wirelessly over very short distances.

After rising initially, Apple shares ended the day down slightly.

The set of products should be the first of more to come this year. In May, Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of Internet services, said the products that the company planned to introduce this year made up the “best product pipeline that I’ve seen in my 25 years at Apple.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 2014, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Apple Goes Big With iPhone 6, and Small With a Smartwatch. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Wearable Computing NYT NOW

Mixed Predictions About Wearables Like Smartwatches and Google Glass

By Brian X. Chen July 2, 2014 5:23 pmJuly 2, 2014 5:23 pm

Photo

Google this year introduced Android Wear, a special version of its mobile operating system tailored for smartwatches.

The wearable computing market will be huge. Actually, it’s a passing fad. (Remember the netbook?) Or it will be a modest hit.

Or we have no idea.

After Google introduced Android Wear, a special version of Android tailored for wristwatches embedded with miniature computers, or smartwatches, several prominent research firms made predictions about where the devices were headed. The projections were all over the map.

IDC, the tech research firm, is bullish about the wearable computing market, which includes smartwatches, connected glasses and fitness devices. It noted that the devices were stirring so much buzz that they were landing on the pages of mainstream publications like GQ and Wired. IDC estimates that this year, more than 19 million wearable computing devices will ship, triple the number last year. By 2018, IDC predicts, shipments will swell to about 112 million.

Forrester Research, on the other hand, thinks wearables have a short shelf life. James L. McQuivey, a Forrester analyst, said in a research report that interest in wearable devices would probably rise next year but could decline as early as 2016.

By that year, he says, features offered by wearable devices will be duplicated by other devices, like smartphones and headphones with sensors embedded inside them, so people will quickly lose interest. He compared the impending rise and fall of wearables to the fate of the e-book reader, MP3 player and handheld camcorder, which were all supplanted by devices like smartphones and tablets.

NPD DisplaySearch, a research firm that tracks shipments of displays, has a more complex prediction. It foresees that the wearables market will grow to 91 million devices next year, up from 48 million this year. After that, the market will cool down when consumer hype dies down.

But after that, sales could surge again, when the devices catch on in China, similar to what happened with smartphones and big-screen TVs there, says Paul Gray, director of European TV research for NPD DisplaySearch.

It’s safe to say that the jury is still out.

Apple, a company that has a track record for creating new mainstream markets, has yet to release its wearable device. Its smartwatch, which will probably include wireless charging and have a strong focus on health monitoring, is expected for release in the fourth quarter.

A version of this article appears in print on 07/07/2014, on page B5 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Future Is Unclear for Wearables.

Wearable Computing, Forrester Research Inc, IDC Data Corp, Watches and Clocks, Wearable Computing

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Alibaba’s Shares Close Up 38% on First Day of Trading

By William Alden

September 19, 2014 6:32 amSeptember 19, 2014 6:32 am

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The Alibaba Group, the e-commerce giant, closed the day at $93.89 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, up 38 percent from its initial public offering price in a strong trading debut. The stock began the day at $92.70 a share.

Alibaba has captured the attention of American investors, politicians and consumers to an extent that is unusual for a company that does much of its business in China.

Apart from making its insiders rich and providing fees to Wall Street, the initial public offering reflects the rise of China’s consumer class. Investors see it as perhaps the best chance yet to buy into the country’s growth.

DealBook followed Alibaba’s market debut:

4:25 P.M. Calculating Yahoo’s Value

Alibaba’s stock debut has breathed new life into one of the stock market’s favorite parlor games.

Yahoo owns a large stake in Alibaba, which has led to a debate over what Yahoo will be worth once it sells its Alibaba holding. The exercise can be cruel to Yahoo. Using Alibaba’s Friday stock price, Yahoo’s remaining stake in the company has a stock market value today of about $38 billion.

Some people subtract that sum from Yahoo’s market capitalization of $41 billion and then assert that the remaining $3 billion is the value that investors are effectively ascribing to Yahoo’s core operations. Though Yahoo has problems, that $3 billion appears too low. It would only value the company at around 2.4 times the $1.23 billion of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, that analysts expect Yahoo to make this year.

So what explains the odd result? Perhaps the market believes Yahoo will liquidate its Alibaba stake for less than its current value on the stock market. Under this exercise, the less the stake is ultimately worth to Yahoo, the more Yahoo’s core operations are worth.

One way that Yahoo gets less from the stake is if it has to pay substantial amounts of taxes as it sells its holdings. If Yahoo gets hit by a tax rate of, say, 25 percent on the holding, it would net Yahoo $28 billion, not $38 billion.

Subtracting $28 billion from Yahoo’s $41 billion stock market value, in theory, implies that its core operations are worth roughly $13 billion. That is about 10.5 times the forecast for Yahoo’s 2014 Ebitda. In some ways, that multiple looks pricey; it’s nearly double that of AOL. On the other hand, it is below Google’s 15.5 times multiple.

As you can see, this is no more than a parlor game.

— Peter Eavis

4:10 P.M. Unofficial Closing Price: $93.89

Alibaba has closed the trading day at $93.89 a share, a 38 percent increase over the I.P.O. price. Anyone who bought shares at the start of trading this morning, however, would end up with a gain of just over 1 percent.

At the close, Alibaba has a market capitalization of $231 billion.

The stock experienced heavy volume during the day, with more than 270 million shares changing hands.

The Jack Ma Way

By DAVID BARBOZA

Alibaba, started by Jack Ma in 1999, is about to sell shares in the United States that could value the company at about $160 billion.

— William Alden

3:48 P.M. Another Asian Magnate’s Wealth Rises Handsomely

Even as all eyes were on Jack Ma, another Asian magnate also roamed the stock exchange floor on Friday.

That would be Masayoshi Son, the chief executive of the Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank. His company is the largest shareholder in Alibaba, with a 32.4 percent stake.

Mr. Son, a director of Alibaba, is a close ally and friend of Mr. Ma’s. He told Bloomberg TV that he was in New York for Alibaba’s debut because it was a “historic moment.” SoftBank held onto all of its shares in the I.P.O.

But Alibaba’s public listing signaled a more profound shift in the relationship between the two men. While Mr. Son has traditionally been among the most visible power players from Asia, Mr. Ma is now stepping out onto a global stage.

Mr. Son, who is now estimated by Bloomberg to be the richest man in Japan, recently experienced a public disappointment when Sprint, which SoftBank controls, failed to carry out a merger with T-Mobile US.

Mr. Ma’s star, meanwhile, is on the rise, reflecting also the emergence of China as an economic power.

— William Alden

1:27 P.M. Why Yahoo’s Stock Is Falling

Even as the value of its Alibaba stake rose, investors punished Yahoo as the day wore on.

Yahoo, which became a big investor in Alibaba in 2005, raised about $8.3 billion in cash (before taxes) by selling 121.7 million shares via Alibaba’s I.P.O. last night. It still owns a 16.3 percent stake, worth $37.2 billion at the start of trading this morning.

That’s a huge number, particularly when compared with Yahoo’s market capitalization, which stood at about $42 billion at Thursday’s close.

But Yahoo’s stock was down about 4 percent by the early afternoon to just above $40 a share, pushing the market capitalization to about $40.2 billion. Trading volume in the stock was more than six times higher than the three-month average.

One clue to the investor reaction might lie in Yahoo’s trading activity in the months before the I.P.O. Investors had treated Yahoo as a way to bet on the still-private Alibaba. Now, that dynamic has changed.

“You no longer need to own Yahoo as a proxy for Alibaba. You no longer need to tangle up your fortunes with that management team and the core business,” said Colin W. Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial who covers Yahoo.

Yahoo has said it plans to return at least half of the cash it raised from the I.P.O. to shareholders. But its plans for its remaining stake in Alibaba are less certain.

“Who knows when that gets sold,” Mr. Gillis said, “or what price it gets sold at?”

After Huge Alibaba Payday, a Test for Yahoo Executives

By VINDU GOEL

Marissa Mayer, chief of Yahoo, will have to prove to Wall Street that she has a plan to save the company after it sells its stake in Alibaba.

— William Alden

1:21 P.M. Facebook Is Valued More by One Measure

Alibaba’s soaring debut on the stock market has given the company an overall value of about $223 billion. As others have pointed out, that value exceeds even Facebook’s market capitalization of $200 billion.

But from another perspective, Facebook is far ahead. The social network company’s market value is 83 times larger than its earnings for the 12 months through the end of June.

For Alibaba, that multiple is 45 times, roughly half that of Facebook. Because the two companies have similar growth prospects and profit margins, they should in theory trade at similar multiples. The fact that Alibaba has a lower valuation suggests that investors have reservations about the Chinese company that they don’t have about Facebook. Investors may want to see a longer track record of earnings growth before awarding Alibaba a higher multiple. A “China discount” may also be to blame.

It’s already harder for investors to understand foreign businesses. But such concerns may be compounded for Chinese companies. Accounting scandals have hit Chinese firms, and their auditors typically aren’t inspected by the American auditor regulator. Chinese firms also have unusual corporate structures that prevent foreign investors from taking a proper ownership stake in the companies.

Then again, investors can talk themselves into buying any stock if they think it is going to keep going up. And Friday’s rise may be all the convincing they need.

— Peter Eavis

1:04 P.M. Midday Retreat

Shares of Alibaba jumped in early trading and were soon testing $100.

The stock price has now come down a bit, trading closer to $90 a share after more than an hour following its debut. That still represents a first-day pop of some 33 percent from its initial public offering price of $68. Trading is heavy, with more than 165 million shares changing hands.

— Jeffrey Cane

12:50 P.M. Yahoo Executives Take Part in the Raucousness

Alibaba’s huge initial public offering generated a lot of money for the few investors who sold shares, but none made more on an absolute basis than Yahoo, which reaped about $8.3 billion.

So naturally, executives from the American Internet company were on hand to take part in the pricing celebration that engulfed the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. Standing inside Barclays’ post on the floor — specifically Post Eight, continuing Alibaba’s fascination with lucky numbers — were Ken Goldman, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, and Jacqueline Reses, the company’s chief deal maker and a director on Alibaba’s board.

As the discussions in the booth swelled closer to the pricing, Mr. Goldman and Ms. Reses joked with officials from the Big Board and top bankers from Alibaba’s six lead underwriters. Among those in the booth cracking wise were James B. Lee Jr., vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase, and Daniel Dees, a co-head of technology, media and telecommunications investment banking at Goldman Sachs.

— Michael J. de la Merced

12:19 P.M. Alibaba Worth More Than Facebook

Alibaba started trading with a market capitalization of about $228.5 billion, making it more valuable than Facebook and Amazon but not nearly as large as Google. Here are the market caps of some other tech giants, as of around noon on Friday:

LinkedIn: $25.6 billion

Twitter: $30.8 billion

eBay: $65.5 billion

Amazon: $151.7 billion

Facebook: $200 billion

Google: $400.3 billion

— William Alden

12:00 P.M. Getting Out of Alibaba’s Way

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Jack Ma, Alibaba’s co-founder, celebrated the ringing of the bell from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

Who wants to compete with Alibaba? Almost no one, judging by the market for initial public offerings.

Alibaba’s I.P.O. was so enormous, the attention it commanded in recent weeks so overwhelming, that the rest of the market essentially ground to a halt ahead of the Chinese company’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

‘It’s a bad idea to go public on the same day as Alibaba,” said Matt Kennedy, an analyst with Renaissance Capital, which tracks I.P.O.s.

In the previous week, just four other companies priced their public offerings, all of them small health care companies. Meanwhile, more than dozen companies are expected to go public next week, once Alibaba is out of the way.

“Some companies have avoided going public this week because of all the hoopla with Alibaba,” said Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida.

Citizens Financial originally hoped to list this week, but delayed to make room for Alibaba. The bank now plans to raise as much as $3.5 billion next week.

Wayfair, a Boston-based technology company, had also considered this week for its stock market debut, but pushed the timing back so as not to be overshadowed by Alibaba.

As Alibaba’s chief executive, Jack Ma, led his company’s roadshow over the last week, other company chieftains wisely chose not to compete for the focus of institutional investors.

“Alibaba is naturally getting all the attention,” Mr. Kennedy said. “People are excited about the deal and spending all their time getting information about it.”

As for the few biotechnology companies that did price this past week, those shares are typically bought not by portfolio managers at big institutional investors, but by managers of smaller funds. “They wouldn’t be on the same radar,” said Mr. Kennedy. “It’s a different investor.”

Besides not wanting to compete with Alibaba for attention, other companies on the cusp of going public didn’t want to compete for institutional investors’ dollars. In advance of Alibaba’s listing, some portfolio mangers have had to sell out of other tech companies to make room for Alibaba in their funds.

Indeed, the $21.8 billion raised by Alibaba was equal to all the I.P.O.s in the first six months of this year, according to Mr. Ritter. For smaller technology companies looking to go public this month, that means there might be little appetite from investors who have just gorged on Alibaba shares.

Nonetheless, the market for new public offerings is as strong as it has been since the dot-com boom. There have been 195 I.P.O.s this year, up 34 percent from last year, according to Renaissance Capital. And after a slow summer for new listings that followed a roaring start to the year, executives at the major exchanges are anticipating a busy end of the year.

The New York Stock Exchange is expected to list Citizens, Medley Management and Vantage Energy next week. Nasdaq, which missed out on the Alibaba I.P.O., plans to list as least 10 new companies over the next two weeks, including Civitas Therapeutics, Revo Biologics and Vitae Pharmaceuticals.

“We’re going to end the year on an incredibly strong note,” said Nelson Griggs, head of new listings at Nasdaq. “The pipeline is exceptionally strong.”

— David Gelles

11:56 A.M. The Start of Trading

Alibaba has started trading at $92.70 a share around 11:53 a.m., nearly two and a half hours after the market opened.

The opening price is a 36 percent jump above the initial public offering price, reflecting investors’ hunger for the shares. The company starts trading with a market valuation of $228.5 billion.

— William Alden

11:10 A.M. Stewart: The Numbers Behind Alibaba’s Story

Alibaba has a compelling story to tell investors, but the underlying numbers may give some investors pause, James B. Stewart writes in the Common Sense column in The New York Times.

For example, at $68 a share, Alibaba’s price-to-earnings ratio is just over 40. EBay, a roughly comparable company, has had an average P/E ratio a little over 26, Mr. Stewart writes:

Thinking Twice on Alibaba

By JAMES B. STEWART

What excites investors in Alibaba isn’t just its size, but its prospects of getting bigger. But is it reasonable to assume its dominance will persist?

11:04 A.M. SoftBank Chief’s Outlook

In an interview with CNBC, Masayoshi Son, the chief of SoftBank and a director of Alibaba, shared his optimism for the Internet giant, as well as Japan and China’s economy:

10:37 A.M. Jack Ma on Spending His Billions and Forrest Gump

Mr. Ma spoke with CNBC immediately following the ringing of the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. He described how he plans to spend his own personal wealth.

… compared the infrastructure of commerce in the U.S. verses in China …

… and said that his hero is Forrest Gump.

10:25 A.M. In China, Alibaba’s New Campus Sets Up for a Big Party

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A re-creation of the facade of the New York Stock Exchange outside of Alibaba's campus in Hangzhou, China.

Over the course of its 15-year history, Alibaba has struggled to separate itself from a reputation for selling fake products online.

On Friday, the day of its listing, it finally has a fake that will inspire pride: A recreation of the facade of the New York Stock Exchange.

The structure, which has been put up in the main courtyard of the company’s new campus in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, will serve as the center of festivities Friday evening local time, when the company lists in New York.

Though China’s state-run companies are usually quite conservative, the mostly private technology sector is anything but, and over the years Alibaba and its co-founder, Jack Ma, have earned a reputation for throwing a good party.

Mr. Ma, who is known to croon karaoke ballads at the company’s festivals, was in New York with a group of executives and Chinese reporters for the listing. Still, the company’s employees, some of whom will soon be millionaires, will ring in the listing by watching a live feed from New York at the campus.

Despite that, two employees said that the mood on the campus was subdued, with many hard at work on Friday morning.

One employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company, said that employees at the campus were generally calm.

“It’s not too different from normal,” said the person, who has worked for seven years for Alibaba and is a senior information technology engineer.

“It’s not as important as the outside world has made it, and we are super busy, like always,” he said, adding that light rain in Hangzhou was dampening the mood as well.

Another employee in the company’s branding department, Zhao Xiuzhi, said the mood was generally happy, but not overly ecstatic.

“Today we feel quite happy,” she said. “Everyone is wearing the same T-shirt, which gives a feeling of having accomplished something together.” She added: “Plus, tomorrow’s a Saturday, so I feel relaxed.”

Photos of the white T-shirts the employees received spread widely on social media in China. “One must have dreams” was printed on the front, and “What if they come true?” was on the back.

Ms. Zhao said she felt tranquil about the money she would earn and also said she was too busy to think too much about the celebrations that night. “But I do feel lucky, since it is the first time I have a chance to witness one company’s I.P.O. event.”

In Hong Kong, senior bankers were taking on jobs usually left to junior employees to get in on the action of what was seen as a historic occasion, according to one banker working on the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“All bankers working on this I.P.O. have been demoted a few rungs,” the banker said. “You got managing directors doing associate and analyst-level work. It’s like the deal has some sort of mystical power over everyone and all are just acolytes at the altar of Jack Ma and Alibaba.”

— Paul Mozur and Shanshan Wang

10:15 A.M. Caution on Alibaba’s Future

Alibaba is projected by many on Wall Street to perform well on its first day. But anyone thinking of buying into the stock should be mindful of the considerable long-term risks. DealBook’s Peter Eavis explored some of the issues. Among them:

* Alibaba’s corporate structure is highly opaque. The entity going public, the Alibaba Group, is not based in the United States but in the Cayman Islands. Investors buying into Alibaba will not get a true ownership stake in Alibaba’s operating businesses; instead, the Alibaba Group merely has contractual rights to profits from the businesses.

* Alibaba’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCooper’s affiliate in Hong Kong, is not subject to inspections by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which regulates audit firms.

* Alibaba went on a buying spree in the second quarter, spending a total of $1.85 billion, more than the $1.64 billion in cash flows from the company’s operations. Some of the deals raised eyebrows. And after buying a movie production company, Alibaba said that it might have found accounting irregularities at the firm, suggesting it did not adequately vet the deal.

* Although the company is dominant today, its future is not certain. Unlike Amazon, Alibaba does not consume lots of cash holding inventory, and it has not used up cash to build a fully fledged distribution network. Rivals like JD.com are building their own networks. If Alibaba were to follow suit, it would be a punitively expensive undertaking.

Rush to Invest in Alibaba, but Concerns Linger About Company’s Future

By PETER EAVIS

Once the so-called smart money piles into a stock, it’s usually time to start asking dumb questions. And with Alibaba, there are many.

— William Alden

9:46 A.M. Employees and Executives at N.Y.S.E.

A huge crowd of Alibaba employees and partners were in a cordoned-off area just under the balcony where eight Alibaba customers were to ring the bell. Among the crowd was Jack Ma, the Internet titan’s executive chairman, and Joseph Tsai, the executive vice chairman, both tieless and looking relaxed.

Many of the employees wore white T-shirts with a blue “Tao doll,” the mascot of Alibaba’s Taobao market, over collared shirts. Selfies and snapshots were taken repeatedly, with the company’s general counsel, Timothy Steinert, featured in a few. Michael Yao, the company’s head of corporate finance, enthusiastically whipped out his smartphone and snapped some photos.

The pen grew so crowded that minders repeatedly sought to thin the crowd, but to little avail. At one point, the crowd was urged to squeeze in “like in a subway train.”

— Michael J. de la Merced

9:42 A.M. Jack Ma on the Floor, Not at the Bell

Jack Ma was the New York Stock Exchange at the market open. But he didn’t ring the opening bell.

Eight customers of Alibaba rang the bell on the company’s behalf. Alibaba says this shows its “customers first” ethos. It also reflects the importance of the number 8.

The customers include an American farmer, a Chinese delivery courier, an Olympic gold medalist and a customer service representative for Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace.

— William Alden

9:28 A.M. Alibaba’s Lucky Numbers

There are plenty of important numbers to keep in mind when analyzing Alibaba. But a few stand out: 6, 9 and especially 8.

Consider how many 8’s appear in the stock offering. The roadshow for the I.P.O. kicked off the week of Sept. 8. The deal priced on Sept. 18. The price was set at $68 a share.

If you dig into Alibaba’s prospectus, there are more 8’s, 9’s and 6’s. The company had 18 founders. Its holding company was established on June 28, 1999 (6/28/99). A credit facility it obtained last year was worth $8 billion.

The pattern is no coincidence. The number 8 is considered lucky in Chinese culture. The word for eight in Mandarin, “ba,” rhymes with the word for prosper, “fa.” (The Beijing Olympics — in 2008 — began at 8 p.m. on the eighth day of August, the eighth month of the year.)

Alibaba just so happens to contain two “eights” in its name.

Reports this summer said Alibaba was considering scheduling its trading debut for Aug. 8, or 8/8, a date the company saw as auspicious.

But a debut in September, the ninth month, is also significant. The number 9 is considered desirable because it sounds the same as the word for long lasting, “jiu.”

The number 6 is popular as well. It can signify longevity or joy, depending on the dialect.

A string of these numbers is even better. Consider, then, the market value Alibaba achieved last night: $168 billion.

— William Alden

9:16 A.M. The Whale of the I.P.O. Market

The trading debut of Alibaba Group comes at a time when the market for initial public offerings has been robust.

At $21.8 billion, Alibaba’s offering is the largest in the United States, topping the I.P.O.s of Visa, Facebook and General Motors. But to really get a sense to how enormous Alibaba is, consider that the market value of the Chinese e-commerce company is nearly as big as the market value of the entire American I.P.O. market so far this year.

With its shares priced at $68 each, Alibaba has a market value of about $168 billion. The combined market value of the 154 companies based in the United States that have already gone public this year is $180.5 billion, says Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ, a research firm.

Fully diluted, Alibaba’s market value is $176 billion at $68 a share, says Renaissance Capital, an I.P.O research firm. That would make Alibaba among the top 25 most valuable companies listed in the United States, it says.

— Jeffrey Cane

9:06 A.M. Who Got In at the Debut Price?

Word is already emerging on who managed to snag shares in Alibaba’s I.P.O., and unsurprisingly, the biggest of the big investors prevailed.

The company and its underwriters allocated the vast majority of shares from the offering to “strategic partners” like mutual funds, according to people briefed on the matter. More than 50 percent of the stock went to the biggest accounts, one of these people said.

Behind the allocation, these people said, was a desire to create a solid base of investors willing to stick with the company for the long term.

Doug Kass at Seabreeze Partners says the demand was high for shares:

TD AMERITRADE SAYS CUSTOMER ORDERS FOR ALIBABA EXCEED CUSTOMER ORDERS FOR TWITTER’S IPO BY 2.5 TIMES $BABA

— Douglas Kass (@DougKass) 19 Sep 14

— Michael J. de la Merced

9:00 A.M. How Alibaba Is Set Up

What exactly will shareholders be buying? Steven Davidoff Solomon, noted in a Deal Professor column that investors in the offering won’t have title to most of Alibaba’s Chinese assets because of Chinese prohibitions on foreign ownership.

Alibaba Investors Will Buy a Risky Corporate Structure

By STEVEN M. DAVIDOFF

When investors buy shares in an American offering of Alibaba, what exactly will they be buying? asks Steven M. Davidoff in the Deal Professor column.

Instead, the company is using a so-called variable interest entity structure. It works for Jack Ma, Alibaba’s co-founder and executive chairman, but whether it works for investors remains to be seen, he writes. He also takes a look in this video:

8:44 A.M. Don’t Look for Alibaba’s Price Right at 9:30 A.M.

Alibaba shares aren’t expected to start trading for several hours, but the floor of the New York Stock Exchange is already bustling, and brimming with orange from the company’s logo. Within the Big Board, screens at various posts — especially at Barclays, the designated market maker — are displaying the bright orange Alibaba logo prominently. The logos of other Chinese companies, like Autohome and Leju.com, dot the screens of other market makers.

I get the sense some company is going public today. #alibaba $baba http://t.co/DX1OEHzLhX

— Michael de la Merced (@m_delamerced) 19 Sep 14

And the chatter around the floor has a distinctly more Chinese flavor. An estimated 140 media teams from the China region have gathered at the Big Board to cover Alibaba’s market debut.

The N.Y.S.E. is also going to great lengths to make sure there are no glitches, so the stock won’t be trading right at the opening bell:

— Michael J. de la Merced

7:39 A.M. The Scene on Wall Street

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Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba, arriving at the New York Stock Exchange.

Jack Ma arriving at the New York Stock Exchange. Dozens of onlookers had gathered early Friday in anticipation of Alibaba’s first day of trading.

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The scene outside the N.Y.S.E.

DealBook’s Michael J. de la Merced is at the exchange to follow the debut:

More than a few Chinese visitors stop to have their picture taken in front of the NYSE $baba @ New… http://t.co/0KMoosJZ5V

— Michael de la Merced (@m_delamerced) 19 Sep 14

7:23 AM How the Chinese Feel About Alibaba

With the Alibaba I.P.O. heavily oversubscribed, the world already knows how international and institutional investors feel about the offering. Less emphasis has been placed on what Chinese investors think.

A survey by the Chinese tech media site PingWest of more than 600 Chinese investors found that 59 percent would not invest in the company. Though 66.7 percent of those asked said that they were bullish on Alibaba’s long-term growth, 16.1 percent said the price was too high, while 8.6 percent chose the more personal reason: They didn’t like Jack Ma and Alibaba.

— Paul Mozur and Shanshan Wang

7:00 A.M. In Hong Kong, Wondering What Might Have Been

HONG KONG — The new Alibaba Group had originally sought to list in Hong Kong. But regulators refused to sign off on its partnership structure, which gives a committee of fewer than 30 of the company’s employees and associates majority control over board appointments.

Speaking to potential investors while on a marketing tour in Hong Kong on Monday, Jack Ma asked his audience to “think about us just like any other Internet company that happens to be in China.”

In Hong Kong, that’s not so easy to do.

— Neil Gough

6:42 A.M. Alibaba.com’s Previous I.P.O. Popped, and Fizzled

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In 2007, Jack Ma, third from left, had taken Alibaba.com public.

HONG KONG — This isn’t Jack Ma’s first trip to the I.P.O. rodeo.

Demand was tremendous back in 2007 when Mr. Ma listed Alibaba.com, a website connecting Chinese exporters with overseas buyers, on the Hong Kong stock exchange. It raised $1.7 billion, a record for an initial public offering by an Internet company in Asia at the time.

Alibaba.com originally offered 129 million shares to individual retail investors and received orders for 33 billion shares. The opening-day pop in the stock was impressive: the shares rose 193 percent on their first day of trading, Nov. 6, 2007 — climbing from an offer price of 13.50 Hong Kong dollars apiece, or $1.74, to 39.50 dollars apiece.

But Alibaba.com came to market near the top of what proved to be a global rally in equities that would turn into a downward spiral a year later, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

From a peak of 38.92 dollars just three weeks after its I.P.O., Alibaba.com’s stock plunged and never quite recovered. It was languishing below 10 Hong Kong dollars a share in early 2012 when the parent company, the Alibaba Group, offered to take it private at 13.50 dollars a share — which just so happened to be the I.P.O. price.

— Neil Gough

A version of this article appears in print on 09/20/2014, on page B7 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Yahoo Falls As Alibaba Climbs Up.

I.P.O./Offerings, Technology, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Initial Public Offerings, Search Engines, Stocks and Bonds

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Technology |NYT Now

After Huge Alibaba Payday, a Test for Yahoo Executives

By VINDU GOELMAY 6, 2014

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What Is Alibaba? The e-commerce company has seized investor and public interest to an extent that is unusual for a company that does much of its business in China. Video Credit By Reem Makhoul and Sofia Perpetua on Publish Date May 6, 2014. Image CreditLiangzhen/Chinatopix, via Associated Press

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SAN FRANCISCO — For Yahoo, the initial public offering of stock in the Alibaba Group will unlock the door to a giant trove of cash. Depending on the price of the deal, Yahoo most likely will receive $10 billion to $15 billion for the 9 percent stake in the Chinese e-commerce company that it is required to sell in the offering.

The I.P.O. will also bring an end to the long honeymoon of Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer. Since she was hired in the summer of 2012, investors have paid little attention to her efforts to revive the fading Internet company and instead focused on what would happen with Yahoo’s longstanding investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan.

At Yahoo’s current stock price of $36.49, some analysts say, investors are basically buying those foreign investments and getting Yahoo’s core operations free.

When Alibaba begins trading as a public company, however, that crutch will disappear. Ms. Mayer will then have to prove to Wall Street that she has a viable plan to save Yahoo and will use the Alibaba windfall wisely.

Photo

Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, will soon have to prove to Wall Street that she has a viable plan to save Yahoo and will use the Alibaba windfall wisely.

“What do you do with that money?” asked Robert S. Peck, an analyst with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, who estimates that Yahoo will end up with about $8 billion after taxes.

Yahoo was required to sell half its stake under an agreement it reached with Alibaba in 2012. The agreement was amended last year to require Yahoo to sell less than half its stake — or 9 percent of Alibaba.

Yahoo executives aren’t saying much about what they will do with the proceeds, citing a regulatory quiet period surrounding the I.P.O. But they dropped a few hints during an April conference call to discuss the company’s first-quarter financial results.“We intend to be good stewards of our capital and we have been to date,” Ms. Mayer said in the call, in response to a question about what she might do with a sudden influx of cash.

“When we look at the investments we need to make in the business, you’ll see the same type of mix we’ve been making to date. Some strategic acquisitions, some tuck-in acquisitions, and we really need to see what opportunities arise in terms of the ways we could deploy the cash at that time.”

Analysts predict that Yahoo will spend a large portion of the proceeds from the Alibaba stock sale to buy back shares of Yahoo. A buyback would in theory make the company’s shares more valuable because each remaining share would have a slightly bigger claim on Yahoo’s business.

Ms. Mayer could also throw a few coins directly to shareholders in the form of a dividend, which would be taxable to the recipients but give them a very tangible piece of the cash hoard. Yahoo pays no dividend now.

Yahoo is likely to keep the rest of the money for acquisitions, adding to the $2.9 billion in cash and short-term liquid investments it already has. (The company says it also has $1.6 billion in liquid long-term investments.)

Under Ms. Mayer, Yahoo has made dozens of tiny acquisitions, and one large one — the $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr, a blogging platform, last May.

In recent months, rumors have swirled that Yahoo was sniffing at larger prey, like the instant-messaging service Snapchat or an online video service.

Yahoo Japan, a joint venture between Yahoo and SoftBank, a Japanese technology company, holds riches too. It operates independently from Yahoo, which owns about 35 percent of the company and records a proportional share of its revenue and profits. Yahoo Japan’s stock is traded in Tokyo; Yahoo’s stake is worth about $9.2 billion.

During the April call, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, Kenneth A. Goldman, suggested the company would look more closely at international acquisitions to bolster the company’s foreign presence.

Photo

Jack Ma, standing, at a news conference in 2005 to announce that Yahoo had bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.

Whatever Yahoo does, shareholders want some assurance that it fits a broader strategy, Mr. Peck said. They don’t want Yahoo to spend a lot of money on a big acquisition that generates no revenue, he said, as Facebook did when it agreed to buy the messaging service WhatsApp for as much as $19 billion earlier this year.

When Alibaba begins trading as an independent stock, many investors who bought Yahoo as a proxy for the fast-growing Chinese company will simply buy Alibaba directly.

Those who continue to buy Yahoo, analysts say, will expect Ms. Mayer and her top executives to show better results.

Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said he could not discuss Alibaba because his firm hoped to play a role in the I.P.O.

But he pointed out that Yahoo’s advertising business trails competitors like Google, Facebook and Twitter and is especially weak in the fastest-growing areas of digital advertising. “The fact that mobile, social and video are still immaterial to Yahoo’s revenue paints a very sharp picture of how much catch-up work Yahoo still has to do,” he said.

Even after the I.P.O., Alibaba will retain some ties to Yahoo.

Yahoo will continue to own about 13.6 percent of Alibaba, giving it a share in future profits of the company. Although the two companies have no joint business ventures, Jacqueline D. Reses, Yahoo’s chief development officer, sits on Alibaba’s board, giving her a prime view into the Chinese Internet market.

A successful I.P.O. will be vindication for Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s co-founder and former chief executive. Mr. Yang struck up a friendship long ago with Alibaba’s co-founder, Jack Ma, and had the foresight to buy about 40 percent in 2005.

Investors later savaged Mr. Yang for rejecting Microsoft’s 2008 offer to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion. But Yahoo ended up being worth more than that, mostly because of the Alibaba investment. Yahoo sold about half its original stake back to Alibaba in early 2012 for about $7.1 billion.

With Alibaba soon to play a much smaller role in Yahoo’s finances, Ms. Mayer will get an unvarnished look at how investors view their leadership.

“Right now, it’s hard for them to tell what the market really thinks,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group. “They can have a messy quarter, they can have a great quarter; it’s unlikely to make any difference.”

Once Alibaba stock begins trading, Mr. Wieser predicted, “the management team has a couple more quarters.”

But if they don’t show substantial progress on a turnaround by then, investors could decide to put their money elsewhere.

A version of this article appears in print on May 7, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: After Huge Payday, a Test for Yahoo Executive. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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Rush to Invest in Alibaba, but Concerns Linger About Company’s Future

By Peter Eavis

September 18, 2014 8:43 pmSeptember 18, 2014 8:43 pm

Photo

Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba. Mutual funds, hedge funds and pensions are rushing to back the company.

When the Alibaba Group starts trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, many people may be asking, “Ali who?”

Professional investors, of course, already know that Alibaba is a fast-growing, hugely profitable Chinese company that is a combination of eBay and Amazon, with a little bit of Google thrown in. They like it so much that they have stampeded to Alibaba’s initial public offering, making it the largest ever on the United States stock market. The deal raised $21.8 billion for Alibaba and gives it an overall market value of $168 billion, two and a half times the size of eBay.

Still, once the so-called smart money piles into a stock, it’s usually time to start asking dumb questions. And with Alibaba, there are many.

Can the company, which today dominates Chinese e-commerce, fend off competition forever? What about its odd corporate structure? Who, exactly, is checking the company’s books? And why did Alibaba recently spend more than a quarter’s worth of cash flow on what seemed like a grab bag of investments?

In many fundamental ways, investing in Alibaba is nothing like owning a slice of a typical American corporation. It requires far more trust. But as the rush into Alibaba’s public offering shows, mutual funds, hedge funds and pensions are falling over themselves to back the company. In a time of economic malaise, when few big companies are growing strongly, a business like Alibaba stands out brightly.

“You’ve got a world that is starved for growth, and this segment of the Chinese capital markets offers a high degree of growth,” said Brendan Ahern of KraneShares, a mutual fund firm that invests in Chinese companies.

For many, the allure of Alibaba is in its headline numbers.

Alibaba makes most of its revenue from fees and commissions that it receives from the two large Internet marketplaces that it operates in China. Taobao is a frenetic and eclectic online bazaar that offers a huge range of goods. Tmall, by contrast, is a more refined platform that established brands use to sell their goods. Together, Alibaba’s marketplaces sold $296 billion worth of goods in the 12 months through the end of June, which is estimated to be more than Amazon and eBay combined.

Facebook’s public offering faltered in 2012 when it became clear that the company did not yet have a strong footing in mobile devices. But Alibaba appears to be handling the retailing transition to mobile devices. In the second quarter of this year, mobile accounted for a third of the value of goods sold on Alibaba’s Chinese marketplaces, up from 12 percent in the same period a year earlier.

Alibaba is also reaping enormous profits from the torrent of commerce that takes place on its websites. In the second quarter, it made 43 cents of operating profits for every dollar of revenue, a staggering margin for a large, fast-growing company. Sometimes, outsize margins can be an indicator that a firm is somehow managing to overcharge — an advantage that might lessen as competition increases. But investors assert that the fees and commissions that Alibaba charges its sellers seem to be in line with those of its rivals.

Photo

Alibaba makes most of its revenue from fees and commissions that it receives from the two large Internet marketplaces that it operates in China: Taobao and Tmall.

“There is no evidence that it is gouging its customers, despite its dominance,” said Alistair Way, a fund manager at Standard Life Investments.

And even though consumers’ habits can change quickly, especially on the Internet, Alibaba’s fans expect it to remain dominant. Their argument: Alibaba’s marketplaces get so much traffic that sellers simply have to use them to reach consumers.

This sort of optimism has persuaded some analysts that Alibaba’s shares could trade well above its $68 offering price. James Cordwell of Atlantic Equities, for instance, says that Alibaba is worth about $100 a share, or 30 times the $3.35 a share that he estimates the company will make in profits in 2016. Alibaba, he contends, deserves a multiple of 30 times because that is in line with other Chinese Internet companies — and because he expects Alibaba’s earnings to grow at about 30 percent a year.

“Alibaba is highly profitable,” he said. “It is easier to value than Facebook and Twitter at their I.P.O.s.”

Photo

Taobao, an eclectic online bazaar that offers a huge range of goods, is one of Alibaba’s two main businesses.

But even bullish analysts like Mr. Cordwell have their concerns.

A big one is whether Alibaba will eventually end up spending a lot of money to stockpile goods and distribute them, potentially depleting future profitability. Right now, a main attraction of Alibaba is that it does not consume large amounts of cash holding inventory, as is the custom for most retailers, including Amazon. Like eBay, Alibaba merely matches buyers and sellers. Nor has Alibaba used up cash building its own fully fledged distribution network. Given the size of the company’s business, such a network would most likely be punitively expensive. Alibaba has, however, invested in a joint venture with delivery companies to establish a logistics network.

But rivals that are building their own networks may do better in crucial parts of the market. JD.com, a Chinese online retailer that focuses on electronics, has its own logistics network — and analysts say that it appears to be notching up better electronics sales than Alibaba in China’s largest cities.

“It suggests that its fulfillment capacity is giving it a competitive edge in these cities,” Mr. Cordwell said.

Beyond its financial performance, Alibaba presents investors with other potential headaches. Its offering effectively asks investors to give up some basic rights and protections.

As is the case with any public company, outside investors have no real way of testing the accuracy of the Alibaba’s financial filings. Investors usually expect outside auditors to assess a company’s books. And American investors might take some comfort in the fact that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board regulates audit firms, to help ensure they are doing their job. But the Chinese government does not allow the board to inspect Chinese audit firms. And the regulator has not inspected Alibaba’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCooper’s affiliate in Hong Kong.

Photo

Sellers from AliExpress, an English-language version of Taobao, watching a CNN interview with Jack Ma, Alibaba’s co-founder.

Alibaba’s corporate structure is another reason to pause.

The actual entity that is going public, the Alibaba Group, is not based in the United States, but in the Cayman Islands. This entity also does not give investors a true ownership stake in Alibaba’s operating businesses. Instead, the Alibaba Group merely has contractual rights to profits from the businesses, an arrangement that allows foreign investors to effectively find a way around Chinese law that would otherwise ban such investment. Adding to concerns over control, Jack Ma, Alibaba’s executive chairman, has majority stakes in the company’s underlying Chinese entities.

Shareholders might find it hard to rein in Mr. Ma and his associates if they make decisions that outside shareholders disagree with. This fear arose a few years ago when Mr. Ma unexpectedly spun out Alipay, the company’s payments business, causing a rift with Yahoo, which has a big stake in Alibaba.

Alibaba’s Shareholders

Current price

Pct. Change

Major Shareholders

Share value

Jack Ma

Co-founder and chairman

Joseph Tsai

Co-founder and vice chairman

Yahoo

Search and tech. company

SoftBank

Japanese telecomm.

Updated

The questions about Mr. Ma’s latitude reasserted themselves after Alibaba made a string of deals that recently raised eyebrows. In April, the company lent $1 billion to Simon Xie, one of its founders, to finance an investment. Alibaba also took a stake in a Chinese soccer team this year. And after buying a movie production company, Alibaba said that it might have unearthed accounting irregularities at the firm, suggesting it did not do good due diligence.

The acquisition numbers are not insignificant: The $1.85 billion that Alibaba spent on acquisitions in the second quarter exceeded the $1.64 billion in cash flows from the company’s operations.

Still, for now, the issues of control and oversight may not be enough to derail Alibaba’s strong financial performance.

“If you are looking for growth, this company is offering that,” Mr. Ahern, the mutual fund manager, said.

Related Coverage:

Alibaba, With Its I.P.O., Mints Millionaires and Risk-Takers

By ANDREW JACOBS and NEIL GOUGH

Alibaba has generously handed out stock to all levels of workers, creating a wealth diaspora rarely seen in China.

Tops in E-Commerce, Alibaba Is Now Taking On China’s Banks

By NEIL GOUGH

The e-commerce company is going head-to-head with banking competitors that are by and large owned by the Chinese government.

Alibaba Raises $21.8 Billion in Initial Public Offering

By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED

The Chinese Internet juggernaut priced its shares at $68 each, which will help make the initial stock sale one of the biggest on record.

A version of this article appears in print on 09/19/2014, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: A Headlong Rush to Invest in Alibaba.

I.P.O./Offerings, Technology, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Computers and the Internet, E-Commerce, Initial Public Offerings, Ma, Jack, New York Stock Exchange, Stocks and Bonds

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NYT NOW

Alibaba, With Its I.P.O., Mints Millionaires and Risk-Takers

By Andrew Jacobs and Neil Gough

September 18, 2014 9:39 pmSeptember 18, 2014 9:39 pm

Photo

Traditionally dependent on manufacturing, Hangzhou, a city of six million people in China, has been embracing the high-tech sector.

HANGZHOU, China —  This leafy manufacturing hub two hours southwest of Shanghai is best known for its scenic lake, Buddhist pagodas and tangy fish-head soup.

With the Chinese e-commerce giant the Alibaba Group poised to start trading on Friday, Hangzhou will earn another accolade: the city that minted thousands of Internet millionaires.

Started here in 1999, Alibaba has followed the model of Microsoft, Google and other American technology companies, generously handing out stock to all levels of workers, from senior executives to receptionists. It has created a wealth diaspora rarely seen in China, where the economy is still dominated by state-owned enterprises, and private companies generally reserve riches for executives at the upper echelons.

The initial public offering on Thursday, which valued Alibaba at $168 billion, will provide Silicon Valley-style payouts. At Alibaba and its affiliates, around 6,000 current and former employees owned stock worth nearly $8 billion before the I.P.O. And that sum represents only a piece of the shares doled out over the years to employees, some of whom cashed out earlier at lower, albeit still lucrative, prices.

“Can you imagine the sort of wealth that’s being generated through this?” said Sanjay Varma, a former Alibaba vice president who still owns shares in the company. “It’s incredible.”

The rise of Alibaba and its founder, Jack Ma, has proved instructive for a generation of young Chinese — not just as a road map to riches, but as a lesson in entrepreneurial individualism. Today, thousands of young people across China are creating start-ups of their own, driven by visions of what they might do if they, too, strike it big.

The Alibaba money has helped spur a constellation of Internet companies in China. Over the last decade, one-time Alibaba employees have helped start 130 Internet businesses, more than any other Chinese company, according to Itjuzi.com, a website that tracks investment in domestic technology companies. There’s Mushroom Street, a social shopping site that caters to young women; Didi Dache, a taxi-hailing app that has 100 million users in China; and Tongcheng, a travel website founded by a former Alibaba salesman that has more than 2,000 employees.

Photo

Lai Jie, a former Alibaba employee who started a wireless Internet service in public spaces like airports, currently has 80 employees.

Three years ago, Lai Jie, a former Alibaba product manager, sold a big chunk of his shares and started WiTown with three co-workers. Today, the venture, which runs wireless Internet service in public spaces like airports, has nearly 80 employees, most in Hangzhou.

“The city is chock-full of talent,” said Mr. Lai, 33.

Alibaba has been educating employees about the hidden risks of sudden wealth. In an email in July, Mr. Ma wrote about the looming I.P.O. and warned that Alibaba’s fast growth could push up prices in its hometown, likening the effect to Microsoft on Seattle or Facebook on Silicon Valley. “All our hard work hasn’t been just so we could turn into a bunch of tuhao,” he wrote, using a slang reference to China’s swarms of uncouth newly rich.

From the early days, top executives like Joseph Tsai, the current vice chairman, would hold companywide sessions about the basics of spending and saving, as well as stock options. “We talked about freedom of choice in 2002 and 2003,” said Savio Kwan, Alibaba’s chief operating officer at the time, who still owns shares. “People said, ‘What is that?’ I said, ‘It’s when you become rich and you don’t need to work for a living anymore. You can choose to still come to work at Alibaba or choose to retire or to do something else.’ “

“It was hard to explain the concept to people who were earning only a couple thousand renminbi a month,” he added, referring to an amount that was roughly $250 at the time. “But the company was growing like crazy.”

The mind-set, in part, requires a cultural shift among a work force that has, even by Chinese standards, gotten by on modest salaries.

Like a number of employees awash in stock options, Su Jie, 33, left the company in recent weeks. He wants to set up a product management consultancy, partly funded by his Alibaba stock.

But he said the decision to depart from what many Chinese consider a prized, stable job was not easy, especially in the face of pressure from his parents, who would have preferred he join the “iron rice bowl” security of China’s civil service. “One thing you can say about Alibaba is that the company gives its workers a sense of purpose and a belief that anything is possible,” said Mr. Su, who joined the company eight years ago right out of college.

Traditionally dependent on manufacturing, Hangzhou, a city of six million people, has been embracing the high-tech sector. Local Communist Party officials have been aggressively promoting the city as a magnet for start-ups through special economic zones, high-tech incubator centers and low-cost capital to young entrepreneurs. Mr. Lai, the former Alibaba product manager, pulled together $81,000 for his company, supplementing his own funds with money from an angel investor and a no-interest loan from the local government.

“People here really value bold thinking and risk-taking, and the government is also pretty good, which is a rarity in China,” said Mr. Lai. In recent years, Hangzhou’s department of science and technology has distributed $130 million to 152 start-ups, according to its website.

The combination — Alibaba’s success and the government’s support — has helped turn Hangzhou into an entrepreneurial hub. Last year, the e-commerce industry contributed 39 billion renminbi ($6.3 billion) to the local economy, a 56 percent increase over 2012, according to government figures. In the city’s technology-heavy central business district, e-commerce was responsible for 25 percent of all economic activity last year, up from 7 percent in 2011, according to the Hangzhou Daily newspaper.

Zhejiang University, one of the nation’s top-rated schools, has become something of a feeder farm for local high-tech firms that aggressively recruit graduating seniors. Incubators, which bring together a number of start-ups under the same roof, are also popping up around the city.

Started in 2012, the Fudi Startup Incubator Centers are the brainchild of Li Zhiguo, an early employee at Alibaba who went on to found Koubei.com, a business review site later sold to Alibaba. The newest Fudi center, which opened a few months ago, is a collection of brightly colored buildings that are home to dozens of start-ups, including a venture focused on Internet coupons, a dating app for college students and a wedding planning site for young couples.

Photo

Zhang Jie and Fang Yi are angel investors and entrepreneurs in Hangzhou who oversee eight start-ups.

Among the biggest tenants are Zhang Jie and Fang Yi, angel investors and entrepreneurs who oversee eight start-ups. During a recent visit, the vibe was unmistakably Silicon Valley, as dozens of young programmers hunched over computers and others napped on an air mattress or inside a pup tent. A blowup kiddie pool and punching bag dominated the room, which was flecked with exhortations to “Hit the Ground Running” and “Find the Must-Win Battle.”

Photo

Fang Yi and his wife are prominent Hangzhou technology incubator mavens.

“The first year or two of a start-up is very challenging, so you have to keep an eye on these guys, otherwise it’s easy to go under,” said Ms. Zhang, 30, a fast-talking woman who is part den mother and part drill sergeant. “Also, you have to keep your employees happy because other companies will steal them.”

The couple, graduates of Zhejiang University who have started a number of Internet companies since 2005, has done well for themselves. In June, they became among the first residents in Hangzhou to own a Tesla.

Although luxury car dealers and property developers are hoping the Alibaba I.P.O. will prompt a spending bonanza, several employees with significant stock holdings said they would probably defer big purchases and instead use their money to finance start-ups. Mr. Su, the former Alibaba product manager, said he had no plans to trade his two-year-old Ford Mondeo for a more expensive car.

Travel is a different matter, he said. Like other Alibaba alumni, he said he had taken few vacations in the last eight years, in keeping with the company’s work-till-you-drop ethos. Several weeks ago, however, Mr. Su and several friends set off on a two-month trek across Tibet.

“Before this, the only time I took off from work was for my honeymoon,” he said shortly before leaving town. “For a lot of Alibaba employees, we are finally getting a chance to enjoy life.”

Related Coverage:

Tops in E-Commerce, Alibaba Is Now Taking On China’s Banks

By NEIL GOUGH

The e-commerce company is going head-to-head with banking competitors that are by and large owned by the Chinese government.

Alibaba Raises $21.8 Billion in Initial Public Offering

By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED

The Chinese Internet juggernaut priced its shares at $68 each, which will help make the initial stock sale one of the biggest on record.

A version of this article appears in print on 09/19/2014, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Chinese Internet Giant Mints Millionaires and Risk-Takers.

I.P.O./Offerings, Technology, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Initial Public Offerings, Ma, Jack

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Investment Banking | I.P.O./Offerings

Tops in E-Commerce, Alibaba Is Now Taking On China’s Banks

By Neil Gough

September 18, 2014 8:20 pmSeptember 18, 2014 8:20 pm

When Jack Ma started a new retail site to rival eBay’s dominance in China, he called it “a fight between an ant and an elephant.” Mr. Ma, the chairman of the Alibaba Group, even briefly considered making the site’s mascot the ant.

He soon prevailed, with eBay eventually closing its Chinese operations. Years later, Alibaba’s online retail venture, Taobao, is China’s largest shopping site — a position that helped Mr. Ma pull off a record-setting initial public offering on Thursday.

Now, Mr. Ma is going up against another giant by shaking up China’s state-dominated finance industry.

His business, the newly named Zhejiang Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group, processes payments, sells insurance and runs one of the world’s largest money market funds. In doing so, the company is going head-to-head with some of the world’s most profitable banks, operating in highly regulated markets and standing against competitors largely owned by the Chinese government.

It is a precarious position. Although Beijing has pledged more financial liberalization, Mr. Ma risks government displeasure if his company moves in ways that run counter to powerful state firms or regulators.

“Jack Ma has clearly disrupted the banking sector in China, and if he didn’t have the right political clout to do that, he would have been crushed already,” said Paul Gillis, a professor at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University. “How far he can go with it” remains to be seen, Mr. Gillis added.

The payoff could be huge. Zhejiang Ant, a stand-alone company that is controlled by Mr. Ma and shares profits with Alibaba, could be worth an estimated $25 billion.

It is also making significant inroads. Through Alipay in China, the company already processes nearly four times the amount of payments that eBay’s PayPal unit does globally. It is also winning deposits away from state banks by paying higher interest rates on investments in Yu’e Bao, a money market fund that has grown to be one of the world’s largest in just over a year. It is branching into online transfers, making loans to small businesses, developing other investment products and laying plans to open one of China’s first private banks.

“Alipay has become the default payment platform for the majority of users for nearly every online or mobile e-commerce transaction, and an increasing number of offline transactions as well — I even use Alipay to pay my rent and utilities,” said Zennon Kapron, the managing director of Kapronasia, a financial industry consulting firm based in Shanghai. “Banks are already facing challenges in maintaining profitability and credit quality, and they definitely recognize Alipay and Yu’e Bao as a threat.”

Photo

At the core of this budding financial services empire is Alipay. In the 12 months that ended in June, the business processed $778 billion worth of payments in China, only 30 percent of that related to Alibaba’s online shopping websites. By comparison, eBay’s PayPal unit — which does not have a license in China but handles transactions in more than 100 currencies across 203 markets globally — processed $203 billion in payments during the same period.

Ashley Wang, a 22-year-old television editor in Beijing, started using Alipay six years ago to shop on Taobao, the Alibaba site where independent vendors sell goods like clothing, household items and consumer electronics. Today, Ms. Wang uses Alipay for much more: paying her electricity, water and gas bills, buying airplane and train tickets and transferring funds quickly to and from the bank accounts of her friends or relatives or their Alipay accounts.

Because she travels a lot and doesn’t always carry her laptop, she often uses Alipay Wallet, a popular mobile payment app. The wallet app sends frequent updates to Ms. Wang’s smartphone, as well as monthly summaries of her spending through Alipay.

“This is very annoying,” Ms. Wang said. “Because you go back and you realize how much money you’ve spent on unnecessary purchases, on things you don’t need.”

Photo

Ashley Wang, a 22-year-old television editor, started using Alipay six years ago to shop on Taobao. She now uses it for much more.

Ms. Wang said the money in her Alipay account was automatically transferred to Yu’e Bao, which translates as “leftover treasure,” where it earns interest at a rate of just over 4 percent annually until she’s ready to spend it. That compares with the 3.3 percent rate — capped by the government — that traditional banks can pay on a one-year fixed deposit and 0.35 percent for demand deposits, which can be withdrawn anytime.

“I don’t mind letting the money stay there, although rates are decreasing,” Ms. Wang said, referring to the returns on her Yu’e Bao account. “That’s good enough for me. I haven’t done any other investment at traditional banks.”

While successful, the money market fund has also proven controversial. Critics have referred to online products like Yu’e Bao as “vampires sucking blood out of banks.”

Some of the country’s biggest banks are fighting back, moving to place limits on how much their customers can transfer into third-party online payment accounts. Mr. Ma responded with a sharply worded post on Alibaba’s social messaging service, Laiwang, calling out the banks by name and accusing them of failing to keep pace with China’s market-oriented financial liberalization.

“The market doesn’t believe in crying and isn’t scared of competition, it’s afraid of unfairness,” he wrote in a post on his personal account that was later deleted but continues to circulate online. “The decision of who wins and who loses in the market shouldn’t be up to monopoly and authority, but up to customers.”

The banks have cause for concern. After rising each year since records began in 2007, low-interest household demand deposits in China’s banking system have declined slightly in recent months.

As with Alibaba in the past, Zhejiang Ant’s strategy appears to be one of winning customers first and worrying about increasing profit later. Alibaba’s filings do not list its share of earnings from the financial unit. But its investments are starting to show signs of paying off.

Photo

In May, Zhejiang Ant bought control of Tian Hong Asset Management, the company that manages the Yu’e Bao money market fund. By the end of June, Tian Hong’s assets under management had grown to 574 billion renminbi ($93 billion). Tian Hong charges fees of less than 1 percent on the assets that it manages, and those fees amounted to 1.5 billion renminbi ($243.8 million) in the first six months of this year.

The company’s portfolio is diverse. Zhejiang Ant is selling insurance products online, as well as making small loans to the businesses that set up virtual storefronts on Alibaba’s retail websites. The company is also waiting to receive approval for one of China’s first private banking licenses, part of a pilot program announced this year. It is even experimenting in online crowdfunding for film production.

But competition is growing. In addition to the risks of resistance from state companies or regulators, Zhejiang Ant’s toughest challenges could come from rival Chinese Internet behemoths like Tencent Holdings or Baidu.

Tencent, a giant in the online game and social messaging world in China, has introduced fast-growing financial offerings to compete directly against both Alipay and Yu’e Bao. While Alibaba can market financial offerings to users of its retail websites, Tencent can leverage its ownership of Weixin, also known as WeChat, a wildly popular social messaging app.

Indeed, Tencent “has been enormously successful in creating cross-product sales opportunities” with Weixin, said Mr. Kapron, the financial consultant.

He added that Zhejiang Ant’s lack of a formal banking license could also limit its future expansion, and the variety of products and services it is allowed to offer, “especially if the regulators start to become more active in regulating this space.”

A version of this article appears in print on 09/19/2014, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Tops in E-Commerce, Now Taking On China’s Banks.

Financial Services, I.P.O./Offerings, Investment Banking, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Alipay, Banking and Financial Institutions, E-Commerce, Yu’e Bao

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Business Day |NYT Now

Thinking Twice on Alibaba

SEPT. 19, 2014

Inside

Common Sense

By JAMES B. STEWART

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

Investors love a good story.

They lined up hundreds deep at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York earlier this month to hear Alibaba’s executive chairman, Jack Ma, promote the Chinese Internet retailer’s initial public offering.

“It was a zoo,” said Vincent Rivers, senior portfolio manager for the London-based investment firm J. O. Hambro Capital Management. “There must have been 400 people waiting in line. Everybody was there. It was like a social event.”

The shy, somewhat awkward Mr. Ma opened by saying that he’d first come to the United States 15 years ago looking for about $2 million in capital. “Now,” he said, "I’m asking for slightly more.”

The line drew a knowing laugh from the crowd — Alibaba was asking for nearly $22 billion, the biggest I.P.O. ever in the United States — but Mr. Ma should probably keep his day job. What the crowd really wanted to hear about was Alibaba’s growth, and Mr. Ma didn’t disappoint them.

A few vivid charts and statistics told the story. Alibaba is already the world’s largest Internet commerce company, with 231 million active buyers using its site, 11.3 billion annual orders and $296 billion in annual merchandise sales, a measure Alibaba uses instead of revenue.

Photo

Investors and Alibaba employees arrive at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Monday for a presentation by Jack Ma.

To put this in perspective, Amazon has less than $82 billion in revenue. EBay has just over $17 billion.

But what excites Alibaba’s potential investors isn’t only its size, but its prospects for getting bigger. China currently has 302 million Internet shoppers. That’s less than half the country’s 618 million Internet users. And Internet penetration in China is less than half the country’s population of about 1.35 billion. Competition from brick-and-mortar retailers in China is far less than in the United States, which should also drive increases in Internet shopping.

“The potential is absolutely massive,” Mr. Rivers said. “The real question isn’t whether they’ll have more users. It’s how much will they spend.” Chinese Internet shoppers spend far less per person than in the United States. “If you look long term and they can close that gap, you can get to some huge numbers,” he said.

Alibaba also has enviably high profit margins of more than 40 percent, which even by Internet standards, let alone retail, is extraordinary. Amazon has struggled for decades to eke out a slender profit. EBay has an operating margin of 20 percent and Google 23 percent.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|1:43

Behind the Appeal of Alibaba

Behind the Appeal of Alibaba James B. Stewart discusses on CBNC the reasons for investor interest in Alibaba, as well as the reasons for concern. Publish Date September 19, 2014.

Alibaba is the dominant e-commerce company in China by far, which, along with the high margins, suggests that it’s the kind of natural monopoly beloved by investors. Alibaba itself attributes this to the so-called network effect. “The interactions between buyers and sellers create network effects in that more merchants attract more consumers, and more consumers attract more merchants,” the company asserts in its prospectus.

And Alibaba keeps profits large by dispensing with the high-cost, low-margin businesses that have dogged Internet retailers in the United States. Alibaba is simply a platform for connecting buyers and sellers. “We do not engage in direct sales, compete with our merchants or hold inventory,” the prospectus notes.

I was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday morning, where the excitement of newly minted billions was palpable. The Alibaba trading station occupied the center of the floor, where it was surrounded by a throng of “V.I.P. guests” squeezed behind velvet ropes. The street outside was packed, the balconies were crowded with onlookers and cheers went up every time the indicated opening price was adjusted upward. Mr. Ma rang the opening bell and dropped in on the on-floor set of CNBC.

Alibaba was priced on Thursday night at $68 a share. And on Friday, pent-up demand drove the opening price to $92.70. The stock immediately rose from there and ended the day at $93.89.

Photo

Jack Ma, the chief executive of Alibaba, outside the New York Stock Exchange Friday morning.

Perhaps some stocks should reflect what I’ll call an “excitement premium,” which in Alibaba’s case is surely significant. That’s fine until the excitement wears off. For a more sobering view, I turned to Bruce Greenwald, co-author of “Competition Demystified” and “Value Investing,” and a finance professor at Columbia Business School. Value investors like Professor Greenwald, by nature, tend to be skeptical of stories, especially when those stories are as rosy as Alibaba’s. Still, Professor Greenwald said he agreed with much of the Alibaba thesis. “There’s no doubt they benefit from a network effect and they have growth potential,” he said.

But value investors tend to prefer numbers to words, and Alibaba’s numbers, impressive as they are, may give some investors pause.

At $68 a share, Alibaba’s market capitalization is about $168 billion. It’s hard to find a United States company that’s directly comparable, but Professor Greenwald said eBay comes the closest. Like Alibaba, it has an auction site that benefits from a powerful network effect, it offers a vast e-commerce site and it has a pay system, PayPal. (While Alibaba spun off its payment system, Alipay, Alibaba will get a share of the proceeds from any sale or public offering of Alipay.) EBay’s market capitalization is about $65 billion.

Of course, eBay doesn’t dominate e-commerce in the United States to the degree that Alibaba does in China. But is it reasonable to assume such dominance will persist as the Chinese market matures? No one company dominates e-commerce in the United States or in Europe, and none are as large as old-economy Walmart. China may now be underserved by national brick-and-mortar chains, but that could change. Professor Greenwald said he believed that Alibaba deserved a premium to eBay — perhaps twice eBay’s market capitalization. “But three times? That’s really pushing it,” he said.

Continue reading the main story

Alibaba’s Shareholders

Closing price

Change From I.P.O. Price

Major Shareholders

Share value

Jack Ma

Co-founder and chairman

Joseph Tsai

Co-founder and vice chairman

Yahoo

Search and tech. company

SoftBank

Japanese telecomm.

Updated

Then, there‘s the most common valuation metric, the price-to-earnings ratio. At $68 a share, Alibaba’s is just over 40. EBay had a loss in its most recent quarter, so it has no P/E ratio. But over eBay’s life as a publicly traded company, its P/E ratio has averaged a little over 26.

No Chinese Internet company is quite like Alibaba, so comparisons with Chinese stocks are difficult. But Baidu, China’s version of Google, which also benefits from network effects and the growth in Chinese Internet use, has a market capitalization of about $80 billion, and a P/E ratio of 45. Tencent Holdings, which is classified as social media rather than e-commerce, although it has elements of both, is even further afield. Its market capitalization of $147 billion is also smaller than Alibaba’s, although its P/E ratio is a steep 51.

Alibaba’s valuation may not be outrageous, but to Professor Greenwald, these comparisons are “pretty scary.” He added, “There’s a lot of hype in Alibaba, and that’s what you’re seeing in the price.”

That doesn’t change the Alibaba story, and sometimes a story is enough. Amazon is the leading example, a company that barely earns a profit and drives value investors crazy. Its market capitalization is $150 billion, nearly as big as Alibaba’s, and its P/E ratio is over 500. Investors buy the Amazon story, which is that Internet commerce dominance is just over the horizon, along with huge profits.

After Alibaba’s presentation in New York, “I’d say the mood was excitement,” Mr. Rivers said. “There really wasn’t much new, but there was significant buzz that this is a great growth opportunity."

Investors, Mr. Rivers added, "want to be able to say they’d been there.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 20, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: After the Party, Some Sober Reflections. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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International Business |NYT Now

The Jack Ma Way

At Alibaba, the Founder Is Squarely in Charge

By DAVID BARBOZASEPT. 6, 2014

Inside

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At the resplendent China World Hotel in Beijing, scores of cameras snapped as colorful confetti floated down from the ceiling. It was Aug. 11, 2005, and this was the global coming-out party for Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce upstart. After months of frantic negotiations, the American Internet giant Yahoo had agreed to invest $1 billion in cash and create deeper business ties, in exchange for a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.

Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, thin, energetic and standing just over five feet tall, was beaming. He gushed that it was China’s Valentine’s Day and this was a beautiful match: “You’d be foolish if you said no.” It was his coming-out party too; the partnership would pave the way for Alibaba to become an international juggernaut.

For days, Mr. Ma was almost giddy about a deal that provided his company with a huge infusion of money and unfettered access to Yahoo’s search technology. He was particularly effusive that eBay and Meg Whitman, who was then its chief executive, had enticed Yahoo to make a competing offer by bidding so aggressively for Alibaba. “Thank you, Meg Whitman,” Mr. Ma joked at the time. “Thank you for making all of this possible.”

But Mr. Ma soon started having second thoughts about the partnership. He worried that he had sold the stake too cheaply and given up too much control.

Trying to buy back most, if not all, of Alibaba’s shares, Mr. Ma started talks that dragged on for several years. With the relationship souring, Mr. Ma transferred ownership of Alibaba’s fast-growing online payment service, Alipay, to an entity that he controlled. He didn’t get the permission of Alibaba’s board. He just went ahead and did it.

While Yahoo complained, Mr. Ma seemed to get everything he wanted, eventually. In 2011, he negotiated an agreement giving him and a handful of key lieutenants a majority stake in Alipay, one of the company’s crown jewels. A year later, Mr. Ma secured a plan for Yahoo to reduce its stake in Alibaba.

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What Is Alibaba?

What Is Alibaba? The e-commerce company has seized investor and public interest to an extent that is unusual for a company that does much of its business in China. Video Credit By Reem Makhoul and Sofia Perpetua on Publish Date May 6, 2014. Image CreditLiangzhen/Chinatopix, via Associated Press

When the Alibaba Group goes public later this month in an offering that could value the company at about $160 billion, investors will have little doubt about who is in control of the company. Mr. Ma, 49, is the public face. He is the chief negotiator. He is the top strategist. He is the biggest individual investor, with a 9 percent stake.

Alibaba, a company started out of Mr. Ma’s apartment in 1999, is now a technology colossus worth more than American stalwarts like eBay and Hewlett-Packard. Under his leadership, Alibaba has become not just the dominant force in China’s e-commerce but also a symbol of the country’s breathtaking economic rise. The company has 250 million active buyers in China, and its orders account for more than 60 percent of all package deliveries in China.

That success has helped make Jack Ma a kind of celebrity C.E.O., an executive comfortable hobnobbing with business moguls in Davos, leading tours of his company for China’s political elite and promoting the “Wisdom of Jack Ma” in books and on DVDs. The initial public offering could make Mr. Ma, already one of China’s richest men, worth more than $15 billion. He has already pledged to give away much of that wealth, which would instantly make him one of the world’s major philanthropists. (Mr. Ma and Alibaba declined to comment for this article, citing regulatory restrictions on public statements ahead of an I.P.O.)

Mr. Ma has grown accustomed to doing things his way. He regularly strikes deals with close friends and buys companies in seemingly unrelated industries. At times, it is hard to determine whether an investment is personal or professional, because the boundaries between Mr. Ma’s portfolio and Alibaba’s holdings can blur.

Such activities are not always transparent, a potential red flag for new shareholders in a public company. Like many Chinese companies, Alibaba also operates behind a cloak of complicated ownership structures, which may limit dissenting shareholders’ objections.

Rebellious and Precocious

Mr. Ma grew up in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, the middle of three children born to a pair of performers of pingtan, a traditional musical storytelling technique. Neighbors called him a troublesome and often rebellious young boy, but he may have just been precocious.

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A young Jack Ma, left, with his older brother and younger sister by West Lake in Hangzhou, China.

At 10, Ma Yun, as he is known in Chinese, took a liking to English and would ride his bicycle to the Hangzhou Hotel to practice with foreign tourists, an experience he said opened his mind to the outside world.

His poor math skills almost prevented him from attending college. But after passing the national college entrance exam on the third try, Mr. Ma gained admission to a local teachers’ college, where he excelled and was elected president of the student union. When he graduated in 1988, he took a $14-a-month job teaching English at the Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Engineering and quickly became one of its most popular instructors.

Photo

Mr. Ma as a boy in Hangzhou.

With China’s economy beginning to take flight, Mr. Ma saw opportunity in entrepreneurship. In his spare time, friends say, he co-founded a translation agency, sold medicine and dabbled in stocks. “If I’m not a millionaire by the time I’m 35,” he joked with his friend Qi Xiaoning, “please kill me!”

He visited the United States for the first time in 1995. Mr. Ma had befriended Bill Aho, an American who taught English in Hangzhou, and stayed with Mr. Aho’s relatives in Seattle. There, he was introduced to the World Wide Web by Mr. Aho’s son-in-law, Stuart Trusty, who ran one of America’s first Internet service providers, VBN.

“At that time, I had an office in the U.S. Bank tower, and Jack came and I showed him what the Internet was,” Mr. Trusty says. “Back then, the Internet was largely a directory for governments and businesses, but he seemed excited.”

Photo

Mr. Ma stayed with Dave and Dolores Selig, relatives of Mr. Aho, during his first visit to Seattle.

Mr. Ma returned home and set up one of the country’s first web companies, China Pages, an online directory for domestic businesses looking for customers overseas. Former colleagues say Mr. Ma worked tirelessly, knocking on doors, taking photos, collecting information and translating it into English. When done, he mailed the listings to VBN in Seattle to post on the web.

“At that time, the concept of the Internet was foreign to the Chinese people — people had no idea and no reaction when we introduced them to the idea,” said Yu Xiaohong, one of Mr. Ma’s partners at China Pages.

China Pages struggled at first, but Mr. Ma was optimistic. During a 1996 trip to Seattle to meet his partners at VBN, he seemed confident he would strike it rich, says Mr. Aho, who traveled with him.

“I remember him looking at the expensive houses in the Queen Anne Hill area,” Mr. Aho recalls. “He’d point at houses and say, ‘When I get rich, I’m going to buy that house there, and that house. ...’ And at that time, he didn’t have a nickel.”

Then Mr. Ma lost control of his company. In 1996, China Pages was pressured into forming a joint venture with Hangzhou Telecom. The deal put the government firmly in charge.

Photo

Jack and his wife, Cathy Ma, at China Pages in 1996.

Discouraged, Mr. Ma went to Beijing to work at Infoshare, an Internet advertising agency set up under China’s Ministry of Commerce. Mr. Ma lasted just 14 months at Infoshare. Itching to run his own company, he returned to Hangzhou. “At that time, I felt it was too tiring doing e-commerce in the government,” Mr. Ma said in a 2005 interview. “E-commerce should start with private enterprises.”

‘With or Without You’

When Mr. Ma started Alibaba on Feb. 21, 1999, he asked 17 friends to gather in his second-floor apartment at the Lakeside Gardens in Hangzhou. In the makeshift headquarters, he gave a long talk about his ambitions and how much China needed a great start-up. He picked the name, he later explained, because “everyone knows the story of Alibaba. He’s a young man who is willing to help others.”

Photo

Jack Ma at an Alibaba meeting.

The company was built on a similar premise: to help businesses find overseas customers. If an American retailer was looking for a supplier of cotton slippers in China, it might turn to Alibaba.com. If a Chinese producer of buttons wanted to export to South Korea, it could advertise on the site. Alibaba, as he saw it, would be a virtual meeting room for small and medium-size businesses engaged in global trade.

Early on, Shirley Lin, a Goldman Sachs banker, visited Mr. Ma’s apartment. She had heard about the company from a friend, Joseph Tsai, a Yale-educated former lawyer who had recently joined Alibaba.

“I went up to the apartment, where they were all working 24/7,” says Ms. Lin, who now teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “The whole place stank — all those instant noodles. Jack’s ideas were not entirely original — they had been tried in other countries. But he was completely dedicated to making them work in China. I was moved by what I saw.”

A month later, Goldman led a $5 million investment in the company. Soon after, Masayoshi Son, the chairman of Japan’s SoftBank and one of the world’s richest men, agreed to lead a second round of financing worth $20 million. Along with foreign investors, Mr. Ma shared a large chunk of the company with his 17 co-founders; most were friends and former students, and also among them was his wife, Cathy.

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Jack & Comapny

Alibaba’s Jack Ma, along with a group of top Chinese entrepreneurs, are part of complicated web of deals and ventures, made for both personal benefit and corporate gain.

OPEN Graphic

“This was really unusual, his willingness to share,” says Chauncey Shey, who works for SoftBank and helped make the initial investment. “Most founders aren’t willing to do that, and so that gave us more confidence in him.”

But power was still largely concentrated in Mr. Ma’s hands. He and his top deputy, Mr. Tsai, held two of the company’s four board seats. Mr. Ma also controlled the underlying companies that Alibaba used to operate in China.

China restricts foreign investment in industries considered sensitive, like the Internet. To avoid running into a problem, Mr. Ma set up an offshore holding company in the Cayman Islands. Foreign investors buy shares in the offshore entity and are contractually entitled to the profit. But most of Alibaba’s assets are actually owned by Mr. Ma and another co-founder, Simon Xie.

The ownership structure — known as the variable interest entity — is common among Chinese Internet companies. But it holds risks for shareholders, because it may leave them without the usual protections. (In June a United States government commission warned Americans about investing in Chinese companies using the complex V.I.E. structure, saying in a report to Congress that “a major risk is that the Chinese shareholder of the V.I.E. will steal the entity, ignoring the legal arrangements on which the system is based.”)

Mr. Ma often had the final say in strategy. Just as Alibaba was beginning to earn money in 2002, Mr. Ma proposed setting up a consumer-oriented site to compete with eBay. Most of his top executives opposed the idea, since eBay was a formidable company and its Chinese partner already had a huge share of the China market.

“Most managers were against it,” says John Wu, who was then the chief technology officer at Alibaba. “I said: ‘We’re barely breaking even. And besides, every business school textbook says focus on what you do best. How can we create a second site?' ”

Savio Kwan, who was then Alibaba’s president, remembers a fierce debate one evening at a restaurant in Hangzhou. After Mr. Ma prevailed, he telephoned Mr. Son of SoftBank.

“He said: “Masa, we’re thinking of doing this. We’re going to let you know, but we’re going to do it with or without you,' ” Mr. Kwan recalls. “Masa called back in five minutes and said, ‘I want in.’ ”

With financing from SoftBank, Alibaba set up a secret task force to develop the consumer site, which they called Taobao, Chinese for “searching for treasure.” When it was introduced in July 2003, Alibaba used it to wage guerrilla warfare on eBay and its Chinese partner, EachNet. EachNet was more of an auction site and took a commission. Taobao allowed more direct selling and was initially free.

When Mr. Ma vowed that it would remain free for years, eBay shot back in a release, “Free is not a business model.” (Taobao now makes money through fees.)

Mr. Ma predicted that eBay’s China operation would soon collapse because of pressure to deliver quick profit. He was right.

In China, “eBay really underestimated Jack’s tenacity and Alibaba’s ability to follow through on a strategy,” says Duncan Clark, founder of BDA China, a Beijing-based consulting firm.

With Taobao growing quickly, eBay moved to make a deal, according to people involved in the discussions. In mid-2005, Ms. Whitman held secret talks with Mr. Ma in China to discuss cooperating with Alibaba, or buying Taobao outright. Mr. Ma was invited to eBay’s campus in San Jose, Calif.

Photo

Mr. Ma at the Alibaba global coming-out party in August 2005, with a photograph in the background of Jerry Yang, left, of Yahoo and Mr. Ma.

But Mr. Ma wanted to maintain control and opened talks with Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo, who was searching for new opportunities in China, according to people involved in the negotiations. The deal was a good fit. Mr. Ma received a $1 billion cash infusion to buy out some shareholders and invest. He also had a collection of sites like Yahoo China that he thought would transform Alibaba into a powerhouse.

At the 2005 news conference in the China World Hotel, Yahoo’s chief operating officer, Daniel Rosensweig, leaned over and whispered in Mr. Ma’s ear. “Jerry Yang had warned me that whatever you do, don’t let Jack Ma say he acquired Yahoo,” recalled Mr. Rosensweig. Mr. Ma leaned back and laughed heartily.

Photo

Mr. Ma with Yahoo’s chief operating officer, Daniel Rosensweig, right.

Consolidating Power

The honeymoon didn’t last long.

After Mr. Yang resigned as chief executive in January 2009, Yahoo’s new management team clashed with Alibaba’s top executives. Yahoo made an Internet search and advertising deal with Microsoft later that year, and stopped providing the technical support to Alibaba that was required under its partnership agreement. It also began competing with Alibaba for advertising in China.

More important, Yahoo rebuffed Alibaba’s request to buy back shares.

“After Jerry Yang left, everything changed,” said David Wei, who until 2011 was one of Alibaba’s top executives. “We had become their most valuable asset and there was no communication.”

The simmering resentments boiled over. Between mid-2009 and early 2011, Mr. Ma transferred ownership of his company’s online payment service, Alipay, to a private company he controlled, effectively removing it from the Alibaba Group.

The unilateral move angered Yahoo, which said it was done without board approval. Yahoo also said it had only been informed of the transfer in March 2011, when its accountant had received a letter from Alibaba simply saying the payment service had been “deconsolidated.”

Mr. Ma later said that he had informed the board. But when the directors had failed to decide, Mr. Ma said he was forced to transfer ownership of the company to comply with new regulations on online payment services.

“If Alipay were illegal and didn’t get a license, Taobao would have been paralyzed,” Mr. Ma told the media in 2011.

After intense negotiations, Yahoo, SoftBank and Alibaba hashed out an agreement, one that seemed to favor Mr. Ma. Yahoo and SoftBank — which between them owned 70 percent of the Alibaba Group — would receive 49 percent of the profit from Alipay. Mr. Ma and a group of unnamed employees would get the rest.

As part of the deal, Mr. Ma also won control over a holding company for the financial services affiliates, including Alipay, the main payment processor for Alibaba’s various sites. The holding company, now known as the Zhejiang Small and Micro Financial Services Company, has expanded to include wealth management products, small-business lending and China’s biggest money market fund. With its ability to profit from Alibaba’s customers, the group is worth an estimated $25 billion, according to analysts.

“He’s essentially formed a huge company within the company that’s tied into absolutely everything that Alibaba does,” says Fredrik Oqvist, an independent financial analyst in Beijing.

Around the same time, Mr. Ma started aggressively making deals with a small circle of businessmen with whom he socialized. The group includes some of China’s most successful entrepreneurs, like Guo Guangchang of the Fosun Group, a Shanghai-based conglomerate; Shen Guojun of China Yintai Holdings, a retail property developer; and Shi Yuzhu, chairman of the online gaming company Giant Interactive.

Together, they have worked on a web of interconnected deals, both for personal benefit and for corporate profit.

The business group, known as the Zhejiang Gang because many of the members grew up in Zhejiang Province, helped Mr. Ma set up his private equity firm, Yunfeng Capital, in 2010. That private equity firm has since been a conduit for other Alibaba-related deals. For example, Giant Interactive, run by Mr. Shi, bought $50 million worth of Alibaba stock through Yunfeng Capital, according to public filings. Less than three years later, the shares were sold for $200 million.

The businessmen have also formed joint ventures together. Last year, Alibaba started a company called Cainiao with plans to spend $16 billion to build out China’s logistics network. Alibaba owns 48 percent. Fosun is an investor. Yintai too. And Mr. Shen of Yintai is Cainiao’s executive chairman.

Analysts and corporate ethics experts say there is nothing wrong with such activities. But they caution that regulators may look askance if interparty deals aren’t properly disclosed.

“Why do they allow Yunfeng to get in on it?” says Jeff Dorr, a Hong Kong-based analyst at J Capital Research, an investment advisory firm. “What value do they bring?”

Most members of the group declined to comment. In an interview, Mr. Shen defended such deals, explaining that Mr. Ma had formed a circle of trust, something common in Chinese business. Mr. Shen insisted that the group follows rules regarding conflicts of interest.

“Public companies have very strict supervision regulations that we have to comply with,” Mr. Shen says. “We just cooperate.”

The playbook, with its web of interrelated players and companies, extends more broadly to Alibaba’s aggressive deal-making. In the last year, Alibaba has made acquisitions valued at more than $6 billion, everything from navigation systems and online video sites to a professional soccer team.

The deal structures can be complex. For example, Alibaba said in April that it agreed to lend about $1 billion to Mr. Xie, one of Alibaba’s co-founders and a top executive, to acquire 20 percent of Wasu Media, an Internet TV company. Mr. Ma and Mr. Shi of Giant Interactive were partners in the deal. The same day Alibaba announced it planned to cooperate with Wasu.

The fast pace of deal-making also makes it more difficult to assess a company properly. This year, Alibaba acquired ChinaVision, a film producer that has since changed its name to Alibaba Pictures. Just weeks ago, Alibaba said it had discovered suspicious accounting at the company.

Nurturing Ties

Photo

Mr. Ma at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Nov. 6, 2007.

As Alibaba grows, the company is not shaking up just bricks-and-mortar retailers, but also venturing into state-dominated industries like media, finance and telecommunications. To help quell any government opposition, friends say Mr. Ma has increasingly cultivated ties to Beijing.

Alibaba, for example, was one of the main sponsors of the Youth Business Council, a state-backed charity set up by Gu Liping, the wife of Ling Jihua, at the time an aide to the country’s president who was considered one of China’s most powerful officials. Mr. Ma also serves as vice president of the China Cultural Industry Association, a nonprofit that operates under the Ministry of Culture.

Alibaba has also developed relationships with politically connected investors. When the company paid $7.6 billion to buy back a large number of its shares from Yahoo in May 2012, a big portion was resold to the country’s sovereign wealth fund and two private equity firms. One of those firms was Boyu Capital, which was co-founded by Alvin Jiang, the grandson of former president Jiang Zemin. Not long after, New Horizon Capital, a private equity firm co-founded by the son of Wen Jiabao, then prime minister, also bought a large block of Alibaba shares, according to corporate records.

Alibaba has also done multiple deals with the Citic Group, one of the country’s biggest state-owned conglomerates. Earlier this year, Alibaba and Mr. Ma’s private equity firm, Yunfeng Capital, bought a controlling stake in a Citic-backed software and logistics provider, Citic 21cn, for $171 million. After the Alibaba deal was announced, shares of the company rose by as much as 500 percent.

Analysts say that forging alliances with the government is a vital part of doing business in China. Companies see it as a way to improve their chances of securing approvals and licenses. In a sense, it is insurance against overly aggressive government intervention.

Mr. Ma’s decision to list shares overseas in the United States was also about maintaining its position.

Alibaba considered listing its shares in Hong Kong. The company asked the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to allow a listing despite rules that permit only one shareholder vote per share; Alibaba has an unusual partnership structure that gives more sway to top executives, including Mr. Ma. After Hong Kong regulators refused to make an exception, Alibaba pursued a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, which allows more diverse ownership structures.

When Alibaba goes public later this month, investors can decide whether Mr. Ma’s tight grip is a selling point or a stumbling block. Yahoo and SoftBank have made their peace, if for no other reason than profit.

Quarter after quarter, year after year, Alibaba has delivered blockbuster growth. And the company, which in 2004 had revenue of about $50 million, may have revenue this year of close to $10 billion.

Said Mr. Rosensweig, the former Yahoo executive who was one of the chief negotiators in the 2005 deal: “The story of Alibaba turned out to be a great one.”

Correction: September 14, 2014

A picture caption last Sunday with an article about Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, misidentified two people standing with him during a visit to Seattle in the 1990s. They are Dave and Dolores Selig, not Bill and Merrilie Aho.

Stephanie Yifan Yang contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on September 7, 2014, on page BU1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Jack Ma Way. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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The Climax in a Tale of Green and Gritty

In Death, Florida Family Reveals a Spiral of Domestic Abuse

The Wolf Sits Down Within the Flock

Clayton Kershaw Keeps Aiming for New Heights

Saturday Profile: Exile in Brooklyn, With an Eye on Georgia

Turkish President’s Allies Increasing Pressure on Times and Reporter

Rowland, Ex-Connecticut Governor, Is Convicted in Campaign Finance Case

Beloved Vendor of Ices in South Bronx Is Killed

Fashion Review: The Theme at Milan Fashion Week? Look to the Past

DealBook: A Soaring Debut for Alibaba

China Fines GlaxoSmithKline Nearly $500 Million in Bribery Case

Sunday Book Review: ‘The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace’ by Jeff Hobbs

International

Fleeing Gaza, Only to Face Treachery and Disaster at Sea

U.S. Hopes Face-Saving Plan Offers a Path to a Nuclear Pact With Iran

New Leader Likens Poland to ‘Reasonable Polish Woman’

Peace Negotiators Agree on a Buffer Zone in Eastern Ukraine

Iraqi Cleric’s Speech Strikes a Balance

Bomb Kills 2 Lebanese Soldiers Near Border With Syria

Yemen: Clashes Unsettle the Capital

South Korea Says It Fired Warning Shots at Patrol Boat From North

Japan’s Premier Seeks Summit Meeting With South Korean President

U.S. and Mexico Aid Tourists Stranded After Hurricane Odile

Russia: Investigative Agency Says Tycoon Remains Under House Arrest

Debate on Independence Lingers in Scottish Homes

Hospitals in Kashmir Struggle After Flooding, Deepening a Health Crisis

At U.N., Kerry Thanks Other Nations for Their Support in Fighting Islamic State

Weighing a Political Comeback, Sarkozy Says He Will Seek His Party’s Presidency

After Sweep, Australia Adds Security at Parliament

National

A Beltway Battle That’s a Bipartisan Dream: Washington-Baltimore World Series

Obama Unveils Push for Young People to Do More Against Campus Assaults

Political Memo: Taking Their Umbrage Where They Can Get It

Republicans Switch Firm Handling Obama Suit

Women Allege Harassment and Abuse on Forest Service Firefighting Crews

Intruder Gets Through White House Doors Before Arrest

Georgia: 3 Found Guilty Over ’09 Salmonella Outbreak

California: Wildfire’s Progress Slowed by Humidity

Texas: Deputy Swept by Flood Is Found Dead

Michigan: Detroit Debt Deal Clears More Hurdles

Obituaries

Guinter Kahn, Inventor of Baldness Remedy, Dies at 80

Jack Wayman, Impresario of Consumer Electronics Show, Dies at 92

Angus Lennie, Actor in ‘The Great Escape,’ Dies at 84

Editorials, Op-Ed And Letters

Today's Editorials: Scotland’s Pro-Unity Vote

Editorial: One Big Unhappy Economy

Editorial: The Met Opera Stands Firm

Editorial Notebook: Hurricane Watch in the Rockaways

Joe Nocera: Getting It Wrong

Gail Collins: Exercising the Right to Rant

Op-Ed Contributor: Science’s Sexual Assault Problem

Op-Ed Contributor: To Save the Planet, Don’t Plant Trees

Letters: The Scots’ Decision: Let’s Stay British

Letters: On Raising Children Outside of Marriage

New York

Crime Scene: In Brooklyn Park, Chants Extol Full Moon as Thefts Empty Bike Shed

Astorino Forces Encounter With Cuomo as They Court Business Leaders

Fraud Charges for Strip-Club Owner Who Publishes a Westchester Newspaper

Judge Questions Plea Deal With Man Tied to Lethal Qaeda Bombings

After Woman Is Struck, Debate on Cycling in City Is Revived

Testimony in Etan Patz Case on Handling of Suspect

The Horses in Central Park Are to Show, Not Work

Group to Sue After M.T.A. Rejects Ad That Refers to Muslims Killing Jews

Part of the Berlin Wall Comes Down, Again

On Religion: Fighting Enmity Against Sikhs With Art, Talks and Superhero Garb

New Jersey Teacher Is Charged With Sexual Assault of 5 Students

Fashion Review: A Different Declaration of Independence

The Arts

Music Review: Where Drums Glow, and Dreams Go Dark

Music Review: Vocabulary Renewed, a Dialogue Continues

Theater Review | 'Illusions': Two Couples, Refracted Through a Prism of Emotion

Themes for a March: Solar City, Natural Haven

Music Review: A Band of Many Identities, but Always Furious

Dance Review: In a Daze, Reaching for Clarity

Bridge: Chairman’s Team Wins Commonwealth Championship

Music Review: Bach, Played in Living Color

What’s on TV Saturday

Business Day

Common Sense: Thinking Twice on Alibaba

Big Factories Go to Work on Biofuel

Your Money: Parents, the Children Will Be Fine. Spend Their Inheritance Now.

Union Reaches Tentative Deal With Airlines

Prada Cuts Forecast as Profit Falls 21%

Gauge of Economy Edged Up 0.2%. in August

F.D.A. Plans to Revise Food Safety Rules

DealBook: Financial Markets Show Relief on Scottish ‘No’ Vote

Off the Charts: Household Net Worth Has Rebounded

Cadillac Makes Big Plan to Woo Luxury Market

Wealth Matters: The Weighty Responsibility of Inheriting a Collection

Your Money Adviser: Rule Changes Increase Flexibility in Pretax Health Care Accounts

Retiring: A 50th High School Reunion, and a Generation to Follow

Shortcuts: Barred From Facebook, and Wondering Why

Exxon Halts Oil Drilling in Waters of Russia

DealBook Analysis: Alibaba’s Shares Close Up 38% on First Day of Trading

Sports Saturday

Back in Public, Vowing to Do More

Sports of The Times: Right Up to Retirement, Derek Jeter Is Still Playing the Game

Boxing Is in Elijah Holyfield’s Blood, but Football Is in His Future

Saturday’s College Football Games to Watch

N.F.L. Roundup: New Policy on Substance Abuse Reduces Josh Gordon’s Ban to 10 Games

TV Sports: Breaking Silence, but Offering Little

Winston Out for Entire Game as F.S.U. Extends Ban

U.S.T.A. Faces Suit Over Sabbath Schedule

David Goffin Tops Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to Reach Semifinals

Reto Shoots 66 to Grab Classic Lead

Floyd Mayweather Jr. Told to Appear Before Regulators

Harvard Wins Opener

U.F.C. Penalizes Two of Its Fighters

Sports of The Times: In Hope Solo Case, Soccer Turns a Blind Eye Toward Domestic Violence

The Upshot: Harry Truman, Five-Card Stud and the Cold War

With John Tavares Back, Islanders Are Eager for Season

South Korea Is Awarded Berths in 2018 Olympic Tournaments

Yankees 5, Blue Jays 3: Ellsbury Shows His Worth, and His Fragility, to the Yanks

Roundup: Tigers Widen Lead Atop A.L. Central

Corrections

Corrections: September 20, 2014

Most E-Mailed

To Save the Planet, Don’t Plant Trees

The Climax in a Tale of Green and Gritty

Parents, the Children Will Be Fine. Spend Their Inheritance Now.

Startling Adult Friendships

Science’s Sexual Assault Problem

The Paleo Lifestyle: The Way, Way, Way Back

The Case for Delayed Adulthood

Amy Cuddy Takes a Stand

36 Hours: Central Park, New York

Too Young to Die, Too Old to Worry

Exercising the Right to Rant

Pope Sets Tone in U.S. by Naming Inclusive Prelate as Chicago Archbishop

In the Cascades, a Trifecta for Outdoor Enthusiasts

After Surgery, Surprise $117,000 Medical Bill From Doctor He Didn’t Know

Will Portland Always Be a Retirement Community for the Young?

Derek Jeter, a Yankee Before the Pinstripes

Jeter’s Real Gift

Ex-Employees Say Home Depot Left Data Vulnerable

Most Viewed

In Hope Solo Case, Soccer Turns a Blind Eye Toward Domestic Violence

The Climax in a Tale of Green and Gritty

Turkey Obtains Release of Hostages Held in Iraq

Breach Prompts Review of White House Security

Science’s Sexual Assault Problem

To Save the Planet, Don’t Plant Trees

The Paleo Lifestyle: The Way, Way, Way Back

Exercising the Right to Rant

Ex-Employees Say Home Depot Left Data Vulnerable

Startling Adult Friendships

The Case for Delayed Adulthood

How Gary Hart’s Downfall Forever Changed American Politics

In Death, Florida Family Reveals a Spiral of Domestic Abuse

Derek Jeter, a Yankee Before the Pinstripes

Pope Sets Tone in U.S. by Naming Inclusive Prelate as Chicago Archbishop

Parents, the Children Will Be Fine. Spend Their Inheritance Now.

Lockdown Begins in Sierra Leone to Battle Ebola

After Surgery, Surprise $117,000 Medical Bill From Doctor He Didn’t Know

Too Young to Die, Too Old to Worry

Tech - Bits

Former Hampton Creek Executive Says He Will Not Advise Company

Pass the Word: The Phone Call Is Back

Making Big Data Think Bigger

Salesforce Boss Tips His Hand on Company’s Big News

A Conversation With Michael Harris, Author of ‘The End of Absence’

Daily Report: Ellison Retires as Oracle’s Chief

Big Weekend for Apple May Herald Strong Demand for iPhone 6

Apple and Amazon Take Baby Steps Toward Digital Sharing

Home Depot Says Data From 56 Million Cards Was Taken in Breach

Net Neutrality Comments to F.C.C. Overwhelmingly One-Sided, Study Says

Upgrading to iOS 8 on an Old Phone? Prepare for Trouble, but Do It Anyway

Twilio to Send Multimedia to Phones

News Corp. and Google in a War of Words

Daily Report: Space Race Between Billionaires Heats Up as Bezos Venture Seeks Foothold

Apple Says iOS 8 Update Keeps Data Private, Even From the Police

Tech - Gadgetwise

Q&A: Reporting Bad Behavior to Facebook

Gadgetwise: Shopping for Flair? The Moto X Smartphone Fits the Bill

App Smart: Let the Phone Be Your Political Adviser

State of the Art: With the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple Aims for Versatility

Q&A: Defragmenting the Hard Drive on a Windows PC

Machine Learning: Review and Video: With Big New iPhones, It’s What’s Inside That Counts

Bits | State of the Art: Why Doesn’t the Apple Watch Have Wireless Charging? Because It Probably Wouldn’t Work Very Well.

With Apple Pay and Smartwatch, a Privacy Challenge

Q&A: Troubleshooting a Balky Trackpad

Bits: Highlights and Analysis From Apple’s Keynote

Bits Blog: T-Mobile’s Latest Freebies Revolve Around Wi-Fi

Gadgetwise: A Teardown of the Phantom 2 Vision Plus Drone from DJI

Q&A: How to Sign Up for a Skype Number

Using Your Phone to See Paris in a Whole New Light

Bits Blog: Answers to Questions About Apple’s Announcements, Including the Watch and iPhone 6

State of the Art: With iPhone 6 and Smartwatch, Apple Is Back and Better Than Ever

With Apple Pay, a Push Into Mobile Payments

The iPhone 6 Goes Big, as Apple Aims Small With a Smartwatch