For Baseball Old-Timer, Numbers Aren’t the Story

Joshua Lott for The New York Times

White Sox announcer Ken Harrelson is critical of the emphasis on sabermetrics. He called its rise "the biggest joke I've ever seen."

CHICAGO — Ken Harrelson was sitting in the television booth at U.S. Cellular Field last week before the Chicago White Sox hosted the Kansas City Royals when he broke into the story of how he would like to die. Harrelson, who goes by the nickname the Hawk, said he would be calling a White Sox game against the Yankees and Chicago first baseman Paul Konerko would step to the plate against C. C. Sabathia.

"Here's the pitch," Harrelson, 71, said, his voice rising. "That ball hit deep, way back. Curtis Granderson looks up, you can put it on the board — "

Before he finished his signature call, Harrelson slumped in his chair and dropped his head, feigning his perfect ending.

"I want to die in the booth," he said. "Just like that."

Harrelson, in his 38th year of broadcasting and 28th with the White Sox, is many things, perhaps none more than a showman. His nickname is derived from his prominent nose, and it comes with a healthy dose of flamboyance dating to his days of long hair and Nehru jackets when he played for the Boston Red Sox in the 1960s.

Today, in his 50th year in baseball, his look is more befitting of a grandfather, but he is no less a character. His broadcasting style has been alternately called nauseating and nostalgic — and rarely anything in between.

From the booth, where he works with the color man Steve Stone, he tells stories in a syrupy southern style about old friends and teammates like Mickey Mantle and Carl Yastrzemski; a walking, talking testament to baseball's golden age. In between, he shamelessly roots for the White Sox and routinely takes on umpires.

And these days, in an approach that could alternately be described as endearing or absurd, he has decided to take on the entire, and increasingly entrenched, world of statistical analysis. During a broadcast a couple of months ago, Harrelson went so far as to contend that those analytics — often referred to as sabermetrics — had cost too many good baseball people their jobs because they were unable to adjust to baseball's new way of making judgments.

That, in turn, led the MLB Network host Brian Kenny to devote a segment of his own show to chastising Harrelson, seeing his attack on sabermetrics as a predictable, and ridiculous, outcry by an old-timer stuck in a bygone era. And then Harrelson joined Kenny on the MLB Network for a debate during which Harrelson declared that the only statistic he cared about was something called "T.W.T.W."

That's right, not O.P.S. (on-base and slugging percentages combined) or WHIP (walks and hits per inning) or WAR (wins above replacement, as in the number of wins a player creates versus an average replacement player, and a tough one for a lot of people, not just Harrelson, to get a handle on) or anything else from the new category of measurements. Just T.W.T.W., or in long hand, the will to win. A category that, of course, cannot be in any way shape or form be determined by looking at numbers.

Kenny said that when Harrlelson unveiled his T.W.T.W. yardstick he was "completely incredulous."

Harrelson maintains that he does, in fact, like numbers and that sabermetrics does have a valued place in baseball, but that he would prefer it be a role much more limited that it is now and that too much deference is being paid in general to numbers crunching. He called its rise over the last decade "the biggest joke I've ever seen."

"Look down there at a guy like Gordon Beckham," he said, peering down at the White Sox' second baseman. "If you got someone who gets a chance to take him out on a double play — like me — I'm not going to take him out, I'm going to take him out into left field.

"So if the shortstop bobbles the ball, and I have a chance to get him, he knows that. Gordon will get busted and he'll take the hit. There's no number to define that in a player."

The role that advanced metrics has in an announcer's booth is, of course, different from the one it has in the office of a general manager, who needs to be conversant with every measurement there is these days, even if he doesn't believe in every one of them.

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

Man Pleads Guilty in Plot to Defraud Broadway Producers

The fraud — involving a plot federal authorities called "stranger than fiction" — led to the collapse of the production, when the former stockbroker, Mark C. Hotton, after reporting that one of the investors had died from malaria, failed to help secure a promised $1.1 million loan. But Mr. Hotton had created the investor, along with three others, out of whole cloth, complete with addresses in Australia and South Africa and fake e-mail correspondence and agreements suggesting they would provide $4.5 million for the show, a musical adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's psychological thriller.

Mr. Hotton, 47, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud before Judge John G. Koeltl in United States District Court in Manhattan. Each wire fraud count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. But the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, was expected to recommend a sentence of between 33 and 41 months in prison, according to an agreement signed by prosecutors and Mr. Hotton.

One count stemmed from the "Rebecca" fraud and the other involved a separate scheme to defraud a Connecticut-based real estate company in which he used some of the same ruses he employed to deceive the Broadway producers.

The convoluted fraud that derailed "Rebecca" was among the most spectacular scandals in modern Broadway history, and it left the show's lead producers, Ben Sprecher and Louise Forlenza, reeling. Mr. Sprecher had already raised several million dollars to mount the musical on Broadway — and had spent much of that money on preproduction costs, as is routine — when Mr. Hotton's scheme was revealed and the show was indefinitely postponed.

In a separate case, Mr. Hotton was also charged by federal prosecutors on Long Island with securing $3.7 million by creating sham invoices and selling that debt at a discount to unsuspecting companies. He is expected to appear in United States District Court in Central Islip before Judge Joanna Seybert on Tuesday afternoon to plead guilty to a single count of money laundering conspiracy in that case.

Mr. Bharara said in a news release announcing the disposition in the "Rebecca" case: "With his guilty plea today, the curtain is finally closing on Mark Hotton's elaborately staged fraud. Though his lies and deceits were the stuff of fiction, they caused real harm to his victims, and now he faces real consequences as a result — the prospect of jail."

Ronald G. Russo, a lawyer for Mr. Sprecher and Ms. Forlenza, said they were pleased by the outcome of the case. Last fall, Mr. Hotton had continued to deny the fraud in the face of mounting evidence, and pleaded not guilty when he was arrested in October.

Mr. Russo said: "The damage he did to 'Rebecca' was enormous. However, despite his criminal conduct, Ben Sprecher has every reason to believe that 'Rebecca' will open on Broadway next year."

Still determined to bring "Rebecca" to Broadway, Mr. Sprecher has been working for months to try to raise the $4.5 million that Mr. Hotton had claimed to line up for the show, initially expected to cost about $12 million.

Salvaging "Rebecca" is important to Mr. Sprecher not only because he believes in the musical's artistry and commercial potential — his producing company will be liable to "Rebecca" investors to return their money if the production does not open on Broadway in 2014.

The guilty plea by Mr. Hotton does not directly influence the chances of "Rebecca" still making it to Broadway, though Mr. Sprecher could conceivably cite Mr. Hotton's admission of guilt in conversations with investors who are frustrated that the musical remains in limbo. Mr. Sprecher has said that the Broadway production budget for "Rebecca" would now most likely be higher than $12 million.

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Big-Name G.O.P. Donors Urge Members of Congress to Back Immigration Overhaul

WASHINGTON — More than 100 Republican donors — many of them prominent names in their party's establishment — sent a letter to Republican members of Congress on Tuesday urging them to support an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.

The letter, which calls for "legal status" for the 11 million immigrants here illegally, begins with a simple appeal: "We write to urge you to take action to fix our broken immigration system."

The effort was organized by Carlos Gutierrez, who was secretary of commerce under President George W. Bush and was a founder of a "super PAC," Republicans for Immigration Reform. The letter is the beginning of a campaign to lobby Republican lawmakers in favor of a broad immigration bill as they return to their districts for the August break.

"What tends to happen during the month of August is that members go home and they go to town hall meetings and they check up on their offices in terms of phone calls and letters, and that's where they get bombarded," Mr. Gutierrez said in a phone interview. "So Republicans who are for immigration reform — and I believe there are many — we need to make our voice known in August."

A cross-section of Republican donors and fund-raisers signed the letter. They include Karl Rove, a deputy chief of staff in Mr. Bush's White House; former Vice President Dan Quayle; Tom Stemberg, a founder of Staples; and Frank VanderSloot, the founder of Melaleuca Inc.

An overhaul of the immigration laws passed the Senate in June, but members of the Republican majority in the House are uneasy about any bill that would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here — as the Senate plan does — and some Republicans have balked at doing much beyond strengthening security at the border.

The letter argues that a refusal to change the immigration system amounts to "de facto amnesty," and the signers outline three steps that they say are integral to any overhaul.

"To fix our immigration system we need meaningful reforms that will (1) secure our borders, (2) provide a legal way for U.S.-based companies to hire the workers they need while making it impossible to hire workers here illegally, and (3) take control of our undocumented immigration problem by providing a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants who pay penalties and back taxes, pass criminal background checks, and go to the back of the line," the letter says.

Mr. VanderSloot, in a phone interview, said he believed that some of the Republican holdouts might support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants as long as no special treatment is involved.

"I think most Republicans are on board with a path, but they don't want them to go the front of the line," Mr. VanderSloot said. "There should not be a reward for breaking the law. They're O.K. with them having a path to citizenship, but not having an advantage over those who have been waiting in line for a long time legally."

He added, "I agree with that, too."

The letter also says that support of an immigration overhaul is both smart policy and smart politics, and argues that Republicans and immigrants should be natural allies.

"Immigrants are often entrepreneurial, family-minded and guided by faith," the letter says. "These are Republican values. Immigrants play key roles at every level of the American economy. From high-skill workers to seasonal laborers, from big-city neighborhoods to small-town main streets, immigrants help drive our economic growth. These are Republican issues. Republicans ought to be welcoming immigrants and be seen as doing so."

During the 2012 presidential campaign — when President Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote — Mitt Romney alienated many Latinos with his comments that he favored a "self-deportation" approach to immigration. Yet many of the Republicans who signed the letter supported or worked for Mr. Romney, including Spencer Zwick, who was his campaign finance director.

Mr. Gutierrez said, "This is our way of saying there are some Republican leaders who want to see the problem solved."

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Explosions Rock Propane Plant in Central Florida

ORLANDO, Florida — A series of explosions rocked a propane gas plant in central Florida, northwest of Orlando, on Monday night, an emergency dispatch official said, and local media reported that homeowners living within a mile of the facility were being evacuated.

There was no immediate word on whether anyone had been injured or killed in the blasts, which began at about 11 p.m. EDT in the town of Tavares, Florida, the Lake County dispatcher told Reuters.

He said fire department and other emergency crews were being dispatched to the scene.

(Reporting by Barbara Liston in Orlando; additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; editing by Jackie Frank)

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Well: Scientists Seek to Rein In Diagnoses of Cancer

A group of experts advising the nation's premier cancer research institution has recommended sweeping changes in the approach to cancer detection and treatment, including changes in the very definition of cancer and eliminating the word entirely from some common diagnoses.

The recommendations, from a working group of the National Cancer Institute, were published on Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They say, for instance, that some premalignant conditions, like one that affects the breast called ductal carcinoma in situ, which many doctors agree is not cancer, should be renamed to exclude the word carcinoma so that patients are less frightened and less likely to seek what may be unneeded and potentially harmful treatments that can include the surgical removal of the breast.

The group, which includes some of the top scientists in cancer research, also suggested that many lesions detected during breast, prostate, thyroid, lung and other cancer screenings should not be called cancer at all but should instead be reclassified as IDLE conditions, which stands for "indolent lesions of epithelial origin."

While it is clear that some or all of the changes may not happen for years, if it all, and that some cancer experts will profoundly disagree with the group's views, the report from such a prominent group of scientists who have the clear backing of the National Cancer Institute brings the discussion to a much higher level and will most likely change the national conversation about cancer, its definition, its treatment and future research.

"We need a 21st-century definition of cancer instead of a 19th-century definition of cancer, which is what we've been using," said Dr. Otis W. Brawley, the chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, who was not directly involved in the report.

The impetus behind the call for change is a growing concern among doctors, scientists and patient advocates that hundreds of thousands of men and women are undergoing needless and sometimes disfiguring and harmful treatments for premalignant and cancerous lesions that are so slow growing they are unlikely to ever cause harm.

The advent of highly sensitive screening technology in recent years has increased the likelihood of finding these so-called incidentalomas — the name given to incidental findings detected during medical scans that most likely would never cause a problem. However, once doctors and patients are aware a lesion exists, they typically feel compelled to biopsy, treat and remove it, often at great physical and psychological pain and risk to the patient. The issue is often referred to as overdiagnosis, and the resulting unnecessary procedures to which patients are subjected is called overtreatment.

Officials at the National Cancer Institute say overdiagnosis is a major public health concern and a priority of the agency. "We're still having trouble convincing people that the things that get found as a consequence of mammography and P.S.A. testing and other screening devices are not always malignancies in the classical sense that will kill you," said Dr. Harold Varmus, the Nobel Prize-winning director of the National Cancer Institute. "Just as the general public is catching up to this idea, there are scientists who are catching up, too."

One way to address the issue is to change the language used to describe lesions found through screening, said Dr. Laura J. Esserman, the lead author of the report in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the director of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at the University of California, San Francisco. In the report, Dr. Esserman and her colleagues said they would like to see a multidisciplinary panel convened to address the issue, led by pathologists, with input from surgeons, oncologists and radiologists, among others.

"Ductal carcinoma in situ is not cancer, so why are we calling it cancer?" said Dr. Esserman, who is a professor of surgery and radiology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Such proposals will not be universally embraced. Dr. Larry Norton, the medical director of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, said the larger problem is that doctors cannot tell patients with certainty which cancers will not progress and which cancers will kill them, and changing terminology does not solve that problem.

"Which cases of D.C.I.S. will turn into an aggressive cancer and which ones won't?" he said, referring to ductal carcinoma in situ. "I wish we knew that. We don't have very accurate ways of looking at tissue and looking at tumors under the microscope and knowing with great certainty that it is a slow-growing cancer."

Dr. Norton, who was not part of the report, agreed that doctors do need to focus on better communication with patients about precancerous and cancerous conditions. He said he often tells patients that even though ductal carcinoma in situ may look like cancer, it will not necessarily act like cancer — just as someone who is "dressed like a criminal" is not actually a criminal until that person breaks the law.

"The terminology is just a descriptive term, and there's no question that has to be explained," Dr. Norton said. "But you can't go back and change hundreds of years of literature by suddenly changing terminology."

But proponents of downgrading cancerous conditions with a simple name change say there is precedent for doing so. The report's authors note that in 1998, the World Health Organization changed the name of an early-stage urinary tract tumor, removing the word "carcinoma" and calling it "papillary urothelial neoplasia of low malignant potential." When a common Pap smear finding called "cervical intraepithelial neoplasia" was reclassified as a low-grade lesion rather than a malignancy, women were more willing to submit to observation rather than demanding treatment, Dr. Esserman said.

"Changing the language we use to diagnose various lesions is essential to give patients confidence that they don't have to aggressively treat every finding in a scan," she said. "The problem for the public is you hear the word cancer, and you think you will die unless you get treated. We should reserve this term 'cancer' for those things that are highly likely to cause a problem."

The concern, however, is that since doctors do not yet have a clear way to tell the difference between benign or slow-growing tumors and aggressive diseases with many of these conditions, they treat everything as if it might become aggressive. As a result, doctors are finding and treating scores of seemingly precancerous lesions and early-stage cancers — like ductal carcinoma in situ, a condition called Barrett's esophagus, small thyroid tumors and early prostate cancer. But even after aggressively treating those conditions for years, there has not been a commensurate reduction in invasive cancer, suggesting that overdiagnosis and overtreatment are occurring on a large scale.

The National Cancer Institute working group also called for a greater focus on research to identify both benign and slow-growing tumors and aggressive diseases, including the creation of patient registries to learn more about lesions that appear unlikely to become cancer.

Some of that research is already under way at the National Cancer Institute. Since becoming director of the institute three years ago, Dr. Varmus has set up a list of "provocative questions" aimed at encouraging scientists to focus on critical areas, including the issue of overdiagnosis and molecular tests to distinguish between slow-growing and aggressive tumors.

Another National Cancer Institute program, the Barrett's Esophagus Translational Research Network, or BETRNet, is focused on changes in the esophageal lining that for years have been viewed as a precursor to esophageal cancer. Although patients with Barrett's are regularly screened and sometimes treated by burning off the esophageal lining, data now increasingly suggest that most of the time, Barrett's is benign and probably does not need to be treated at all. Researchers from various academic centers are now working together and pooling tissue samples to spur research that will determine when Barrett's is most likely to become cancerous.

"Our investigators are not just looking for ways to detect cancer early, they are thinking about this question of when you find a cancer, what are the factors that might determine how aggressively it will behave," Dr. Varmus said. "This is a long way from the thinking 20 years ago when you found a cancer cell and felt you had a tremendous risk of dying."

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Thief Gets Away With Estimated $50 Million in Jewelry at a French Riviera Hotel

A jewel thief brandishing a gun entered an exclusive hotel along the French Riviera on Sunday morning, eluded security guards and well-heeled guests, and left with a glittering haul worth perhaps $50 million, according to the regional state prosecutor's office.

The theft occurred at the Carlton InterContinental Hotel along the Promenade de la Croisette in Cannes, a Mediterranean playground for the word's rich and famous.

It comes just days after the Swiss police announced that a member of the Pink Panther gang of jewel thieves had escaped from a prison in Switzerland. The gang, which has ties to the Balkans, is said to have hit hundreds of high-end boutiques all over the globe, making off with hundreds of millions of dollars in jewelry.

The theft had all the hallmarks of a Hollywood movie, including the set, the Carlton, where Alfred Hitchcock filmed "To Catch a Thief," the 1955 movie about a jewel thief prowling the French Riviera, starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Reached by telephone, hotel officials would not comment.

Several news agencies, citing unnamed officials, estimated the value of the stolen goods at more than $50 million, but the officials cautioned that the estimate was preliminary.

Details of the theft were slow to emerge on Sunday. The police in Cannes and the nearby city of Nice, the regional hub, said by telephone that they had no information about the case. No suspects have been named.

News agencies said the stolen jewels were part of an exhibition put on by the Leviev diamond house. Calls made to Leviev were not answered on Sunday.

Around 11:30, a man wearing a cap, and with a scarf or bandanna over his face, entered the hotel carrying what appeared to be an automatic pistol, the office of the regional state prosecutor in Grasse told Agence France-Presse. He entered the exhibition while several people, including security guards, were there.

"Everything happened very quickly and without violence," the prosecutor's office said, according to A.F.P., which said the man made off with several bags full of jewels and watches.

The prosecutor's office said $50 million was "a provisional estimate" of the jewels' value, but might not be "trustworthy," Agence France-Presse reported. An inventory was under way Sunday, the office said.

Thieves have plied a lucrative trade in Cannes this year. In May alone, several million dollars' worth of jewelry was reported stolen in two separate robberies at luxury hotels during the Cannes Film Festival, which typically attracts a wealthy and bejeweled crowd.

In one episode, thieves stole a necklace by the Swiss jeweler De Grisogono reportedly worth $2.5 million. A week earlier, about $1 million in jewelry was taken from the room of an employee of Chopard, the Swiss jewelers.  

Other thefts elsewhere have been far more dramatic. In February, thieves dressed as police officers and armed with automatic weapons surrounded a plane packed with diamonds that was parked on the tarmac at the Brussels airport. In a matter of minutes, they were able to make off with tens millions of dollars in stones. The diamonds were later recovered and several arrests were made.

Perhaps the costliest theft in recent memory occurred in France in 2008. In a crime called the robbery of the century by French news media, a pack of thieves, some posing as women and at least one with a hand grenade, robbed the Harry Winston jewelry store in Paris of roughly $110 million worth of diamonds, rings and watches.

More than two years later, some of the diamonds were found in a drainpipe north of Paris.

Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.

12.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

5 Dead, Including Child, in Pa. Helicopter Crash

NOXEN, Pa. — A helicopter crash in a rugged, wooded area of northeastern Pennsylvania claimed the lives of five people, including one child, officials said Sunday.

The crash happened Saturday night after the pilot told air traffic controllers he was losing altitude, according to the county coroner.

Wyoming County coroner Thomas Kukuchka said the pilot contacted a nearby tower around 10:30 p.m. saying he would attempt to return to another airfield nearby.

"That's when he went off radar," Kukuchka said.

Although the names of those on board have not been released, Kukuchka said three men, a woman and a child were on board.

"It appears to be a father and son, a father and daughter and the pilot," he said.

Kukuchka did not release the ages of the victims. He said his office was trying to reach family members of the deceased in Leesburg, Va., Ellicot City, Md. and Kintnersville, Pa.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the helicopter took off from Greater Binghamton Airport in New York but officials there said it had actually originated at a smaller airfield nearby, Tri Cities Airport in Endicott. A phone message left at Tri Cities Airport was not immediately returned Sunday night.

State police and FAA personnel were still on the scene Sunday evening, according to Trooper Adam Reed, a state police spokesman. Additional details will be released as the investigation progresses, he said.

Although it was not clear if weather played a role in the crash, Kukuchka said there were severe thunderstorms in the area Saturday night. The coroner and police said rough weather contributed to the difficulty of the search; the wreckage was located shortly before 2 p.m. Sunday.

The FAA said the helicopter was bound for Jake Arner Memorial Airport in Lehighton.

The National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation, the FAA said.

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Bloomberg Media Recruits a New Chief From The Atlantic

Justin B. Smith, whose digital strategy swiftly transformed The Atlantic, one of the statelier media vessels around, is about to get a bigger boat.

Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times

Justin B. Smith, as president of Atlantic Media, developed a reputation as an aggressive promoter of digital media.

On Monday, Bloomberg will announce that Mr. Smith, the president of Atlantic Media, will be named chief executive of the Bloomberg Media Group. He will report to Daniel L. Doctoroff, chief executive of Bloomberg. Andrew Lack, who managed the media division for five years, will become chairman.

After joining The Atlantic in 2007, Mr. Smith developed a reputation as an aggressive promoter of digital media who was able to reconfigure a 156-year-old magazine into a genuine multiplatform property.

In a letter to the staff about Mr. Smith's departure, David Bradley, the owner of Atlantic Media, credited Mr. Smith with bringing the company to profitability for the first time under his ownership; doubling revenue; and creating a number of successful digital start-ups, including The Atlantic Wire and Quartz.

His quick results at the Atlantic Media Company drew the attention of executives at Bloomberg, who began talking to him at the end of last year.

"We know that every part of media is being disrupted by technology, and we need someone who understands that," Mr. Doctoroff said. "Justin can drive things forward here because he has an incredibly digital sensibility with a unique understanding of the confluence of journalism and multiple platforms."

The move will give Mr. Smith significant scale and a connection with Bloomberg's lucrative terminal business, which produces revenue that allows the company to invest aggressively in media properties. The company has had success in moving from a linear television business to a more diverse model of video distribution, while the acquisition of Businessweek gave Bloomberg an editorial cachet it historically lacked.

Even with those successes, the media division has long been treated as a marketing amenity for subscribers to the terminal business. Despite its recent growth, the media division has struggled to gain a consumer base for its properties, which include television, print, radio, mobile, events and digital media.

The company was heavily criticized several months ago after revelations that some of its reporters had used the Bloomberg terminals to gain access to data about its users, prompting Eric T. Schneiderman, attorney general of New York, to begin looking into the practice, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The company's assets — its success, its size and a hard-driving business culture — might make bringing about change difficult. But Mr. Smith said the fit was a natural one.

"If you look at the entrepreneurial roots of this company and its history of market disruption and innovation, I think it is the best positioned media company there is," he said. The theory that large companies cannot innovate, he said, "has not been historically true at Bloomberg." He added, "This is a company where you can take big risks with longer horizons."

Before joining Atlantic Media, Mr. Smith opened the American edition of the British newsmagazine The Week in 2001. Before that, he was head of corporate strategy for The Economist in London, Hong Kong and New York. He also founded Breaking Media, a collection of Web sites that includes Above the Law, Dealbreaker and Fashionista.

Mr. Smith has no experience in the television business and said he would work closely with Mr. Lack in that area. He said he was interested in creating new products, including ones aimed at the global market, while bringing additional digital muscle to Bloomberg's existing businesses.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, met Mr. Smith at one of Atlantic Media's conferences and they became friends.

"How many people have really managed to be successful in digital media?" Mr. Schmidt said in a phone call. "Everyone has tried and few have been successful. Justin is one of them. He is moving very fast, but this is the next logical step. It's a serious gain for Bloomberg."

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 28, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the New York attorney general was investigating how reporters at Bloomberg had gained access to customer data. There is no formal investigation as this time.

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Body Found in Hudson Believed to Be 2nd Boat Crash Victim

The police said Sunday that a body discovered in the Hudson River by a Jet Ski rider was probably that of the second victim of a boat crash Friday night that also killed a bride-to-be. 

A 30-year-old man, Mark Lennon, had been missing since a speedboat he was aboard struck a construction barge just south of the Tappan Zee Bridge around 10:40 p.m. Friday. 

The crash killed Lindsey Stewart, 30, and injured the man she was to marry on Aug. 10, Brian Bond, 35. Mr. Lennon was to have been Mr. Bond's best man. 

Ms. Stewart's body was found floating just offshore Saturday. The man's body was found about a mile away, Sheriff Louis Falco of Rockland County said in a news conference on Sunday.

The medical examiner was working to confirm the identification, Mr. Falco said. 

The driver of the boat, Jojo K. John, 35, has been accused of driving the vessel while intoxicated. He was charged on Saturday with vehicular manslaughter and vehicular assault.

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Five Are Killed in Pennsylvania Helicopter Crash

The crash was believed to have occurred on Saturday night after radar and communication contact with the helicopter was lost, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The helicopter had taken off from central New York State with five people on board, the F.A.A. said.

Trooper Adam Reed confirmed that five people died in the crash near Noxen, in Wyoming County, but said he did not have additional information on the victims.

He said inclement weather had hampered search efforts.

Personnel from the State Police and the F.A.A. were at the scene on Sunday night, according to Trooper Reed. There was no immediate response to a message left for the Wyoming County coroner.

The F.A.A. said the helicopter took off from Greater Binghamton Airport, but officials there said it had left from a smaller airfield nearby, Tri Cities Airport in Endicott.

A phone call to Tri Cities Airport was not immediately returned on Sunday night.

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3 Are Killed in Bus Crash in Indiana

INDIANAPOLIS — A bus carrying teenagers home from a church camp crashed Saturday after exiting an interstate in Indianapolis, killing three people and sending 26 others to hospitals, officials said.

Lt. Ato McTush of the Indianapolis Fire Department said the dead included a man and a woman, but he did not have information about the third victim.

Witnesses said the bus came speeding off Interstate 465 on Saturday afternoon, struck a retaining wall as it tried to round a curve and overturned. A local TV station, WTHR, reported that the bus driver told witnesses his brakes had failed.

A witness, Duane Lloyd, told the TV station that he heard a loud noise behind him as he was traveling near the intersection and saw the crash.

"I heard a skid, I looked back, I see this bus in the air and people falling out of the bus," Mr. Lloyd said. "I could have gone my whole life without seeing that."

The bus was carrying 40 passengers who are members of Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Indianapolis

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Netanyahu Agrees to Free 104 Palestinians

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel announced Saturday that he had agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom have served 20 years or more for attacks on Israelis, to pave the way for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Washington in the coming days.

Mr. Netanyahu took the unusual measure of issuing what he called "an open letter to the citizens of Israel" to explain the contentious move, which many Israelis oppose, ahead of a cabinet vote on Sunday.

Reports of a prisoner release had been circulating for weeks, but this was the first confirmation by the prime minister of the number expected to be freed. Mr. Netanyahu's letter did not give any details regarding the identities of those to be released or the timing, but said the release would be carried out in stages after the start of negotiations and in accordance with their progress.

The talks were expected to begin Tuesday after months of intense shuttle diplomacy by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Mr. Netanyahu began his letter, which was posted on the prime minister's Web site and disseminated through the Israeli news media, with an acknowledgment of the unpopularity of the gesture, which many Israelis view as a painful concession with nothing guaranteed in return.

"From time to time prime ministers are called on to make decisions that go against public opinion — when the matter is important for the country," he wrote. He added that the decision "is painful for the bereaved families, it is painful for the entire nation, and it is also very painful for me. It collides with the incomparably important value of justice."

On Friday, Yediot Aharonot, an Israeli newspaper, published an impassioned open letter to Mr. Netanyahu from Abie Moses, whose pregnant wife and 5-year-old son, Tal, were fatally burned in a firebomb attack on their car in April 1987. Mr. Moses said that faced with the likely release of their killer, Mohammad Adel Hassin Daoud, "the wounds have reopened; the memories, which we live with on a daily basis, turn into physical pain, in addition to the emotional pain of coping daily with the nightmare."

Mr. Moses added, "In our opinion, if his release will lead to attaining of peace, let him be released outside the boundaries of Palestine, exiled and never allowed to see his family members again, just as we cannot see ours."

Over the years, thousands of Palestinian prisoners have been exchanged for Israeli soldiers who had been taken captive, or for the bodies of abducted soldiers. During his previous term in office, Mr. Netanyahu reached an agreement with Hamas, the Islamist militant group that governs Gaza, and exchanged more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who had been held captive in Gaza for five years.

An Israeli government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said many of those who remained in Israeli jails, like the 104 now chosen for early release, had been involved in particularly gruesome acts.

"The goal here is to augment the political dialogue with confidence-building measures," the official said, adding that the cabinet was expected to approve the release. In moves meant to appease the more right-wing elements in the government, the cabinet is also expected to discuss legislation for a referendum on any peace deal and to set up a special ministerial committee to deal with the negotiations.

But the prisoner issue is the one that has inflamed passions on both sides. Palestinians view these long-serving prisoners, convicted before the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993, as political prisoners whose release is long overdue.

A Palestinian official involved in the negotiations process, who could speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate diplomacy under way, said the Palestinian side had given a list of all 104 pre-Oslo prisoners to Mr. Kerry, who conveyed it to the Israelis. Israel had previously balked at including 22 prisoners who are Arab citizens of Israel or residents of East Jerusalem. Israeli officials have so far refused to say whether those objections have been dropped.

"This is the biggest achievement we will have had this year," the Palestinian official said.

He said the first group was expected to be released in August, and the rest within six months.

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J.J. Cale, Musician and Songwriter, Dies at 74

J. J. Cale, a musician and songwriter whose blues-inflected rock influenced some of the genre's biggest names and whose songs were recorded by Eric Clapton and Johnny Cash among others, died on Friday in La Jolla, Calif. He was 74.

Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press

J. J. Cale died on Friday in La Jolla, Calif. Mr. Cale was best known as the writer of "Cocaine" and "After Midnight," songs made famous by his collaborator, Eric Clapton.

A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.

Mr. Cale suffered a heart attack and died at Scripps Memorial Hospital around 8 p.m. on Friday evening, a statement posted on his Web site said.

He is best known as the writer of "Cocaine" and "After Midnight," songs made famous when they were recorded by his collaborator, Eric Clapton.

A multi-instrumentalist, Mr. Cale often played all of the parts on his albums, also recording and mixing them himself. He is also credited as one of the architects of the 1970s Tulsa sound, a blend of rockabilly, blues, country and rock that came to influence Neil Young and Bryan Ferry, among others. He won a Grammy Award in 2007 for an album with Mr. Clapton.

"Basically, I'm just a guitar player that figured out I wasn't ever gonna be able to buy dinner with my guitar playing," Mr. Cale told an interviewer for his official biography. "So I got into songwriting, which is a little more profitable business."

John Weldon Cale was born in Oklahoma in 1938. He recorded "After Midnight" in the mid-1960s, according to the biography, but had retreated to his native Tulsa and "given up on the business part of the record business" by the time Mr. Clapton covered it in 1970. He heard it on the radio that year, he told NPR, "and I went, 'Oh, boy, I'm a songwriter now. I'm not an engineer or an elevator operator.' "

Mr. Cale released an album, "Naturally," in 1972, to capitalize on that success, and continued to tour and release new music until 2009. But he declined to put his image on any of his covers and kept his vocals low amid the instruments on his recordings. He developed a reputation as a private figure and a musician's musician while his songs were covered by Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Band, Deep Purple and Tom Petty, among others.

"I'd like to have the fortune," he said in his biography, "but I don't care too much about the fame."

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 27, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the first name of one of the musicians who was influenced by the Tulsa sound. He is Bryan Ferry, not Brian.

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Amid Protests, Inmates Escape From Libyan Prison

Reuters

Protesters ransacked the headquarters of the liberal National Forces Alliance in Tripoli on Saturday.

BENGHAZI, Libya — More than 1,000 prisoners escaped from a prison near here on Saturday, security officials said, after a wave of political assassinations and attacks on political offices across Libya.

The mass escape from the Queyfiya prison took place early Saturday after a series of marches in a number of Libyan cities protested the assassinations and the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been blamed for recent political killings. It was not clear whether the inmates had received inside help.

Libya's prime minister, Ali Zeidan, said in a televised news conference on Saturday that local residents had broken the inmates out of the prison.

"The prison was attacked by the citizens who live nearby, because they don't want a prison in their region," he said. "Special forces were present and could have got the situation under control by using their arms, but they had received orders not to use their weapons on citizens, so the citizens opened the doors to the prisoners." Mr. Zeidan said he had ordered the border with Egypt to be closed to prevent the inmates from fleeing there.

But security officials here, speaking on the condition of anonymity, vehemently denied the assertion that residents had incited the prison break. The officials said it had started with a fracas and shooting among military police officers inside the prison, leading to a fire that allowed the inmates to escape. The inmates were mostly common criminals, not the militants who are blamed for much of the violence here, officials said.

"It was a dispute with the military police that the prisoners mistook for an uprising, so they started smashing things and setting things on fire to be released," said a member of a top joint security operation in Benghazi. "What do you expect? Prisoners saw an opportunity to escape, and they took it."

The security official said several escapees had returned on their own, reasoning that they were safer behind bars than in the street, where they feared reprisals from relatives of their victims.

The prison break followed a day of extraordinary violence, even by the standards of Libya, which is overrun by heavily armed militias unwilling to come under government control. Assassins shot five people dead on Friday in Benghazi and Tripoli, the capital. Among the dead were security officers and a prominent lawyer, Abdul-Salam al-Musmari, a harsh critic of the Brotherhood and the militias, He was also known for his role in helping instigate Libya's 2011 revolution against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Mr. Musmari, who was shot in the heart while leaving a mosque in Benghazi, was the first victim in a long string of recent assassinations who was neither a military official nor a figure from the Qaddafi government.  

Hundreds gathered in Tripoli after dawn prayers on Saturday and denounced the killing of Mr. Musmari, The Associated Press reported. They set fire to tires in the street and demanded the dissolution of Islamist parties.

Protesters appeared to be inspired by events in Egypt, where millions took to the streets on Friday to answer an appeal from the top military commander, who said he wanted a mandate to fight "terrorism" by supporters of the country's ousted president, Mohamed Morsi. Mr. Morsi is allied with the Islamist-led Brotherhood. On Saturday, the Egyptian military killed at least 72 people in a ferocious attack on Islamist protesters, the deadliest attack by the security services since the 2011 revolution.

"We don't want the Brotherhood; we want the army and the police," Libyan protesters chanted, The A.P. reported, repeating a slogan used in Egypt.

Last week, rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Tripoli, and at a Tripoli hotel where government figures live, though no one was killed. A bomb detonated at a police station in Benghazi, the eastern city where Islamist militias remain powerful and where the United States ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans were killed last year in an assault on a diplomatic compound by heavily armed militants.

Mr. Zeidan said that an investigation had begun into Mr. Musmari's killing and that a foreign criminal investigation team would join Libyan investigators in Tripoli and Benghazi on Monday, but he did not offer further details.

Human Rights Watch urged the Libyan government to "conduct a prompt and thorough investigation" of Mr. Musmari's death.

"Libya's fragile transition is at stake if political killings go unpunished," said Nadim Houry, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch. "This makes investigating al-Musmari's murder all the more urgent."

Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from Cairo.

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Weiner’s Campaign Manager Quits After Latest Revelations

According to two people told of the decision, the campaign manager, Danny Kedem, no longer wished to oversee Mr. Weiner's bid for New York mayor after a week of bruising revelations about the candidate's latest online conduct. The two people, who have close ties to the campaign, did not want to be identified because they were disclosing confidential conversations.

Mr. Kedem, 31, informed Mr. Weiner of his decision in the last 24 hours, the two people said.

Mr. Kedem and a spokeswoman for Mr. Weiner's campaign declined to comment.

The move suggests that even as Mr. Weiner vows to press ahead with his candidacy, there are mounting doubts about its political viability within his own campaign.

Mr. Weiner's staff was jolted by his admission last week that his habit of sending raunchy online photographs and messages to women had persisted long after he resigned from Congress in 2011. The disclosures clashed with Mr. Weiner's claims that he had been rehabilitated after undergoing therapy and his suggestion that such behavior had long ago stopped.

Mr. Kedem had helped guide Mr. Weiner's candidacy, originally considered a long shot, to the top of the polls in the mayoral field before last week.

Not long ago, Mr. Kedem made clear he had no qualms about his new job. He sent an e-mail to dozens of his associates in late June seeking volunteers and financial contributions for Mr. Weiner's mayoral bid. "I am really proud to work for Anthony," he wrote.

His departure is a hit to a campaign that was short of experienced staff members, because of Mr. Weiner's scandal and his reputation as difficult boss.

Before working for Mr. Weiner, Mr. Kedem had managed the re-election of John DeStefano Jr. to a 10th term as mayor of New Haven in 2011, according to his online profile, and worked on Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.

Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 28, 2013

An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect age for Danny Kedem. He is 31, not 30.

campaign: regiAt6_global_growl_main_container -- 219227, creative: nyt_nested_growl_container_test -- 330257, page: www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/nyregion/weiners-campaign-manager-quits.html, targetedPage: www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/nyregion, position: Bottom8

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U.S. Asks Court to Limit Texas on Ballot Rules

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Thursday moved to protect minority voters after last month's Supreme Court ruling striking down a central part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, with the Justice Department asking a court to require Texas to get permission from the federal government before making changes.

In a speech before the National Urban League in Philadelphia, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the request would be the first of several legal salvos from the administration in reaction to the Supreme Court's decision. "My colleagues and I are determined to use every tool at our disposal," he said, "to stand against such discrimination wherever it is found."

Last month's ruling, Shelby County v. Holder, did away with a requirement that Texas and eight other states, mostly in the South, get permission from the Justice Department or a federal court before changing election procedures. On Thursday, the administration asked a federal court in Texas to restore that "preclearance" requirement there, citing the state's recent history and  relying on a different part of the voting rights law.

Republicans harshly criticized the announcement, in a sign that both parties view the battle over voting laws as important to future elections.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas cast Mr. Holder's remarks as an attempt by the Obama administration to weaken the state's voter-integrity laws and said the comments demonstrated the administration's "utter contempt for our country's system of checks and balances."

"This end run around the Supreme Court undermines the will of the people of Texas, and casts unfair aspersions on our state's common-sense efforts to preserve the integrity of our elections process," Mr. Perry said in a statement.

For years, Republicans across the nation have pushed for tougher voter identification laws, shorter voting hours and other measures they say are intended to reduce voter fraud. The efforts have intensified across the South, from Texas to North Carolina, after the Supreme Court's ruling freed many states and localities from federal oversight.

Democrats have said the steps are intended to reduce voting by minorities, students and other heavily Democratic groups.

State Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, Democrat of San Antonio, who is the chairman of the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus, said racial discrimination in Texas was not a thing of the past.

"The fact that intervention in Texas is the Department of Justice's first action to protect voting rights following the Shelby County decision speaks volumes about the seriousness of Texas' actions," Mr. Fischer said.

"Texans should be proud that the resources of the federal government will be brought to bear to protect the voting rights of all," he added.

President Obama mentioned his concern about voting problems — especially long waits at the ballot box — in both his victory speech on the night of his re-election and in his second Inaugural Address. Several recent polls and studies found that voters in heavily Democratic areas face longer lines, although the reasons remain unclear.

The new move by the Justice Department relies on a part of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court left untouched in the Shelby County case. The court struck down the coverage formula in Section 4 of the law, which had identified places subject to the preclearance requirement based on 40-year-old data. The court suggested that Congress remained free to enact a new coverage formula based on contemporary data, but most analysts say that is unlikely.

Striking down the law's coverage formula effectively guts Section 5 of the law, which requires permission from federal authorities before covered jurisdictions may change voting procedures.

The move by the Justice Department on Thursday relies on a different part of the law, Section 3, which allows the federal government to get to largely the same place by a different route, called "bail-in." If the department can show that given jurisdictions have committed constitutional violations, federal courts may impose federal oversight on those places in a piecemeal fashion.

Lawyers for minority groups have already asked a court in Texas to return the state to federal oversight. The Justice Department's action — filing a "statement of interest" in that case — will bring the weight of the federal government behind those efforts.

Richard H. Pildes, a New York University professor who specializes in election law issues, said the move was "a dramatically significant moment in the next phase of the Voting Rights Act's development" after the Supreme Court's ruling.

Ashley Southall and Jonathan Martin contributed reporting from Washington, and Manny Fernandez from Houston.

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DealBook: Wall Street’s Exposure to Hacking Laid Bare

The indictment on Thursday of a long-running hacking ring is kindling fears that rogue programmers are going beyond theft and developing the capacity to wreak havoc on the broader financial system.

Five Eastern European computer programmers were charged by the United States attorney in New Jersey with hacking into the servers of more than a dozen large American companies and stealing 160 million credit card numbers in what the authorities called the largest hacking and data breach case ever.

But one company had nothing to do with credit cards or bank accounts: Nasdaq.

In a separate indictment unsealed in federal court in New York, one of the men, Aleksandr Kalinin of Russia, was charged with having gained access for two years to the servers of the Nasdaq stock exchange.

While Mr. Kalinin never penetrated the main servers supporting Nasdaq's trading operations — and appears to have caused limited damage at Nasdaq — the attack raised the prospect that hackers could be getting closer to the infrastructure that supports billions of dollars of trades each hour.

"As today's allegations make clear, cybercriminals are determined to prey not only on individual bank accounts, but on the financial system itself," Preet Bharara, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said in announcing the case.

It is a pivotal moment, just a week after a report from the World Federation of Exchanges and an international group of regulators warned about the vulnerability of exchanges to cybercrime. The report said that hackers were shifting their focus away from stealing money and toward more "destabilizing aims."

In a survey conducted for the report, 89 percent of the world's exchanges said that hacking posed a "systemic risk" to global financial markets. "A presumption of safety (despite the reach and size of the threat) could open securities markets to a cyber 'black swan' event," the report said.

At a Senate hearing on cybersecurity on Thursday, a representative of several financial industry groups, Mark Clancy, said that "for the financial services industry, cyberthreats are a constant reality and a potential systemic risk to the industry."

Over the last few years, accidental technological mishaps at the trading firm Knight Capital and the Nasdaq and BATS stock exchanges have revealed how even isolated programming errors can quickly ripple through the markets, causing significant losses in minutes.

The exchanges have been bolstering their defenses and their preparations for an assault on their computer systems. On July 18, an industry group led an exercise, referred to as Quantum Dawn 2, in which the exchanges and other financial firms responded to a simulated attack on the nation's stock markets.

The attack on Nasdaq is far from the first time an exchange has been singled out by hackers. In a survey conducted for the World Federation of Exchanges report, 53 percent of all exchanges said they had experienced a cyberattack during the last year.

This year, the Prague Stock Exchange and several Czech banks were reportedly disabled for a brief time by an attack.

The public-facing Web sites of a number of American exchanges have been hacked. Just last week, Nasdaq said that hackers had gained access to the passwords of people using one of its online forums. Its sites were breached in October 2010, too. At the time, the exchange said the breach affected a single system, known as Directors Desk, used by company board members to exchange confidential information.

The indictments unsealed on Thursday indicate a more wide-ranging scheme that prosecutors say gave Mr. Kalinin and his accomplices access to an unknown amount of information on numerous Nasdaq servers.

They were able to "execute commands on those servers, including commands to delete, change or steal data," according to the indictment in Manhattan court.

At certain points they had enough information to "perform network or systems administrator functions" on the servers, the New Jersey indictment said. Mr. Kalinin had access to the servers, intermittently, until October 2010, according to the Manhattan indictment. Nasdaq discovered the breach itself and alerted the authorities, according to a person briefed on the investigation.

A spokesman for Nasdaq said the company had no comment on the case.

Paul M. Tiao, a former senior adviser on cybersecurity at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said the Nasdaq breach was worrying because the servers the defendants attacked could have eventually provided an entryway to the more closely guarded trading systems.

"This is the beginning of the process through which you can imagine that some bad actors would find their way into much more sensitive infrastructure," said Mr. Tiao, now a partner at the law firm Hunton & Williams. "This is a significant cause for concern."

The indictment from the United States attorney in New Jersey, which included information on the Nasdaq breach, said that Mr. Kalinin, who went by the nicknames Grig and Tempo, first cracked Nasdaq's systems in late 2007 using so-called SQL injections. This technique infects a computer system with malicious software that in turn allows the attackers to steal or manipulate the contents of the system.

When an accomplice in Florida asked about attacking Nasdaq, Mr. Kalinin wrote on instant message: "NASDAQ is owned."

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DealBook: SAC Capital Advisors Is Indicted, and Called a Magnet for Cheating

Federal authorities, under fire for handling Wall Street with kid gloves, have delivered a crippling blow to one of its most successful firms, SAC Capital Advisors, whose outsize trading profits have drawn government scrutiny for more than a decade.

Calling SAC "a veritable magnet of market cheaters," federal prosecutors announced criminal charges against the hedge fund on Thursday, a rare move against a large company that could threaten its survival. The authorities argued that the firm and its units permitted a "systematic" insider trading scheme to unfold from 1999 to 2010, activity that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in profit for the firm, owned by its founder, the billionaire stock picker Steven A. Cohen.

The indictment offers the most detailed account yet of SAC's inner workings, citing e-mails indicating that Mr. Cohen and other top executives failed to prevent possible insider trading.

In one e-mail about the technology company Sun Microsystems, an SAC analyst informed Mr. Cohen that, "My edge is contacts at the company and their distribution channel." In an instant message, an employee informed Mr. Cohen that he planned to bet against Nokia's shares and then apologized for being "cryptic," explaining that SAC's compliance chief "was giving me Rules 101 yesterday — so I won't be saying much." (Mr. Cohen never responded to the message.) SAC, the indictment says, also recruited employees who possessed what the fund called "an edge," including one trader who was fired from another hedge fund on suspicion of insider trading.

The United States attorney's office in Manhattan and the F.B.I., which brought the charges, have spearheaded the largest and most prominent securities fraud cases in the nation's history, including those against Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and Raj Rajaratnam. Yet federal prosecutors on Thursday portrayed the "rampant insider trading" at SAC as having no equal, pointing to more than a decade of abuses that took place while managers turned a blind eye.

The scheme at SAC, said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, was "substantial, pervasive and on a scale without known precedent in the history of hedge funds."

Mr. Cohen, 57, was not charged, but the 41-page indictment is a stinging attack on him nonetheless, declaring that he "fostered a culture that focused on not discussing inside information too openly, rather than not seeking or trading on such information in the first place." Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil action against Mr. Cohen, accusing him of failing to supervise his employees.

The criminal indictment lists eight former SAC employees who the government said engaged in misconduct while at the fund; six of them have already pleaded guilty to individual criminal charges, and are expected to testify in a trial against SAC.

One of the cooperating employees emerged publicly for the first time in Thursday's indictment. Richard Lee, 34, pleaded guilty earlier this week to insider trading charges, according to the indictment. It was Mr. Lee whom Mr. Cohen hired despite a warning from a previous employer that he was part of an "insider trading group."

The earlier employer was Citadel, a large fund based in Chicago. Citadel, which has not been accused of wrongdoing, said "it does not have, and never has had, an 'insider trading group.' "

"Richard Lee has accepted responsibility for his prior conduct," said Mr. Lee's lawyer, Richard D. Owens of Latham & Watkins.

In response to Thursday's developments, a spokesman for the firm said, "SAC has never encouraged, promoted or tolerated insider trading." The spokesman added, "The handful of men who admit they broke the law does not reflect the honesty, integrity and character of the thousands of men and women who have worked at SAC over the past 21 years."

Despite the onslaught, SAC was open for business on Thursday with Mr. Cohen at the center of the firm's cavernous trading floor in Stamford, Conn., sifting through information, buying and selling stocks, and trying to make money for his investors. Banks including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley continued to trade with SAC and finance its operations, though several are discussing the implications that the indictment will have on their relationships, said people with knowledge of those conversations. SAC is also wrestling with how to stanch an exodus of its investors, which is expected to accelerate after the indictment.

For its part, the government signaled that it could pursue hefty penalties, staking claim to "any and all assets" of SAC.

SAC managed about $15 billion at the beginning of the year, but the government's investigation has buffeted the firm; investors have withdrawn about $5 billion in recent months. Mr. Cohen's fortune and employee money accounts for about $9 billion of SAC's assets under management.

While prosecutors could theoretically pursue all of SAC's money, they have no plans to do so, a person briefed on the matter said. Instead, they are likely to demand that SAC forfeit money that is traceable to any illicit trading, a sum that could reach a few billion dollars.

By filing the indictment under the theory of corporate criminal liability, the government is wielding a potent weapon. If prosecutors can show that SAC traders were acting "on behalf of and for the benefit of" SAC when breaking the law — and six such traders are likely to testify to that — then the theory allows the government to impute liability to the firm itself.

To avoid charging corporations every time an employee commits a crime, the government often relies on so-called deferred prosecution agreements, which suspend an indictment so long as the company improves its behavior. Prosecutors seized on this approach after the Justice Department indicted Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, in 2002, leading the firm to collapse and terminate 28,000 jobs. Deferred-prosecution agreements have drawn ire from critics of Wall Street who have complained that no Wall Street banks faced criminal charges after the financial crisis.

But in the case of SAC, which has about 1,000 employees in five offices across the globe, the government rejected that more cautious measure, limiting the fund's ability to defend itself.

"In the corporate criminal world, avoiding indictment is the key battleground," said Alan Vinegrad, a former federal prosecutor now a partner at Covington & Burling. "Once you have the indictment, either it's a deferred prosecution agreement or you have your work cut out for you."

At the heart of the government's case is an attack on SAC's pursuit of an edge in stock trading. Though it has pushed into other investment strategies, at its core SAC has traditionally been an information-driven hedge fund, aggressively trading stocks around market-moving events like earnings releases and merger announcements.

At the height of SAC's powers in 2006 and 2007, Mr. Cohen is reported to have earned about $900 million each year, helping to give the firm a certain mystique. But it also generated whispers about whether the fund routinely crossed the line.

The indictment paints Mr. Cohen and his staff as promoting a culture of lax compliance and crooked morals. In one example, an SAC employee forwarded an e-mail to Mr. Cohen in which a prospective hire was praised for his access to industrial companies. The message described him as "the guy who knows the quarters cold, has a share house in the Hamptons" with a senior executive at a big industrial company.

In another instance, prosecutors quote internal e-mails from two SAC analysts saying that a third colleague had a "black edge," secret information about a company so good that it almost guaranteed an investment's success.

SAC used the word "edge" in a marketing document to summarize the fund's investment strategy in 2008, a year that much of the activity at the center of the indictment occurred. But by 2011, in a deposition for a private lawsuit, and at a time when the investigation was heating up, Mr. Cohen said, "I hate that word."

The charges will not necessarily destroy SAC. One option for Mr. Cohen would be to shut down SAC and open up a family office that manages his own personal fortune. But the S.E.C. could seek to have him barred from stock trading for other investors for life.

The government will face off against an army of lawyers from two of the world's most sophisticated law firms: Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Martin Klotz at Willkie and Daniel J. Kramer at Paul Weiss have headed the SAC representation. For the criminal case, the fund has also enlisted Mark F. Pomerantz and Theodore V. Wells Jr., both at Paul Weiss and two of the country's most renowned criminal defense lawyers.

Paul Weiss finds itself in a familiar position. Two decades ago, it represented Mr. Milken.

William Alden contributed reporting

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The Lede: Video of Juror Who Says George Zimmerman ‘Got Away With Murder’

Updated | 10:15 p.m. As my colleague Lizette Alvarez reports, a juror in the trial of George Zimmerman told ABC News that she believed Mr. Zimmerman "got away with murder" in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

The juror, known as Maddy and identified as Juror B29 in the courtroom, said that she and the others on the six-woman jury had no choice but to vote for an acquittal in the case because of Florida law and the evidence presented at the trial in Sanford, Fla. Mr. Zimmerman, 29, argued that he shot Mr. Martin, 17, who was unarmed, in self-defense.

"You can't put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty," the juror said in an interview broadcast on ABC's "World News" on Thursday. "But we had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence."

The juror also said that she felt sympathy for the Martin family. Of the charges against Mr. Zimmerman, she said, "The law couldn't prove it."

"George Zimmerman — look, George Zimmerman got away with murder. But you can't get away from God," she told Robin Roberts, the "Good Morning America" anchor. "And at the end of the day, he's going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with."

The juror, whose full name has not been revealed by the court, allowed her face to be shown during the interview but withheld her full name because of concerns for her safety, ABC News reported.

She is the second of six jurors to come forward. Offering a different perspective on the jury negotiations was Juror B37, who spoke to CNN's Anderson Cooper with her face hidden from the cameras.

In a lengthy interview, Juror B37 said she believed that Mr. Zimmerman was "justified" in shooting Mr. Martin. She said she believed the defense's argument that, while Mr. Zimmerman should not have followed the teenager, he shot and killed him in self-defense.

Shortly after the CNN interview was broadcast, four other jurors, as The Lede previously reported, distanced themselves from Juror B37, saying that her statements did not reflect their views.

It is not known if Juror B29 was among them, or if the remaining jurors share the perspective that Juror B29 offered in the interview.

A transcript of the interview, which is scheduled to continue on Friday on "Good Morning America," was provided by ABC News.

ROBIN ROBERTS:
So what was your — what was your first vote?
JUROR B29:
My first vote was second-degree murder.
ROBIN ROBERTS:
Second-degree murder?
JUROR B29:
In between, that nine hours, it was hard. You know, a lot of us that wanted to find something that — something that we could connect to the law. For myself, he's guilty, because the evidence shows he's guilty.
ROBIN ROBERTS:
He's guilty of?
JUROR B29:
Killing Trayvon Martin. But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can't find — you can't say he's guilty.
ROBIN ROBERTS: Did you want to step out at all? Did you want to——
(OVERTALK)
JUROR B29:
I was the juror that was gonna give 'em the hung jury, oh, I was. I fought to the end. It's hard for me to sleep, it's hard for me to eat, because I feel that I was part, or I feel that I was forcefully included in Trayvon Martin's death. And as I carry him on my back I'm hurting as much as Trayvon's Martin's mother, 'cause there's no way that any mother should feel that pain.
ROBIN ROBERTS:
But you feel in your heart of hearts that you and the jury approached it and came with the decision, and you stand by that decision to this day?
JUROR B29:
I stand by the decision because of the law. If I stand by the deci— decision because of my heart, he would've been guilty.
ROBIN ROBERTS:
I know that you've heard some people have said point blank, they've said, "George Zimmerman got away with murder." How do you respond to those people that say that?
JUROR B29:
George Zimmerman — look, George Zimmerman got away with murder. But you can't get away from God. And at the end of the day, he's gonna have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with. The law couldn't prove it. But, you know — you know, the world goes in circles.

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Aid to Egypt Can Keep Flowing, Despite Overthrow, White House Decides

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has concluded it is not legally required to determine whether the Egyptian military engineered a coup d'état in ousting President Mohamed Morsi, a senior administration official said Thursday, a finding that will allow it to continue to funnel $1.5 billion in American aid to Egypt each year.

The legal opinion, submitted to the White House by lawyers from the State Department and other agencies, amounts to an escape hatch for President Obama and his advisers, who had concluded that cutting off financial assistance could destabilize Egypt at an already fragile moment and would pose a threat to neighbors like Israel.

The senior official did not describe the legal reasoning behind the finding, saying only, "The law does not require us to make a formal determination as to whether a coup took place, and it is not in our national interest to make such a determination."

"We will not say it was a coup, we will not say it was not a coup, we will just not say," the official said.

News of the administration's legal determination began circulating on Capitol Hill after a deputy secretary of state, William J. Burns, briefed House and Senate members in closed-door sessions earlier on Thursday.

The White House said it would continue to use financial aid as a lever to pressure Egypt's new government to move swiftly with a democratic transition. On Wednesday, the Pentagon delayed the shipment of four F-16 fighter jets to the Egyptian Air Force to signal the administration's displeasure with the chaotic situation in Egypt.

Such case-by-case decisions, the official said, would be the model for how the United States disbursed aid in the coming months. The administration might also "reprogram" assistance to promote a transition, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the White House's internal deliberations.

"We will work with the Congress to determine how best to continue assistance to Egypt in a manner that encourages Egypt's interim government to quickly and responsibly transition back to a stable, democratic, inclusive, civilian-led government that addresses the needs and respects the rights and freedoms of all its people," the official said.

Had the administration been forced to determine whether the tumultuous events of July 3 in Cairo were a coup d'etat, it is difficult to see how it could have avoided that conclusion.

Responding to days of antigovernment demonstrations, Egypt's generals deposed Mr. Morsi; put him under arrest, along with other leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood; and suspended the Constitution.

Mr. Obama did not use the word "coup" in his initial statement about Mr. Morsi's ouster, and he has not done so since. Rather, he warned the military to resist violence and to act swiftly to restore a democratically elected government, with a transition process that includes all elements of Egyptian society, including the Brotherhood.

The generals, citing the vast popular uprising against Mr. Morsi, disputed that it was a coup. They have installed a transitional government, led by a civilian judge, but they have declined to release Mr. Morsi and have rounded up other leaders of the Brotherhood. The exclusion of the Brotherhood, American officials said, is one of the factors that contributed to the decision to halt the F-16 shipment.

Shortly after Mr. Morsi was ousted, one of his senior advisers, Wael Haddara, accused the American administration of "verbal acrobatics," and asked, "With the entire world calling this a coup, why isn't the American administration calling it so?"

Under the terms of the Foreign Assistance Act, no aid other than that for democracy promotion can be given to "any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup d'état." The law does not allow a presidential waiver, and stipulates that aid cannot be restored until "a democratically elected government has taken office."

The State Department's legal adviser, however, appears to have leaned heavily on a national-security rationale for arguing that the White House could continue to supply aid.

"Egypt serves as a stabilizing pillar of regional peace and security and the United States has a national security interest in a stable and successful democratic transition in Egypt," the official said. "We believe that the continued provision of assistance to Egypt, consistent with our law, is important to our goal of advancing a responsible transition to democratic governance and is consistent with our national security interests."

Among the potential dangers in the cut-off of aid is a reduction in the ability of the Egyptian military to halt smuggling of weapons to Hamas, which could use them against Israel. The aid program is also a pillar of the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and Israeli officials have urged the United States not to suspend it.

There is little appetite for cutting off aid on Capitol Hill. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and the head of a foreign aid subcommittee, said he would "review future aid to the Egyptian government."

But calls for the aid flow to be maintained have come from Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the senior Democrat and Republican, respectively, on the Senate foreign relations committee.

12.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

Scores Reported Dead as Train Derails in Spain

A high-speed passenger train that was reportedly traveling at more than double the speed limit derailed just outside a station in northwest Spain on Wednesday evening, killing at least 60 of those on board, according to local news reports.

The train, carrying 218 passengers and 4 crew members, was traveling between Madrid and Ferrol when it derailed at 8:41 p.m., the Spanish national train company Renfe said in a statement. It was about two miles from the station in the city of Santiago de Compostela.

Citing unidentified sources, the Web site of the Spanish newspaper El País reported that the train had been traveling at 110 miles per hour, but that the speed limit for the stretch of track where the derailment occurred was 50. The train derailed with such force that one car leapt 15 feet in the air and 45 feet from the tracks, the newspaper said.

Renfe said in a statement early Thursday that its technicians and those from Adif, the state-owned railroad company that reports to the Ministry of Public Works, had arrived to help in the rescue, repair tracks and "clarify the causes of the accident."

Pictures from the scene showed the train lying zigzagged on its side across the tracks. At least one car had been torn open and was jammed on top of another. What appeared to be bodies were covered in makeshift blankets by the side of the tracks as emergency workers struggled to pull the dead and injured from the train's windows as night fell.

"The road is full of cadavers," a radio reporter, Xaime López, said on the station Cadena Ser. "It's striking: you almost can't even count them."

Precise casualty figures were not immediately available, but El País, citing local officials, said at least 60 people had died and more than 100 were injured, 10 to 20 of them seriously. The derailment occurred on the eve of an annual religious and cultural festival in Santiago de Compostela that attracts hordes of visitors and pilgrims, according to the region's tourist board.

The Spanish government is working from the assumption that the derailment was an accident, The Associated Press reported, not an act of terrorism. A total of 191 people were killed in the 2004 bombing by Islamist extremists of four commuter trains in Madrid.

Calls to the offices of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain and representatives of the Spanish government in the United States were not immediately answered Wednesday night.

A passenger, Sergio Prego, told Cadena Ser that the train had jumped off the tracks at a curve. "It was a disaster," he said. "I was lucky."

Another passenger, Ricardo Montesco, who was in the second car, told a local radio station: "It happened very fast. At a curve, the train started rolling over, some cars were on top of others and a lot of people were trapped at the bottom. We had to get out from underneath the cars and we realized the train was on fire."

If the initial casualty estimates hold, the accident will rank among Europe's most deadly rail crashes in recent years. In 2006, an underground metro train in Valencia, Spain, derailed and killed 41 people. Excessive speed on a curve was cited as a factor.

Elias E. Lopez contributed reporting.

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Obama Nominates Caroline Kennedy to be Ambassador to Japan

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday nominated Caroline Kennedy to be ambassador to Japan, moving to give a scion of America's most enduring political dynasty a diplomatic post that has often gone to political heavyweights.

In naming Ms. Kennedy, whose nomination has been rumored for months, Mr. Obama is keeping with a well-established tradition of rewarding important campaign supporters with plum embassies. He recently put forward big-dollar fund-raisers to be envoys in London, Berlin, Copenhagen and Madrid.

But Ms. Kennedy's value to Mr. Obama has been less about money than mystique. As the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, her imprimatur on his candidacy in 2008 — along with that of her uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts — elevated Mr. Obama at a crucial moment against his better-known rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And it gave Ms. Kennedy lasting ties to Mr. Obama, something analysts said would come in useful in Japan, where officials and journalists have been buzzing with speculation about what a Kennedy in Tokyo would mean for Japan's standing in the United States.

Ms. Kennedy, 55, a lawyer and an author who has served as director of numerous nonprofit organizations, has never worked in government and has no special expertise in Japan. But some experts said her lack of knowledge is outweighed by her connections to the Oval Office. She shares that with other marquee figures who have served as ambassador to Tokyo, including former Vice President Walter F. Mondale; Howard Baker, a former senator and White House chief of staff; and Thomas S. Foley, a former House speaker.

"For those who say she doesn't know a lot about Japan, I say 'sure,' but neither did Walter Mondale," said Kurt M. Campbell, a former assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs.

"What you really want in an ambassador is someone who can get the president of the United States on the phone," Mr. Campbell said. "I can't think of anybody in the United States who could do that more quickly than Caroline Kennedy."

Her stature, he said, should assuage Japan's worries that in Washington, Tokyo takes a back seat to Beijing. The current ambassador to China, Gary F. Locke, was commerce secretary during Mr. Obama's first term, but he hardly knows the president as well as Ms. Kennedy does.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Japanese Foreign Ministry welcomed the nomination, noting that "Caroline Kennedy has the deep confidence of President Obama" and that her choice reflected "the great importance the Obama administration attaches to the Japan-U.S. alliance."

If confirmed, Ms. Kennedy would replace John V. Roos, a lawyer and major fund-raiser for the president. Mr. Obama chose Mr. Roos over Joseph S. Nye Jr., a Harvard professor who was the preferred candidate of Mrs. Clinton, then Mr. Obama's newly appointed secretary of state.

Mr. Roos was barely known in Japan when he arrived in 2009. But he built up a following on Twitter with frequent posts about baseball, Justin Bieber and Mrs. Clinton — many of them in Japanese. He was the first envoy to attend a peace memorial in Hiroshima, and he dealt with the tsunami and subsequent crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

While Ms. Kennedy may not have firsthand ties to Japan, historians note that her father played a critical role as president in repairing the alliance between Japan and the United States.

Relations had become frayed over the signing of a 1960 treaty that made permanent the American military base on Okinawa. President Kennedy sent another Harvard academic, Edwin O. Reischauer, as his ambassador to Tokyo, and Mr. Reischauer, with his Japanese wife, Haru, worked to wean the countries away from their post-World War II relationship as occupier and occupied. The president also sent his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, on a fence-mending tour of Japan.

Ms. Kennedy would not face anywhere near that kind of tension. These days, American officials worry most about clashes between Japan and China over disputed islands in the East China Sea. But the Japanese bridled when Mr. Obama skipped a meeting last month with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the Group of 8 meeting in Northern Ireland.

None of Mr. Obama's other diplomatic appointments are likely to draw the attention that Ms. Kennedy's has.

Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue magazine and a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama, was rumored to be under consideration for posts in London and Paris. But she was passed over for London in favor of Matthew Barzun, a technology executive who was the Obama campaign's national finance chairman and served as the ambassador to Sweden from 2009 to 2011.

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Killer of Two Undercover Detectives Is Sent Back to Death Row

The anonymous 12-member jury took just five hours to reach its decision to return Mr. Wilson to federal death row, where no other New Yorker has served time in six decades.

As the jury foreman responded to preliminary questions from a 22-page verdict sheet, Mr. Wilson, 31, slumped forward with his chin in his hands as the tension rose in the courtroom in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. When the foreman finally said "yes" to the death penalty, Mr. Wilson leaned back and looked over to his family. They wept as he was led away.

Outside the courthouse on Wednesday, Rodney Andrews Sr., the father of one of the victims, Detective Rodney J. Andrews, said that he was pleased with the outcome. "He's done too many things," Mr. Andrews said of Mr. Wilson. "He's proven that he's not going to change." Mr. Andrews said that he wanted to watch Mr. Wilson's execution, and when asked why, he replied, "For satisfaction."

Detective Andrews's wife, MaryAnn, said she was too emotional to speak. The family of Detective James V. Nemorin, the other victim, did not attend court on Wednesday.

In a statement, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said: "It was an assault on the society that those officers represented, and for that reason their murders had to be answered with the full force of punishment at society's disposal. To do otherwise is to invite chaos."

Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District, whose office prosecuted the case, said that she hoped the verdict would bring closure to the victims' families.

Mr. Wilson's lawyers declined to comment. A judge is expected to formally sentence Mr. Wilson in the fall.

The legal case against him has lasted more than a decade.

On March 10, 2003, Mr. Wilson killed Detective Andrews, 34, and Detective Nemorin, 36, who were participating in a sting operation to buy an illegal gun. He shot each once in the back of the head at point-blank range on a secluded street on Staten Island.

 In choosing the death penalty, the jury unanimously found that prosecutors proved every element of their case, including that Mr. Wilson committed the murders for financial gain and that he poses a future danger.

The jury rejected arguments posed by the defense — that life in prison was punishment enough and that Mr. Wilson's rough childhood filled with bad influences should spare him from death. Only one member of the jury found that the federal prison system could restrict Mr. Wilson's inappropriate behavior. Only two found that "Ronell Wilson's life has value." None felt that his background mitigated against the imposition of the death penalty.

 Death penalty trials are exceedingly rare in New York, where the state's highest court struck down the death penalty in 2004 and where capital cases at the federal level are often resolved before trial.

 Federal prosecutors vigorously sought the death penalty against Mr. Wilson, taking the case from state prosecutors on Staten Island, when capital punishment at the state level was invalidated. They won a death verdict in 2007, the first one in New York since 1953.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his death sentence in 2010, ruling that the prosecutor had violated Mr. Wilson's constitutional right not to testify by telling jurors that if Mr. Wilson had felt any remorse, he would have taken the stand. The panel commuted the sentence to life in prison without parole, but prosecutors decided to again seek death.

 With Mr. Wilson's guilt never in doubt, the question at the heart of the monthlong sentencing trial was: How much punishment is enough?

Prosecutors argued that prison alone would not do. The prosecutors showed a dramatic video of several guards at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn storming into a recreation pen to retrieve Mr. Wilson, who had refused to be handcuffed. When the guards emerged from the pen with Mr. Wilson, he smiled.

One of their witnesses described seeing a guard, Nancy Gonzalez, walk away from Mr. Wilson's cell one day, leaving him there with his pants down and his genitals exposed. Mr. Wilson had several sexual encounters with Ms. Gonzalez, fathering a child, Justus, who was born in March.

Defense witnesses described Mr. Wilson's difficult childhood, during which he shuttled between relatives as his mother, an alcoholic and drug addict, was often absent. He spent years in an overcrowded and squalid home, where the adults who influenced him were criminals.

Life in prison was punishment enough, Mr. Wilson's lawyers argued, for someone who never really had a chance.

But Celia Cohen, one of the prosecutors, said that only the death penalty assured justice. "He's not going to stop until he's dead," she said in her closing argument. "Truer words were never said."

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