Cathay Pacific Airliner Makes Emergency Landing in Singapore

 

HONG KONG — A Cathay Pacific airliner was forced to make an emergency landing after engine trouble on Monday, prompting the airline and the engine maker Rolls-Royce to start an investigation into the incident.

No one was hurt. The Airbus A330 aircraft carrying 136 passengers and 13 crew members left Singapore shortly after 1 a.m. local time, bound for Jakarta. The flight, CX 715, returned to Singapore’s Changi International Airport shortly after takeoff when one of the aircraft’s engines emitted a stall warning, Cathay Pacific said in a statement.

Cathay Pacific, which is based in Hong Kong and is one of the biggest airlines in the Asia-Pacific region, said fire crews met the aircraft on landing and used extinguishers to douse what it described as “sparks” from the affected engine. A separate statement from Changi Airport indicated the engine was on fire.

The passengers disembarked “without incident,” and most were transferred to other flights on Monday morning, according to Cathay.

“Cathay Pacific and Rolls-Royce are investigating the incident which has been reported to the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department,” the airline said in its statement.

The aircraft was purchased new by Cathay in February 2001. It has logged approximately 11,250 takeoffs and landings and 37,000 flight hours, according to Ascend, an aviation industry consultancy in London. The engine involved was a Trent 700, built by Rolls-Royce of Britain. A Rolls-Royce spokesman said Monday that 900 engines of the same model were in service worldwide. The Trent 700 fleet, which first entered service in 1995, has logged a total of 16 million flight hours.

Nicola Clark contributed reporting from Paris.

View the original article here

Ex-FA boss makes Fifa bribe claim

 David Bond reports on Lord Triesman's allegations

Former Football Association chairman Lord Triesman claims four Fifa members sought "bribes" in return for backing England's failed 2018 World Cup bid.

Triesman - who was initially chairman of England's bid - made the allegations about Jack Warner, Nicolas Leoz, Ricardo Teixeira and Worawi Makudi.

He said their behaviour was "below what would be ethically acceptable".

However, Fifa vice-president Warner said the allegations made against him by Triesman were "a piece of nonsense".

Speaking to Sky Sports News, Warner added: "I've never asked Triesman nor any other person, Englishman or otherwise, for any money for my vote at any time.

"In the English campaign, before Triesman was unceremoniously kicked out, I've spoken to him on his initiative on only three occasions, while I've spoken to his other colleagues on other occasions and not one of them will ever corroborate his bit of trivia.

Lord Triesman's allegations in full

"I have been in Fifa for 29 years and this will astound many, I'm sure, including people like David Dein [international president of England 2018 bid] and Geoff Thompson [head of England's 2018 bid]."

Triesman admitted that - with hindsight - his bid team should have reported Warner, Leoz, Teixeira and Makudi immediately.

Speaking before a British parliamentary inquiry into the governance of football in England and the country's failure to secure the right to host the 2018 World Cup finals, Triesman said the FA chose not to complain at the time for fear of jeopardising England's bid.

As it turned out, England collected only two out of 22 votes in December last year as Russia landed the tournament.

"I think, in retrospect, we would have burned off our chances," Triesman told the Department of Culture, Media and Sport committee on Tuesday. "In retrospect, that was not the right view to take and I accept that."

Triesman said he now planned to take his evidence to Fifa, while John Whittingdale, chairman of the committee, said he would be writing to Fifa president Sepp Blatter to launch an investigation into the evidence "as a matter of urgency".

Blatter himself promised immediate action if evidence of wrongdoing by executive committee members was revealed.

"I was shocked [upon hearing] but one has to see the evidence," said the 75-year-old Swiss on Tuesday, adding that the accused executive committee members were not elected by the same congress as him.

"They are coming from other confederations, so I cannot say that they are all angels or all devils.

"There is a new round of information. Give us time to digest that and start the investigation by asking for evidence on what has been said.

"We will react immediately against all those in breach of the ethics code rules.

"Zero tolerance is going through Fifa, it is one of the items on the Congress. It is my battle horse."

Fifa secretary-general Jerome Valcke claimed the governing body had been very clear about what was considered ethical behaviour during World Cup voting.

"We will be asking for evidence or any information," he said. "We sent a letter to all ExCo [executive committee] members on what they can or cannot do so we were very clear from day one."

Triesman's specific claims are:

- Fifa vice-president Warner asked for around ￡2.5m to build an education centre in Trinidad, with the cash to be channelled through him, and later wanted ￡500,000 to buy Haiti's World Cup TV rights for the earthquake-hit nation, again to be channelled through him;

- Paraguay's Fifa member Leoz asked for a knighthood;

- Brazil's Fifa member Teixeira asked him [Triesman] to "come and tell me what you have got for me", with the implication being that he wanted something in return for his vote;

- Thailand's Fifa member Makudi wanted to be given the TV rights to a friendly between England and the Thai national team.

Triesman also claimed that Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore offered to support the England 2018 World Cup bid in return for the FA's backing for his controversial '39th Game ' proposal.

But Scudamore claimed Triesman's version of events was incorrect.

"I'm afraid David's recollection of the facts and the chronology is simply?wrong in this instance," he said in a statement.

"I was, along with my organisation and our member clubs,?always in full support of England's bid for the 2018 World Cup.

"It was discussed at numerous?club meetings and that support?was?never made conditional on the International Round concept (39th Game), or?anything else for that matter.

"In fact, the league and its clubs had moved on from the idea of an International Round some time before the FA started structuring the 2018 Bid Company and associated positions.

"I will be writing to the select committee to provide them with the accurate facts in this matter."

In a separate development, it was also claimed that two more Fifa executive committee members were paid nearly ￡1m to vote for Qatar's bid.

Blatter wants Triesman evidence

Conservative MP Damian Collins said evidence submitted by the Sunday Times newspaper - which has been published on the UK Parliament website - claimed Fifa vice-president Issa Hayatou, from Cameroon, and Jacques Anouma, from the Ivory Coast, were involved.

Collins also said the Sunday Times submission claimed Qatar specifically employed a fixer to arrange deals with African members for their votes.

Mike Lee, the London-based public relations consultant who worked on Qatar's bid, said he was unaware of any payments being made.

Lee, formerly communications director of the Premier League, Uefa and London's 2012 Olympic bid, told MPs: "I was working at the highest level of that bid and talking at length with the chairman and ceo and saw no evidence of any of these allegations.

"My experience is I would have had a sense if such things were going on and I had no sense of that."

Later on Tuesday the Qatar Football Association issued a statement categorically denying the Sunday Times allegations and promised to co-operate with Fifa if it opened an investigation into the newspaper's claims.

Teixeira also issued a statement linking Triesman's comments to England's failure to attract more than two votes in the December World Cup vote.

"The president of the CBF is already taking the relevant judicial measures with a case against Mr David Triesman for the absurd comments which in truth attempt to hide his failure in leading the English candidacy since it only obtained one vote... its own," said Teixeira.

These latest accusations could spell more trouble more Fifa.

Two other executive committee members, Amos Adamu from Nigeria and Reynald Temarii from Tahiti, were banned by Fifa's ethics committee last year.

That means eight executive committee members, one third of the total 24, have either been alleged to have been already found guilty of impropriety in relation to the 2018 and 2022 bids.

Opposition Makes Inroads in Singapore

BANGKOK — The ruling People’s Action Party led by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was returned to power on Sunday with a majority of 60 percent of the vote after a hard-fought parliamentary campaign in which opposition parties made their strongest inroads since Singapore’s independence in 1965.

The opposition was contesting all but one constituency for the first time, drawing enthusiastic crowds, many of them energized by Internet campaigning that opened the race to a clamor of voices and points of view in this tightly controlled city-state.

In a significant upset, a five-member Workers’ Party slate won a group-candidate constituency over a ruling party slate that included two cabinet ministers. The results assured the opposition of its largest representation in Parliament in history.

One other member of the Workers’ Party was also elected, meaning that the ruling party will hold 81 seats to the opposition’s 6.

The popular vote was also a concern for the ruling party. It received just over 60 percent of the ballots cast, the lowest in its history, down from 67 percent in 2006 and 75 percent in 2001.

“We understand that this was a watershed election,” said the prime minister, who promised to study the outcome and listen to the voters.

The People’s Action Party, or P.A.P., has never been out of power, and until 1981 there were no opposition members of Parliament. Until this election, there had never been more than four members from opposition parties. The ruling party’s loss of seats was its biggest since independence.

“A new chapter has opened in Singapore’s history,” said the foreign minister, George Yeo, one of the cabinet ministers who lost his seat. “There was a tide we could not overcome.”

In the last election, in 2006, the opposition put up candidates in only about half the constituencies, winning just two parliamentary seats. This year, candidates for six opposition parties contested 82 of 87 seats.

As public counting of the votes ran deep into the night, constituency by constituency, it became evident that many opposition candidates had made strong challenges even in constituencies they had lost and that the overall percentage of votes won by the ruling party was declining.

The ruling party faced voter discontent over inflation and a growing imbalance of wealth as well as resistance to an influx of foreign workers. The online campaigns gave new voice to public discontent over the P.A.P.’s monopoly on power.

“Your votes tell us that the government that you want is a home, not just a house,” Low Thia Khiang, the Workers’ Party chief, said in a victory speech, contrasting his group’s approach with the hard-nosed and technocratic leadership of the P.A.P.

“Your votes tell the world that Singapore is just not an economic success to you,” he said. “Singapore is our home.” In their victory statements, members of the ruling party, one after another, acknowledged the slip in their popularity and promised to try harder in the future.

In the closing days of the campaign, Prime Minister Lee apologized for any mistakes the government had made, underlining the ruling party’s concerns about voter discontent.

“If we didn’t quite get it right, I am sorry, but we will try and do better the next time,” he told a rally on Tuesday, according to local newspaper reports. Later, he repeated: “Well, we’re sorry we didn’t get it exactly right, but I hope you’ll understand and bear with us because we’re trying our best to fix the problems.”

In what seemed an attempt to embrace the future, Singapore loosened its grip on political discourse in the unruly world of the Internet.

Government opponents are often sued for defamation, and public speech has been permitted only in a small park called Speakers’ Corner (which was shut down in the campaign). But experts say the new opening, if only in the virtual world, appears to be a redefinition of what are known as “out-of-bounds markers.”

Following changes to the Constitution and election laws, campaigning is now permitted throughout cyberspace — in podcasts, videos, blogs, instant messaging, photo-sharing platforms like Flickr, social networking sites and electronic media applications like those on cellphones.

For the first time, campaign recordings could be posted as long as they were not “dramatized” or published “out of context.” Video taken at an election rally was able to be uploaded onto the Web without being submitted to the Board of Film Censors.

“Social media have lowered the barriers of entry into political discourse everywhere,” said Mark Cenite, an assistant professor of communication and information at Nanyang Technological University. “But that’s particularly significant in Singapore because here the barriers to entry into political discourse and the accompanying risks have been so high.”

Rather than trying to suppress online political organizing, as China and Vietnam have done, Singapore has taken a gamble on making it part of the legal campaign system.

Opposition Web sites and Twitter accounts were used to urge people to attend election rallies. They also sent out streams of comments from rallies, increasing their audience. The site Gothere plotted out the locations of rallies on a map.

The site Party Time gathered conversations about the elections and graphically presented who was getting the most buzz online.

Facebook is estimated to have up to three million members in Singapore, whose population is more than five million. All seven competing parties have their own sites. By one estimate, there are 900,000 local users of Twitter.

Online coverage pushed the main pro-government newspaper, The Straits Times, to publish fuller and not always critical news and photographs of opposition campaigns, said Alex Au, a prominent blogger.

The Straits Times also dedicated a portal on its Web site to extensive electronic election coverage, and collected comments from the social media on a page called Buzz:

“The opposition can make ferocious speeches, but can they deliver?”

“Is it true that civil servants will be ostracized if they vote for the opposition?”

“Why must we be so dogmatic about democracy and stability being mutually exclusive?”

View the original article here

Opposition Makes Inroads in Singapore

BANGKOK — The ruling People’s Action Party led by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was returned to power on Sunday with a majority of 60 percent of the vote after a hard-fought parliamentary campaign in which opposition parties made their strongest inroads since Singapore’s independence in 1965.

The opposition was contesting all but one constituency for the first time, drawing enthusiastic crowds, many of them energized by Internet campaigning that opened the race to a clamor of voices and points of view in this tightly controlled city-state.

In a significant upset, a five-member Workers’ Party slate won a group-candidate constituency over a ruling party slate that included two cabinet ministers. The results assured the opposition of its largest representation in Parliament in history.

One other member of the Workers’ Party was also elected, meaning that the ruling party will hold 81 seats to the opposition’s 6.

The popular vote was also a concern for the ruling party. It received just over 60 percent of the ballots cast, the lowest in its history, down from 67 percent in 2006 and 75 percent in 2001.

“We understand that this was a watershed election,” said the prime minister, who promised to study the outcome and listen to the voters.

The People’s Action Party, or P.A.P., has never been out of power, and until 1981 there were no opposition members of Parliament. Until this election, there had never been more than four members from opposition parties. The ruling party’s loss of seats was its biggest since independence.

“A new chapter has opened in Singapore’s history,” said the foreign minister, George Yeo, one of the cabinet ministers who lost his seat. “There was a tide we could not overcome.”

In the last election, in 2006, the opposition put up candidates in only about half the constituencies, winning just two parliamentary seats. This year, candidates for six opposition parties contested 82 of 87 seats.

As public counting of the votes ran deep into the night, constituency by constituency, it became evident that many opposition candidates had made strong challenges even in constituencies they had lost and that the overall percentage of votes won by the ruling party was declining.

The ruling party faced voter discontent over inflation and a growing imbalance of wealth as well as resistance to an influx of foreign workers. The online campaigns gave new voice to public discontent over the P.A.P.’s monopoly on power.

“Your votes tell us that the government that you want is a home, not just a house,” Low Thia Khiang, the Workers’ Party chief, said in a victory speech, contrasting his group’s approach with the hard-nosed and technocratic leadership of the P.A.P.

“Your votes tell the world that Singapore is just not an economic success to you,” he said. “Singapore is our home.” In their victory statements, members of the ruling party, one after another, acknowledged the slip in their popularity and promised to try harder in the future.

In the closing days of the campaign, Prime Minister Lee apologized for any mistakes the government had made, underlining the ruling party’s concerns about voter discontent.

“If we didn’t quite get it right, I am sorry, but we will try and do better the next time,” he told a rally on Tuesday, according to local newspaper reports. Later, he repeated: “Well, we’re sorry we didn’t get it exactly right, but I hope you’ll understand and bear with us because we’re trying our best to fix the problems.”

In what seemed an attempt to embrace the future, Singapore loosened its grip on political discourse in the unruly world of the Internet.

Government opponents are often sued for defamation, and public speech has been permitted only in a small park called Speakers’ Corner (which was shut down in the campaign). But experts say the new opening, if only in the virtual world, appears to be a redefinition of what are known as “out-of-bounds markers.”

Following changes to the Constitution and election laws, campaigning is now permitted throughout cyberspace — in podcasts, videos, blogs, instant messaging, photo-sharing platforms like Flickr, social networking sites and electronic media applications like those on cellphones.

For the first time, campaign recordings could be posted as long as they were not “dramatized” or published “out of context.” Video taken at an election rally was able to be uploaded onto the Web without being submitted to the Board of Film Censors.

“Social media have lowered the barriers of entry into political discourse everywhere,” said Mark Cenite, an assistant professor of communication and information at Nanyang Technological University. “But that’s particularly significant in Singapore because here the barriers to entry into political discourse and the accompanying risks have been so high.”

Rather than trying to suppress online political organizing, as China and Vietnam have done, Singapore has taken a gamble on making it part of the legal campaign system.

Opposition Web sites and Twitter accounts were used to urge people to attend election rallies. They also sent out streams of comments from rallies, increasing their audience. The site Gothere plotted out the locations of rallies on a map.

The site Party Time gathered conversations about the elections and graphically presented who was getting the most buzz online.

Facebook is estimated to have up to three million members in Singapore, whose population is more than five million. All seven competing parties have their own sites. By one estimate, there are 900,000 local users of Twitter.

Online coverage pushed the main pro-government newspaper, The Straits Times, to publish fuller and not always critical news and photographs of opposition campaigns, said Alex Au, a prominent blogger.

The Straits Times also dedicated a portal on its Web site to extensive electronic election coverage, and collected comments from the social media on a page called Buzz:

“The opposition can make ferocious speeches, but can they deliver?”

“Is it true that civil servants will be ostracized if they vote for the opposition?”

“Why must we be so dogmatic about democracy and stability being mutually exclusive?”

 

Criminal Past Makes a Job Search Even Harder

The eight months she spent in prison, she said, were “the best thing that ever happened to me,” persuading her to pursue training in medical administration and complete coursework for a degree in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. At 38, she is a far different person from the confused young woman who strayed into crime, she says.

But employers, initially impressed by her credentials, grow leery when they learn her history through criminal background checks. She has been turned down for more than a dozen jobs since finishing college in 2010.

The pool of Americans seeking jobs includes more people with criminal histories than ever before, a legacy in part of stiffer sentencing and increased enforcement for nonviolent crimes like drug offenses, criminal justice experts said. And each year, more than 700,000 people are released from state and federal prisons, a total that is expected to grow as states try to reduce the fiscal burden of their overcrowded penal institutions.

Almost 65 million Americans have some type of criminal record, either for an arrest or a conviction, according to a recent report by the National Employment Law Project, whose policy co-director, Maurice Emsellem, says that the figure is probably an underestimate.

Some, like Ms. Spikes, have left their criminal pasts far behind. Others have been convicted of minor offenses, or of crimes that appear to have little relevance to the jobs they are seeking.

Employers once had to physically search court records to uncover the background of people they were considering hiring. But the Internet and the proliferation of screening companies that perform background checks have made digging into a job applicant’s history both easy and inexpensive for prospective employers.

In a 2010 survey by the Society for Human Resources Management, almost 90 percent of the companies surveyed, most of them large employers, said they conducted criminal background checks on some or all job candidates.

Advocates for workers say that the indiscriminate use of background checks by companies has made finding employment extremely difficult for millions of Americans.

“We’re spending a tremendous amount of money incarcerating people and then creating a system where it’s almost impossible for them to find gainful employment,” said Adam T. Klein, an employment lawyer with Outten & Golden in New York, a firm that has represented plaintiffs in class-action lawsuits against employers over criminal checks.

Many companies, advocates say, screen out anyone who has a hint of criminal activity in his or her background, in violation of government guidelines that demand that employers take into account the severity of an offense, the length of time that has passed and its relevance to the job in question.

In some cases, they note, people have been turned away because of arrests that never resulted in convictions.

“I understand the employers’ response that, ‘We don’t want murderers working for us,’?” Mr. Klein said. “What if you just have minor events, like arrests for drug use in college, speeding tickets, D.W.I.’s?”

Employers argue that they already use common sense when they evaluate a candidate’s background and take steps to ensure that they are being fair.

“Advocacy groups are kind of saying that this is the day and age of the sign that says, ‘Convicts need not apply,’?” said Rod Fliegel, a lawyer at Littler Mendelson, an employment law firm. “But in my experience, that would be taking the exception and presenting it as the rule.”

Mr. Fliegel and other lawyers representing companies said that employers were caught in a bind; they can also be sued if they fail to screen an employee who later harms someone. Some type of jobs — in the securities industry, for example — require that candidates be free of convictions for certain crimes. And when applicants are abundant and jobs are scarce, some employers say that they should be able to pick and choose candidates who carry no legal baggage.

There is no federal law that prohibits discrimination against people with criminal records. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has set guidelines on how employers can use such records. Because African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities have higher rates of criminal convictions, a blanket policy that screens out anyone with a criminal history will discriminate against these groups, the commission says, and is unlawful under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The E.E.O.C. has been a plaintiff in several lawsuits over background checks, and the guidelines have led to a raft of lawsuits against companies under Title VII — at least seven are working their way through the courts. One, brought by the commission against Peoplemark, an employment agency, was dismissed because the commission was not able provide expert evidence to back up the discrimination claim.

At least three lawsuits brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which mandates that employers notify applicants rejected because of a consumer reporting agency’s criminal background check, have been settled for the plaintiffs.

Defendants in lawsuits over criminal background checks have included transportation companies, a charter school, screening companies, a global consulting firm and the Census Bureau.

In New York, where state law regarding background checks is stricter than federal policies, the state attorney general’s office has settled with Radio Shack, ChoicePoint and other companies after investigating them for violations.

Mr. Fliegel and some other lawyers who represent employers argue that Title VII is not an appropriate tool for ensuring fairness for people with criminal records.

“If you’ve read Title VII, it doesn’t say anything about ex-criminals,” Mr. Fliegel said.

But advocates and lawyers for plaintiffs in the suits say that using of Title VII in regard to criminal background checks is well established. Still, many employers suspect that hiring a person with a criminal conviction is a gamble.

Until recently, the available statistics seemed to back up employers’ suspicions: A third of those released from prison returned within three years, recidivism studies showed, and it was assumed that ex-offenders would always be more likely to commit crimes than people with no criminal convictions.

But several new studies by criminologists are beginning to turn that assumption on its head, providing a far more encouraging picture of actual risks posed to employers by those whose crimes lie well in the past. Called “redemption research,” the studies find that the risk that an ex-offender will be re-arrested decreases substantially over time, eventually becoming indistinguishable from that of someone of the same age with no record.

For first-time offenders, this point of “redemption” is reached 7 to 10 years after a conviction. For older first offenders, it comes significantly earlier. For some crimes and for offenders with multiple prior convictions, redemption takes considerably longer.

The studies have been cited in some lawsuits over criminal background checks. Taken collectively, they indicate that “it is no longer accurate to say that individuals with criminal records are always a higher risk than individuals without a criminal record,” said Shawn Bushway, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University at Albany, one of several researchers who have conducted redemption studies.

Ms. Spikes, who is still searching for a job, said she hoped she would eventually find an employer who could overlook her background.

“I’ve been told that I’m the kind of person that can pick myself up, dust myself off and give it a go again,” she said. “What’s most important to me is that the story has somewhat of a happy ending.”

 

Obama Makes His Case in Mostly Friendly Territory

 

From three fund-raisers on Wednesday and Thursday morning in San Francisco to three more later Thursday here among the Hollywood set, Mr. Obama made the case for his achievements, acknowledged the setbacks, faced a few hecklers and raked in millions of dollars for the Democratic Party. Contributions ranged from $25 to the legal maximum of $35,800.

Especially in Hollywood, interest in Mr. Obama has waned little, people here say, despite pockets of frustration over matters including the war in Afghanistan, the failure to close the Guantánamo Bay prison and his resistance to endorsing same-sex marriage.

“What’s the alternative? There is none. Hollywood wants Obama re-elected, it’s as simple as that,” said Bill Carrick, a Democratic consultant in California. “East Coast reporters keep suggesting to me that Hollywood is unhappy with the president. Based on what? I see no evidence of that.”

Mr. Obama’s three events in Los Angeles included a fund-raising dinner and another event at Sony Pictures Studios and a dinner afterward at the restaurant Tavern. The two dinners were expected to draw a combined 100 people paying $35,800 each, while about 2,500 people paid at least $100 to attend the larger rally at the Sony back lot featuring the Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx, according to Democratic officials.

All money goes to the Obama Victory Fund; of the $35,800, $5,000 goes to Mr. Obama’s own campaign and the rest to the national party.?

A Sony representative said the company had rented the space to the Democratic National Committee. Organizers of the dinner included Jamie Lynton, wife of Michael Lynton, the chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and attendees included Amy Pascal, Sony’s co-chairwoman, and the philanthropist Eli Broad. The co-chairmen included Ken Solomon, chief executive of the Tennis Channel; John Emerson of Capital Group; and Andy Spahn, a political consultant and former DreamWorks executive.

Much as in the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton was a favorite of the entertainment crowd, the rivalry among its competitive players for proximity to the president remains intense. And Mr. Obama has come far less frequently than Mr. Clinton, making dinners with him all the hotter a commodity.

Two people familiar with the planning for the Sony events said it caused some consternation among those who had already been organizing the dinner at the Tavern, including two of the founders of DreamWorks, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who were prominent in the 2008 Obama election effort.

Yet the high-priced 60-person dinner sold out quickly. Among other attendees were Steven Spielberg, another DreamWorks founder, and actors George Clooney Tom Hanks, wife Rita Wilson and Will Ferrell.

At a fund-raising dinner for about 200 in San Francisco on Wednesday, the luxury cars outside the home of Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com, included a Jaguar with the license plate “MR44FAN.” Mr. Obama is the 44th president.

As he would do again at a breakfast fund-raiser the next morning in San Francisco at the St. Regis Hotel, Mr. Obama acknowledged that for many the high hopes he had excited in 2008 had not been fulfilled, or he had frustrated them by his compromises with Republicans.

But he made a case for his achievements — some of the largest spending “investments” ever in education, transportation, infrastructure and clean-energy industries; a health care law, even if it is not the single-payer, government-run system many liberals wanted; repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law; and the naming of two women to the Supreme Court, including the first Hispanic-American.

Later, at a larger and lower-priced fund-raiser at the Nob Hill Masonic Center, Mr. Obama recalled that he had warned supporters on election night in Chicago: “I said we may not get there in one year.? We may not even get there in one term.”

But when he continued by saying, “Our work is not finished,” an audience member yelled out “Gay marriage!”?When he said, “We didn’t get everything exactly the way we had planned,” someone yelled “Health care!” and another, “Single-payer!”

Mr. Obama took it in stride: “See there? Case in point, right? All right — see, I knew I’d open up this can of worms.”

But the more bizarre protest came at the St. Regis breakfast. Soon after Mr. Obama began speaking to about 150 people who had paid up to $35,800, a woman stood and led her table of 10 in a song. The chorus: “We paid our dues, where’s our change?”

They complained mainly of the detention of Pvt. Bradley Manning on suspicion of having leaked classified material to the WikiLeaks Web site. But they also sang, “We’ll vote for you in 2012. Yes, that’s true. Look at the Republicans — what else can we do?”

“That was a nice song,” Mr. Obama said. The lead singer and two others left and Mr. Obama continued speaking, once again conceding his setbacks but recounting his achievements. And the seven who remained stood with everyone else for an ovation when he finished.

 

Bits: McDonald's Makes Subtle Play for Children Online

  There are few references to food on McWorld, a virtual world created for McDonald’s.

McWorld, a Web site for children sponsored by McDonald’s, offers visitors the chance to create characters, decorate digital treehouses and go on a quest in a virtual world.

French fries, hamburgers and apple pies are nowhere to be seen.

This is the latest in online marketing, where the hope is that a site’s visitor will naturally associate the brand with a pleasurable activity. It is a type of advertising that has less in common with a 30-second television spot than with a product placement in a movie.

It is also a glimpse of the future, said Mark Smale, a senior vice president with Creata, the Australian company that created the site for McDonald’s. Mr. Smale said in an interview that companies are realizing that, when going online, the best strategy is to forgo immediate sales in order to build lasting emotional relationships with children. In that sense, McWorld is a more sophisticated version of the sites that Matt Richtel discusses in an article about the online marketing of food to children.

“It’s not overtly aimed at trying to sell product,” Mr. Smale said. “If it is, the people you’re trying to reach won’t be interested, they won’t be engaged.”

This approach, known as engagement-based marketing, has become an important tool for companies marketing to children. Mr. Smale’s clients also include Kellogg’s, Nestle, and Coca-Cola. At an industry conference in New York in February, about 50 people gathered to hear Mr. Smale talk about Creata’s approach.

Critics see such marketing as an unfair way to manipulate children who may not realize what is going on. And there are parts of McWorld and other food sites that encourage purchases. McWorld prompts children to enter codes from Happy Meal boxes to unlock things like special gear for their online avatars.

Kathryn Montgomery, a communications professor at American University who studies marketing to youth, said it would be more honest if McWorld did feature McDonald’s food. At least then the company’s intentions would be clear.

Modern marketing, she said, “is about kids playing with the brand, making friends with the brand, interacting with the brand and communicating with friends in the branding environment.” But in the end, she said, “it’s all about pushing the product.”

McDonald’s dismisses concerns that children cannot distinguish between entertainment and marketing online. Heather Oldani, a company spokeswoman, said McDonald’s had more than 50 years of experience in communicating with young consumers, and that it followed its own guidelines and those of the industry about what is age-appropriate.

“Our standards are high, both from an industry and self-regulatory perspective. And those standards are consistent across all of our communications, whether online or traditional advertising,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Mr. Smale said it would be inappropriate to have a Web site whose sole purpose was to sell food to children. But he said that engaging them with games and other forms of entertainment was different, and entirely acceptable.

Most restrictions imposed on Web sites aimed at children center on privacy. Players on McWorld are anonymous so the site complies with the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. But there are no regulations when it comes to pitching products to children under the guise of entertainment, as there are on television.

The limiting factor on how hard to push sales online is whether companies believe they will drive children away, Mr. Smale said. Television viewers learn to tune out commercials during their favorite shows, a strategy that does not work as well when the commercials are embedded into the entertainment itself.

Branded Web sites work for food companies because it is “getting them out of the position of interrupting the fun,” Mr. Smale said. ” They’re part of the fun.”

 

Philadelphia Orchestra Makes Bankruptcy Move

The vigorous applause was certainly for Mahler, but it also seemed to be a vote of support for a beleaguered hometown team.

Philadelphia is not New York, with its abundance of musical organizations, said Mindy Pressel of Cherry Hill, N.J., who was in the audience: “This is what we have here for concerts.” Some in the audience took out their frustrations on orchestra executives. “They’re in trouble because of poor management,” said Edward Neifeld of Maple Glen, Pa., who wore a red Phillies sweatshirt.

Inside the orchestra’s Kimmel Center home, there were many empty seats — possibly the result of a thunderstorm, though also indicative of a reason the orchestra is having financial trouble. In a program insert given to the audience on Saturday, management also blamed its eroded endowment, not enough donations, “operational costs,” the expense of financing its musicians’ pensions and the cost of vendor contracts.

It praised the musicians for their sacrifices, pleaded for donations and urged the audience to buy tickets. “If you care, please do not abandon our orchestra now — embrace us,” the handout said.

The decision to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy has sent ripples through the country’s major orchestras, many of which are struggling with money. Several, like Philadelphia, are also facing contract negotiations with their musicians. Allison Vulgamore, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s president and chief executive, sent a memo last week to executives of other major orchestras alerting them to Saturday’s vote.

While orchestras have resorted to bankruptcy court in the past, none have been of the caliber of the Fabulous Philadelphians — an internationally famous ensemble that was the first American orchestra to visit China and counts Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy as past music directors. It is as much a national treasure as a local one.

The orchestra said that it had cash to pay the bills for only two more months and that the gap this season between what it has to pay to operate and what it earns is $13 million. Emergency fund-raising is expected to bring that down to $5 million, management officials said, but that would cover only this season.

The trustees voted overwhelmingly in favor of a filing, with only the five musicians on the board opposing. The musicians contend that management is exaggerating the situation and that filing for bankruptcy will undermine the orchestra’s quality and discourage donors.

After the vote, Ms. Vulgamore said the board felt heavily the weight of tradition. “But we also talked about wanting to see our future and taking the necessary steps to get there to it.”

She said the musicians would still be paid and concerts would continue, but the orchestra would review all contracts with its business partners — especially the Kimmel Center, where it pays rent. It will come up with a reorganization plan to be approved by a bankruptcy judge and will continue to negotiate with the musicians over a new contract.

Richard Worley, the board’s chairman, said in an interview that the orchestra hoped to emerge from Chapter 11 “by later this year.” He said the atmosphere during the vote was emotional. “Not every eye was dry throughout the morning.”

John Koen, a cellist and chairman of the players committee, spoke from the stage on Saturday, thanking the audience members for their support and announcing that the musicians would offer a special expression of gratitude: the heart-warming “Nimrod” movement from Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations. Its mood reflected a more hopeful outcome than another work on the program — music from Berg’s opera “Lulu,” in which the protagonist dies a tawdry death at the hands of Jack the Ripper.

Mr. Norris contributed reporting from Philadelphia and Mr. Wakin from New York.

 

Mixed Martial Arts Makes Inroads in Baseball Training

Adam Dunn of the Chicago White Sox, Brad Penny of the Detroit Tigers and Russell Martin of the Yankees have used the sport’s punches and kicks to improve their throwing and swinging. In addition to improving overall fitness, Martin said, mixed martial arts can make an athlete mentally tougher.

“You tolerate the pain and get through it,” he said. “Mentally, I know I’m in a good place because I worked hard.”

Mixed martial arts is a combination of karate, judo, jujitsu, boxing, wrestling and tae kwon do. The sport is also popular in Brazil and Japan. Pay-per-view telecasts in the United States began in 1993, with the Ultimate Fighting Championship staging the most lucrative matches.

Unlike Martin, Dunn and Penny guard the secrets of their workouts as if they were team signs.

Penny acknowledged training with Dan Henderson, a star M.M.A. competitor, but he declined through a Tigers spokesman to discuss his training. Dunn declined through the White Sox media-relations office.

Henderson said that he had had Penny practice the kicks and punches used in M.M.A., but there was no sparring.

“We use focus mitts,” Henderson said, referring to the oversize padded gloves that he wears while athletes kick and punch them. “Physically, it works different muscles than players tend to use in their own sport. The training gives them something different to push themselves through.”

Henderson said the workouts could indirectly help Penny’s strategy on the mound.

“It might give Brad a little more confidence when he’s pitching inside,” Henderson said. “And he’s prepared in case anyone rushes the mound.”

Jay Glazer, a football analyst for Fox Sports who runs MMAthletics with Randy Couture, a mixed martial arts star, has trained N.F.L. players in the sport. Glazer said his clients included Ryan Grant, Jared Allen, Clay Matthews and the Atlanta Falcons team.

While the workouts for the football players emphasize wrestling and hand-fighting techniques, Glazer said the routine for baseball players concentrated on emulating the movements of their sport.

Ryan Rowland-Smith, a left-handed pitcher in the Houston Astros organization who battled arm and back injuries the last couple of years with the Seattle Mariners, worked with Glazer in the winter. “I’m in the best shape of my life, for sure,” said Rowland-Smith, a surfer while growing up in Australia.

Glazer said: “In the case of Ryan, we look at film and break it down frame by frame and come up with a combination that mirrors his pitching delivery. A knee, a punch, followed by a kick. We have him do a ton of that for his hips. Power comes from his core, his hips and his legs, even though he uses his arm to pitch.”

Mentally, Glazer said, the mantra is the same for baseball players as it is for N.F.L. players.

“Own your space,” Glazer said seveal times. “We get the players thinking like a cage fighter. When the door shuts, it’s time to break that man’s will across from you. For Ryan, as a pitcher, it’s that 60 feet 6 inches that you own.”

Rowland-Smith said the rigors of M.M.A. training made it easier to tolerate physical and mental challenges on the mound.

“If you have some small injuries or you’re not feeling 100 percent, nothing can compare with what you go through with the training, so you can fight through it,” he said.

Martin, a catcher, worked with Jonathan Chaimberg, who trains Georges St.-Pierre, the U.F.C.’s welterweight champion. Martin said he was searching for a way to regain his All-Star form after two injury-marred seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

After a few months of six-days-a-week M.M.A.-style training sessions with Chaimberg in Montreal, where he lives, Martin increased his endurance and explosiveness and lost body fat. He said his upper-body routine was called the big rope.

“It’s a thick rope that you attach to a base of a wall and has a loop,” he said. “You create waves with the rope, and it’s like a 20-second sprint, a 10-second rest. You don’t do it for a long period of time. You do it for five minutes, get a good workout in and work on your conditioning.”

It seems to be helping. Martin is hitting .300 with three homers and eight runs batted in.

Bobby Valentine, an ESPN baseball analyst, has managed in the major leagues and in Japan, where one would think mixed martial arts training is popular among players. But that is not the case, he said.

“It’s more prominent in the States,” said Valentine, who said he believes the training is beneficial.

He added: “Most mixed martial arts instructors teach balance, quickness and awareness of your surroundings. There are a few cases in Japan, but most players just play baseball over there.”

INSIDE PITCH

The Yankees’ scheduled game Tuesday against the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium was postponed because of rain and was not immediately rescheduled. Manager Joe Girardi said that A. J. Burnett (2-0), Tuesday’s scheduled starter, would pitch Wednesday, and Phil Hughes (0-1) would start Thursday. Girardi said he planned to start Freddy Garcia for the first time later this week; Girardi added that the date had yet to be determined. ... Reliever Pedro Feliciano, who has been sidelined with tightness in his left triceps, played catch, but Girardi said the session “did not go well.” Feliciano will have another test Wednesday. “It’s a concern,” Girardi said of Feliciano, who had to cut short a similar throwing session March 27. “We were hoping after these two weeks that he’d be able to take the next step.” DAVE CALDWELL

 

Magellan's eXplorist Pro 10 does GIS data collection for $700, makes Google maps green with envy

The Magellan? eXplorist? Pro 10 GPS Receiver - Waterproof, Rugged, Built-in Bluetooth and Runs an Open Platform on Windows Mobile 6.5

SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Magellan, a pioneering GPS brand, today announced it's re-entering the GIS market with the eXplorist Pro 10, a rugged, lightweight and waterproof GPS handheld device specifically designed for GPS/GIS data collection.

Featuring a vibrant 3-inch, WQVGA transflective color touchscreen, 533MHz processor and 128MB RAM, the eXplorist Pro 10 packs the power needed to work with maps and large data sets into a compact-handheld form factor. It comes with 4GB of onboard storage and is expandable with up to 32GB via microSDHC card slot, enabling large data sets such as aerial photos to be loaded easily.

With its rugged IPX-7 waterproof casing, the lightweight eXplorist Pro 10 is the ideal GIS data collection handheld device for GIS professionals seeking to collect GPS/GIS data. The Pro 10 can deliver 3 to 5 meters accuracy in real-time using its internal GPS receiver or work with a supported Bluetooth enabled GPS receiver to achieve sub-meter or 1-3 meter accuracy.
"Rugged environments, reliability and durability are today's main challenges for GIS professionals," said Sunnie Tsai, Sr. Director, product marketing for Magellan. "With flexible GPS accuracy options, built-in Bluetooth wireless technology and a high resolution camera, the Pro 10 handheld enhances productivity at a very affordable price."

Built-in Bluetooth wireless technology enables users to connect laser rangefinders, barcode scanners, and other Bluetooth-enabled devices for convenient cable-free solutions.
Added features to help record data include a built-in 3.2 mega-pixel camera to capture geotagged photos and video, and an on-board voice recorder to enable hands-free note taking. The Pro 10 also includes a 3D compass, pressure altimeter and barometer. It can run up 15 hours on two standard AA batteries.

The palm-sized handheld is powered by the standard Windows Mobile v6.5 operating system. The Pro 10 is specifically developed as an open platform to run powerful GIS data collection programs such as ESRI's ArcPad 10 as well as a wide range of other Windows Mobile data collection software programs.

The eXplorist Pro 10 is now available through Magellan's GIS Distribution Channel for an MSRP of $699.99. To learn more, please visit www.magellangps.com/GIS.

 

Magellan's eXplorist Pro 10 does GIS data collection for $700, makes Google maps green with envy

 The Magellan? eXplorist? Pro 10 GPS Receiver - Waterproof, Rugged, Built-in Bluetooth and Runs an Open Platform on Windows Mobile 6.5

SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Magellan, a pioneering GPS brand, today announced it's re-entering the GIS market with the eXplorist Pro 10, a rugged, lightweight and waterproof GPS handheld device specifically designed for GPS/GIS data collection.

Featuring a vibrant 3-inch, WQVGA transflective color touchscreen, 533MHz processor and 128MB RAM, the eXplorist Pro 10 packs the power needed to work with maps and large data sets into a compact-handheld form factor. It comes with 4GB of onboard storage and is expandable with up to 32GB via microSDHC card slot, enabling large data sets such as aerial photos to be loaded easily.

With its rugged IPX-7 waterproof casing, the lightweight eXplorist Pro 10 is the ideal GIS data collection handheld device for GIS professionals seeking to collect GPS/GIS data. The Pro 10 can deliver 3 to 5 meters accuracy in real-time using its internal GPS receiver or work with a supported Bluetooth enabled GPS receiver to achieve sub-meter or 1-3 meter accuracy.
"Rugged environments, reliability and durability are today's main challenges for GIS professionals," said Sunnie Tsai, Sr. Director, product marketing for Magellan. "With flexible GPS accuracy options, built-in Bluetooth wireless technology and a high resolution camera, the Pro 10 handheld enhances productivity at a very affordable price."

Built-in Bluetooth wireless technology enables users to connect laser rangefinders, barcode scanners, and other Bluetooth-enabled devices for convenient cable-free solutions.
Added features to help record data include a built-in 3.2 mega-pixel camera to capture geotagged photos and video, and an on-board voice recorder to enable hands-free note taking. The Pro 10 also includes a 3D compass, pressure altimeter and barometer. It can run up 15 hours on two standard AA batteries.

The palm-sized handheld is powered by the standard Windows Mobile v6.5 operating system. The Pro 10 is specifically developed as an open platform to run powerful GIS data collection programs such as ESRI's ArcPad 10 as well as a wide range of other Windows Mobile data collection software programs.

The eXplorist Pro 10 is now available through Magellan's GIS Distribution Channel for an MSRP of $699.99. To learn more, please visit www.magellangps.com/GIS.

 

CE-Oh no he didn't!: Sony's Jack Tretton says Nintendo makes 'babysitting tools'

。 By Donald Melanson posted Apr 9th 2011 4:39PM Sony does what Nintendon't? That's the general sentiment from a brief interview that PlayStation chief Jack Tretton gave to Fortune this week, in which he talked up Sony's strengths and played down (some may even say belittled) its competitors, and Nintendo in particular. That began with the relatively tame assertion that Sony's decision to go high-end with PlayStation 3 is just now beginning to pay off while the other consoles are "starting to run out of steam," before he took aim at Nintendo's handheld business. According to Tretton, Nintendo's handhelds all offer what he calls a "Game Boy experience," something that's great as a "babysitting tool," but that "no self-respecting twenty-something is going to be sitting on an airplane with one of those." Yow. Any self-respecting twenty-somethings beg to differ? Let us know in the comments below.

[Thanks, Robert C]