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Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
Critics of the memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said a phrase carved into the statue misrepresented his statement.
WASHINGTON — The Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin finished removing a contentious phrase on the memorial for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Thursday in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington at the end of the month.
The Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin removed a contentious phrase from the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.
The phrase came from Dr. King's "Drum Major Instinct" speech. It read, "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness."
Critics of the memorial, including the poet Maya Angelou, said the phrase did not show the true nature of the full quotation. The actual quotation was: "Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter."
The quotation was taken from a 1968 sermon that Dr. King delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, two months before he was assassinated.
Mr. Lei began removing the phrase on Monday. Officials from the National Park Service, which maintains the memorial on the National Mall, said that Mr. Lei planned to carve grooves over the area where the phrase sat to match existing horizontal striation marks in the statute. Mr. Lei spoke at a news conference on Thursday morning, using his son as his interpreter.
"He feels that it was an honor to work with the M.L.K. Foundation to make the memorial," said Mr. Lei's son, Shi Ke. "He has put a lot of effort and heart into the statue. He thinks that Americans would not regret to pick him as the sculptor."
The work is expected to be finished by Aug. 28, the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Park Service officials said that it could be finished before then but that the date depended on the weather: the team cannot operate power tools in the rain.
Carol Johnson, a spokeswoman for the National Mall and Memorial Parks, said the Park Service was using money that had been allocated for the construction of the memorial to remove the phrase. The memorial cost $110 million to build, and the current project will run $700,000 to $900,000.
Since the memorial opened in August 2011, many critics have said the quotation made Dr. King appear arrogant and should also be removed because it was historically inaccurate. Mr. Lei has said he paraphrased it because the original was too long.
"He thought it would look better shortened," Ms. Johnson said. She added that it was important to bring back the original team of workers because of its familiarity with the sculpture.
On Thursday, several workers stood on scaffolding erected around the memorial and used power tools on its surface. The memorial was hidden behind shrouds to prevent debris from falling on visitors.
"When people come from all over the world to visit, we know it is disappointing," Ms. Johnson said. "But a big effort here is conservation, so we have to do what we have to do."
Members of the public are allowed to visit the memorial as work continues. About 5.2 million people visited the statue last year, and park officials said people were continuing to come despite the construction.
A steady stream of tourists wandered around the memorial on Thursday. They stopped to get a view of the construction and asked Park Service rangers at the statue what was going on.
"People are very moved by it, and they are still coming," Ms. Johnson said.
A terrorism threat has prompted the United States to close dozens of American diplomatic missions in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere through the weekend, American officials said Thursday.
Officials gave few details about what prompted the move to close an unusually large number of American missions, but said there was "credible" information that an Al Qaeda regional affiliate might be plotting an attack sometime in the coming days.
"It's not often that we close a bunch of embassies at once," said one official, adding that the threat was being taken particularly seriously by American intelligence agencies.
The official said that the State Department was planning to have nearly all American diplomatic facilities in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia closed through the weekend, including missions in Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In much of the Muslim world, diplomatic facilities are generally closed on Friday and Saturday, but open on Sunday.
A State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, told reporters on Thursday that the decision was taken "out of an abundance of caution and care for our employees and others who may be visiting our installations." The State Department did not announce on Thursday which terror group might be plotting an attack, but American officials indicated that the threat originated from one of Al Qaeda's regional affiliates.
To date, the only Al Qaeda affiliate that has shown both a desire and an ability to attack American facilities overseas is Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a group based in Yemen.
In a meeting at the White House on Thursday, President Obama met with Yemen's president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. American and Yemeni officials said that counterterrorism operations in Yemen were among the main topics of the meeting.
American drones have carried out three separate strikes in Yemen, over the past week according to Long War Journal, a Web site that tracks drone strikes. There have been 15 American drone strikes in Yemen this year, according to the site.
The closings come toward the end of the Ramadan holidays and the approaching one-year anniversary of the terror attack on Sept. 11, 2012, on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
"This seems to be a late-Ramadan threat," one senior American diplomat said. "We don't have information on the specific details."
Dick Kazmaier, a Princeton halfback who won the Heisman Trophy in 1951 as the nation's outstanding college football player, but who rejected a career in the National Football League, saying he had achieved all he wanted in the sport and could make more money in business, died on Thursday in Boston. He was 82.
The cause was heart and lung disease, said Bob Ruxin, the president of Kazmaier Associates, an investment and financial consulting business with a special interest in sports.
Kazmaier, the last Ivy Leaguer to win the Heisman, an athlete who won varsity letters in five sports in high school and graduated second in his class, went from Princeton to graduate school at Harvard and a rewarding, lucrative career. He was chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and president of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame.
But he is best remembered for exploits on the football field that almost surely would have continued in the professional game if he had chosen that path.
At 5 feet 11 inches and 171 pounds, Kazmaier looked too fragile to play high-level college football, especially in a single-wing offense that favored bruising 2-on-1 blocking. Still, he succeeded in the triple-threat role of runner, passer and punter.
As a junior and senior, he led Princeton to undefeated seasons and was named to most all-American teams. As a senior, in separate player-of-the-year polls, he won the Heisman Trophy, the Maxwell Award and the Walter Camp Trophy. He was voted the Associated Press athlete of the year in 1951 — ahead of Ben Hogan and Stan Musial.
But football was not the focus of his life. When Princeton's dean of students told him he had won the Heisman Trophy, he recalled: "I thought it was nice. Then I went back to class."
Kazmaier was drafted by the Chicago Bears but declined to join the team, or any other one. Player salaries then were often less than $5,000 a year. Instead, with a degree in psychology, he pursued a master's in business administration at Harvard, receiving the degree in 1954.
After Harvard came three years as a Navy officer. He then started a career in sports marketing and consulting, and in 1975 he founded Kazmaier Associates. He had no regrets about giving up football.
"I knew I could earn more money in business than I could in professional football," he said, "but there was more to it than that. I had achieved everything I could achieve as an individual and as part of a team. I felt there was nowhere to go but down."
Richard William Kazmaier Jr. was born on Nov. 23, 1930, in Maumee, Ohio, outside Toledo. He grew up there playing many sports.
"I had good coordination and speed," he said, "and I practiced. I shot baskets. I threw a football through a rubber tire. I'd field ground balls. It was just a natural part of life. There were no sports camps, no special training."
Kazmaier won high school letters in football, basketball, baseball, track and golf.
He was recruited by 23 colleges, most offering full scholarships. He chose Princeton, where, like most athletes and nonathletes, he received financial aid, in his case $400 a year. (Tuition was $600.) To cover the rest of his tuition and room and board, he waited on tables, drove laundry trucks and took summer jobs.
He started his football career at Princeton as the fifth-string tailback on the 1948 freshman team.
"I was about 155 pounds," he said. "I'm not sure they thought I was going to make that big of a difference in my four years there. But we had 120 men at that first meeting freshman year, and only 12 of us would letter as seniors."
Frank McPhee, a teammate, said Kazmaier "was the most determined kid I ever saw."
In his three varsity seasons, Kazmaier passed for 2,404 yards and rushed for 1,950. As a senior, he led the nation with 1,027 yards rushing in nine games.
Time magazine called him "a refreshing reminder, in the somewhat fetid atmosphere that has gathered around the pseudo amateurs of U.S. sports, that winning football is not the monopoly of huge hired hands taking snap courses at football foundries."
His classmates voted him the senior who did the most for Princeton. Years later, The Princeton Athletic News named him Princeton's football player of the century. In 1966, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.
Kazmaier is survived by his wife of 60 years, the former Patricia Hoffmann; five daughters; and several grandchildren. Another daughter died in 1990. Further information about his survivors was not immediately available.
Despite his success, Kazmaier remained self-effacing.
"It's been a long time since someone recognized me as a Heisman winner," he said. "I don't think of it as something I did. I think of it as something we did as a group. Football is a consummate team sport. Nobody does anything of substance unless they do it with everybody else on the team. You have to have the team. The rest? It's just hype."
In 2008, Princeton retired his number, 42, which was also worn by Bill Bradley, the university's basketball great.
At the time, Bradley said: "When I was 9 years old, playing pickup football in the church yard across from my house in Crystal City, Mo., I imagined that I was Heisman Trophy winner Dick Kazmaier, who played for some college I never heard of called Princeton. Other kids wanted to be Hopalong Cassady from Ohio State. I wanted to be Dick Kazmaier."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 1, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated Dick Kazmaier's age. He was 82, not 83. The error was repeated in the headline. An earlier version of this article also misstated the number of years he was married to his wife, Patricia. They were married 60 years, not 50.
Updated, 10:03 p.m. |
A former Goldman Sachs trader at the center of a toxic mortgage deal lost a closely watched legal battle on Thursday, giving Wall Street's top regulator its first significant courtroom victory in a case stemming from the financial crisis.
A federal jury found the trader, Fabrice Tourre, liable on six counts of civil securities fraud after a three-week trial in Lower Manhattan. The case had given both sides — the government and Mr. Tourre — a chance to repair their reputations.
For the Securities and Exchange Commission, a regulator dogged by its failure to thwart the crisis, the case offered a shot at redemption following one courtroom disappointment after another, including two similar mortgage-related cases that crumbled last year.
For Mr. Tourre, 34, who abandoned his trading career to pursue a doctorate in economics and become a teacher, the threat of being barred from Wall Street came second to the black mark on his name.
Five years after Wall Street risk-taking nearly toppled the economy, the S.E.C. has taken only a handful of employees to court in connection with the crisis; most cases have been settled. The agency has not leveled fraud charges against one top executive at a big bank.
"He was the one that didn't get away," one of the nine jurors, Beverly Rhetts, said after the verdict. "The decision-making was a slow and arduous process," said Ms. Rhetts, a retired teacher who was juror No. 2. "We went over each item with a fine-tooth comb. We looked into the semantics and tried to understand them as best as we could."
"We never felt there was anything that was cut and dry," she added.
The S.E.C. threw innumerable resources at Mr. Tourre's case, underscoring its importance to the agency. The onslaught began when the S.E.C. opened an investigation into Goldman after the 2008 crisis.
Lorin Reisner, then the No. 2 enforcement official at the agency, conducted all the pretrial depositions, a task typically assigned to lower-level investigators. When it came time for trial, the S.E.C. assigned Matthew T. Martens to lead the case, although he typically oversees the agency's trial lawyers without acting as one.
"There is no denying the importance of this to the S.E.C. because it is a financial crisis case," said Stephen J. Crimmins, a partner at the law firm K&L Gates and former deputy chief litigation counsel in the S.E.C. enforcement division, who was not involved in this case.
Yet even with the triumph over Mr. Tourre, the S.E.C. could still face scrutiny.
Some critics have questioned why the agency chose to make Mr. Tourre — a midlevel employee who was stationed in the bowels of Goldman's mortgage machine — the face of the crisis. Rather than aim at a high-flying executive, the agency pursued someone barely known on Wall Street.
Those concerns also arose in another S.E.C. crisis-era case, in which a jury cleared a midlevel Citigroup employee, questioning why the agency had declined to charge more senior executives. Even Ms. Rhett, the juror, after reflecting on Mr. Tourre's case, said, "I could characterize him as somewhat of a scapegoat."
"There are bigger fish out there swimming fat and free, and they made a lot more money from the mess than Tourre ever dreamed of making," said Erik Gordon, a professor of law and of business at the University of Michigan.
For its part, the S.E.C. notes that it has won about 80 percent of its trials under Mr. Martens and has sued 66 chief executives and other senior officers in cases related to the financial crisis. S.E.C. officials also note that the agency files cases only where they can be proved, even if that means not pursuing top executives insulated from the bad acts of their employees.
Andrew Ceresney, co-director of the S.E.C.'s division of enforcement, said in a statement: "We are gratified by the jury's verdict finding Mr. Tourre liable for fraud. We will continue to vigorously seek to hold accountable, and bring to trial when necessary, those who commit fraud on Wall Street."
It is unclear whether Mr. Tourre will appeal the verdict. A spokesman for Mr. Tourre declined to comment.
But a friend who dined with Mr. Tourre this week at Walker's Restaurant, a pub near the courthouse, said he appeared upbeat while discussing his doctoral program at the University of Chicago. "He doesn't really care and finds the entire thing politically motivated," the friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said about the S.E.C.'s case.
After two days of deliberation, the nine-person jury concluded that Mr. Tourre had misled investors about the mortgage deal at the heart of the case. Of the seven charges against Mr. Tourre, the jury found him liable on six. He was found not liable of perhaps the most specific fraud charge, which contended he had knowingly made an untrue or misleading statement.
Juror No. 9, Leonel Lopez, 27, who works in advertising, said, "I found Mr. Tourre's testimony to be genuine and the defense's case solid, but the evidence suggested that a number of S.E.C. violations had occurred."
As the verdict was read on Thursday, Mr. Tourre sat emotionless, briefly glancing at the jury before fixing his stare elsewhere. When the jury shuffled from the courtroom, few made eye contact with him. Minutes later, he departed the building, carrying a copy of "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon.
Judge Katherine B. Forrest has the final say on the penalty Mr. Tourre must pay, be it forfeiture of profits or a fine. The fine could range from $5,000 to $130,000 for each violation.
Mr. Tourre could also be barred from the securities industry, but that decision lies solely with the S.E.C.
The S.E.C.'s victory reopens some wounds for Goldman, which is paying for Mr. Tourre's defense. Inside the bank, employees had been quietly cheering for Mr. Tourre, whom one executive called "the poor kid." Viewing the S.E.C.'s case as thin, the executives saw Mr. Tourre as a proxy for the fight they wanted to wage with regulators.
Goldman settled with the S.E.C. in 2010, paying what was at the time a record $550 million fine. The bank conceded that it had made a "mistake."
On Thursday, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs said, "As a firm, we remain focused on being more transparent, more accountable and more responsive to the needs of our clients."
The verdict comes three years after the S.E.C. thrust Mr. Tourre into the spotlight with civil charges and a series of embarrassing e-mails. Those e-mails, in which Mr. Tourre referred to a friend's nicknaming him the "Fabulous Fab," a moniker that has come to define Mr. Tourre's persona, transformed him from an obscure trader into a symbol of Wall Street hubris.
The S.E.C.'s case against Mr. Tourre hinged on the contention that he and Goldman sold investors a mortgage security in 2007 without disclosing a crucial conflict of interest: a hedge fund that helped construct the deal, Paulson & Company, also bet that it would fail. In his opening argument to the jury, Mr. Martens, the S.E.C.'s lead lawyer, depicted the commission's case as an assault on "Wall Street greed," arguing that Mr. Tourre created a deal "to maximize the potential it would fail."
Mr. Tourre was living in a "Goldman Sachs land of make-believe" where deceiving investors is not fraudulent, Mr. Martens declared on Tuesday.
Throughout the trial, Mr. Martens invoked documents that Goldman had submitted to investors — including a term sheet and a 66-page marketing book — in which the bank said that the deal was "selected by ACA," an independent company, without reference to Paulson & Company. Mr. Martens also cited an e-mail in which Mr. Tourre stated that the riskiest slice of the mortgage trade — a piece typically bought by someone betting that the deal would succeed — was "precommitted," when in fact it was not even going to be offered.
The S.E.C. also used some of Mr. Tourre's love notes to a girlfriend who worked at Goldman to impugn his credibility. In one e-mail, he joked about selling toxic real estate bonds to "widows and orphans."
On the witness stand, Mr. Tourre acknowledged that the e-mail had been "in poor taste."
But he was confident that he did nothing wrong. "I am here to tell the truth and clear my name," Mr. Tourre, whose fresh face and diminutive stature suggest he is much younger than his age of 34.
His lawyers portrayed him as a scapegoat who was 28 at the time of the crisis. The lawyers also noted that senior Goldman executives had approved the deal.
"The idea that Fabrice Tourre, a 28-year-old vice president, was conjuring up a $1 billion fraud, or conspiring with others, is just not supported by the evidence," Sean Coffey, one of his lawyers, said during his closing arguments.
Mr. Tourre's lawyers have argued that what Paulson & Company was doing should not have mattered to investors. The trade in question had to have an investor who was betting it would fail, and another betting it would rise — a fact each side knew.
The verdict calls into question the decision by Mr. Tourre's lawyers not to call a single witness, a show of confidence that failed to impress a jury that also included a minister, a graphic designer and a former stockbroker. Some jurors appeared to nod off as the case became bogged down in financial minutiae.
On Thursday, as they emerged from the courthouse, several jurors appeared troubled. "It was intense," one said. "Exhausting," said another.
The mood was upbeat at a Starbucks down the street, where the S.E.C.'s legal team took shelter from the rain after the trial. They stood in a group near the doorway, tapping on their smartphones as they arranged train tickets home to Washington.
Mr. Tourre returned to the same place he had started each day: a cramped conference room in an apartment building next to the courthouse. Mr. Tourre, said one person in the room, was the only one there who was upbeat.
The war room, as his lawyers called it, was typically full of tinfoil containers from nearby fast food restaurants. A white board listed names of witnesses. Mr. Tourre often camped out in a smaller room littered with empty Diet Coke cans.
"It's home right now," he said recently, shrugging his shoulders.
William Alden, Michael J. de la Merced and Alexandra Stevenson contributed reporting.
WASHINGTON — Senators of both parties on Wednesday sharply challenged the National Security Agency's collection of records of all domestic phone calls, even as the latest leaked N.S.A. document provided new details on the way the agency monitors Web browsing around the world.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, expressed deep skepticism about the domestic phone records program.
Declassified N.S.A. Documents on Data CollectionRead and search three documents related to the National Security Agency's collection of phone records.
Robert Litt, left, the top lawyer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, testified that the Obama administration was also "open to re-evaluating this program."
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the chairman, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, accused Obama administration officials of overstating the success of the domestic call log program. He said he had been shown a classified list of "terrorist events" detected through surveillance, and it did not show that "dozens or even several terrorist plots" had been thwarted by the domestic program.
"If this program is not effective it has to end. So far, I'm not convinced by what I've seen," Mr. Leahy said, citing the "massive privacy implications" of keeping records of every American's domestic calls.
At the start of the hearing, the Obama administration released previously classified documents outlining the rules for how the domestic phone records may be accessed and used by intelligence analysts. And as senators debated the program, The Guardian published on its Web site a still-classified 32-page presentation, apparently downloaded by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, that describes a separate surveillance activity by the agency.
Called the XKeyscore program, it apparently gives N.S.A. analysts access to virtually any Internet browsing activity around the world, data that is being vacuumed up from 150 foreign sites.
Together, the new disclosures provided additional details on the scope of the United States government's secret surveillance programs, which have been dragged into public view and public debate by leaks from Mr. Snowden, who remains stranded in a Moscow airport.
The hearing came a week after the House voted narrowly to defeat an amendment to shut down the N.S.A.'s domestic phone record tracking program. The 217-to-205 vote was far closer than expected, and it — along with shifting poll numbers — suggested that momentum against the domestic program was building. In recent days even some of the most outspoken supporters of the program have said they are open to adjusting it.
The Obama administration has been trying to build public support for its surveillance programs, which trace back to the Bush administration, by arguing that they are subject to strict safeguards and court oversight and that they have helped thwart as many as 54 terrorist events. That figure, Mr. Leahy emphasized, relies upon conflating another program that allows surveillance targeted at noncitizens abroad, which has apparently been quite valuable, with the domestic one.
Still, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she supported overhauling the program but keeping it in place because it generates information that might prevent attacks.
John C. Inglis, the deputy director of the N.S.A., said there had been 13 investigations in which the domestic call tracking program made a "contribution." He cited two discoveries: that several men in San Diego were sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia, and that a suspect who was already under scrutiny in a subway bomb plot was using a different phone.
Robert S. Litt, the top lawyer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, testified that the Obama administration was also "open to re-evaluating this program" to create greater public confidence that it protects privacy while "preserving the essence of the program." Administration officials have emphasized that the program collects only so-called metadata, and not the contents of phone calls.
Still, the top Republican on the committee, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, asked skeptical questions about the legal basis for the program while criticizing the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, for making inaccurate statements to Congress about it in March. Mr. Clapper has since apologized.
"Nothing can excuse this kind of behavior from a senior administration official of any administration, especially on matters of such grave importance," Mr. Grassley said.
A series of slides describing XKeyscore, dated 2008, make it clear that the security agency system is collecting a huge amount of data on Internet activity around the globe, from chats on social networks to browsing of Web sites and searches on Google Maps. The volume of data is so vast that most of it is stored for only three days, although metadata — information showing logins and server activity, but not content — is stored for a month. Several of the pages were redacted by The Guardian.
Some of the servers the agency uses are run by foreign intelligence services of friendly nations, including Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, but other servers may be on the soil of countries unaware the agency is mining Internet "pipes" on their soil. Some of the harvesting of data takes place on the coasts of the United States, and along the Mexican border. Most sites are in Europe, the Middle East, and along the borders of India, Pakistan, and China.
David Cannon/Getty Images
Inbee Park at St. Andrews. Park won this year's United States Women's Open, Kraft Nabisco Championship and L.P.G.A. Championship.
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Grand slams are generally seen as quartets: a four-run homer in baseball; four major victories in the same calendar year in tennis and golf; four items from a list of choices in a Denny's Grand Slam breakfast.
With the Women's British Open starting Thursday, Inbee Park of South Korea will try to add another major victory to the three she has this year. No professional golfer, male or female, has accomplished that in the same calendar year.
But if she wins, should she be celebrated for completing golf's Grand Slam?
What constitutes a Grand Slam in women's golf is unclear at the moment. The L.P.G.A. announced two years ago that the September event in Évian-les-Bains, France, would be elevated from a regular tour stop to become the fifth major beginning in 2013. At the time, the organization's commissioner, Michael Whan, said the motivation was to give the women's game added exposure.
Instead, it has put a wrinkle in an otherwise potentially historic moment for the sport.
In the lead-up to the British Open here at the fabled Old Course, more people were debating what to label a Park victory than savoring the details of Park's season for the ages: her putting prowess; her poise under pressure; her fiancé, who has paused his professional golf career to support hers.
"I find it strange that we are struggling not to call this a Grand Slam if Inbee Park wins this week," Whan said. "If a player had won all four global majors in 2011, we would have declared her the Grand Slam winner and she would be posing with all four trophies. If Inbee wins four majors this season, why wouldn't we call it the same thing?"
If Park wins this week, Whan said, it will be "one of the greatest accomplishments in modern sports." She then would proceed to France, he said, with a "Super Slam" in play, making the Evian Championship sound like an extra class and Park a conscientious go-getter aiming for Advanced Placement honors in golf.
The Merriam-Webster definition of grand slam is "a clean sweep or total success." In sports, the term originated in card games like bridge, in which, since the 19th century, a grand slam has meant taking all 13 tricks. According to the Dickson Baseball Dictionary, grand slam was first used to describe a home run with the bases loaded in 1929. The term gained popularity in golf and tennis during the 1930s, when the American golfer Bobby Jones won the United States Open, the British Open, the United States Amateur and the British Amateur in 1930, and the American tennis star Don Budge won the Australian championship, the French championship, the United States championship and Wimbledon in 1938.
Rugby union might provide the most relevant example. A Grand Slam used to be four victories: when a team in the Five Nations Championship defeated the other four teams during the annual competition. When the event became the Six Nations Championship in 2000, a Grand Slam became five victories.
Park, 25, is carving out a new frontier in golf, attempting to go where Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Annika Sorenstam never trod. With her victories at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, the L.P.G.A. Championship and the United States Women's Open, Park became the first player on the L.P.G.A. Tour since Babe Zaharias in 1950 to win the first three majors of the year.
A Park victory Sunday would be the most attention-grabbing moment in women's golf since Sorenstam tested her game against the men at the Colonial tournament in 2003. But as so often happens with the women's game, the focus is not where it ought to be.
With no clear finish line, how are fans and observers supposed to know when it is time to cheer Park home? Is the modern pentathlon competitor awarded the Olympic gold medal before the results of her target shooting are known?
"Whenever you win four majors in a row, I think it doesn't really matter what you call it; it's impressive," said the American golfer Paula Creamer, who did not see the addition of a fifth major this year as bad timing for Park or the tour.
"Who is going to say that Inbee was going to win or somebody was going to win three majors in a row?" Creamer said. "You can never predict that."
In an interview in 2011 with Golf World, Whan acknowledged that he was not always an advocate of adding a fifth major.
"If you had asked me before I was commissioner if I thought five majors was a good idea, I would have said no," he said.
He warmed to the idea when he thought of the spotlight that would shine on the women for one extra week every year. Never mind that the Evian Championship will take place during the second week of the N.F.L. season, the third week of the college football season, the baseball pennant races and the PGA Tour's FedEx Cup playoffs.
The women's majors have always been fluid in name and number. As recently as 1978, only two events were considered majors. At one time or another, the Western Open, the Titleholders and the duMaurier Classic were designated as major championships. The Women's British Open was not labeled a major until 2001.
In men's golf, the tournaments forming the Grand Slam — the Masters, the United States Open, the British Open and the P.G.A. Championship — have been together on the tour schedule since 1934. The only change in the last 50 years has been that the top Americans, following Palmer's lead, have incorporated the British Open into their plans.
Leave it to Park to see through the noise. Grand Slam, Inbee Slam or Super Slam, Park is not getting stuck on semantics.
"I don't try to put so much pressure on myself to win this week," she said, adding, "Just the fact that I could have this kind of opportunity is very special."
One patron approached the restaurant's owner, Russell Stern, to introduce himself. His name was Jojo K. John, and he was a friend to Lindsey Stewart and Brian Bond, the young, soon-to-be-wed couple who rented an apartment at the same marina that houses Pier 701.
Mr. John was with two friends, Mr. Stern said, and they ordered five drinks among them and left.
The night would end in one of the most harrowing water crashes that people here can remember: a powerboat driven by Mr. John slammed into a steel barge northeast of the restaurant by the Tappan Zee Bridge, knocking several people aboard unconscious, seriously wounding Mr. Bond, and sending Mr. Bond's best man, Mark Lennon, and Ms. Stewart, both 30, hurtling into the river. Their bodies were recovered over the weekend.
Mr. John was charged with vehicular manslaughter and vehicular assault; the police suspect that alcohol played a role in the accident and are awaiting toxicology reports on his blood.
As the investigation continues, and family members prepare to bury their dead — Ms. Stewart's funeral is scheduled for Thursday and Mr. Lennon's is Friday — community members and people who knew the deceased are searching hard for where, or whether, to assign blame.
On Wednesday, the families of Ms. Stewart and Mr. Lennon said in a statement that Mr. Bond and other survivors reported that those onboard had consumed very little alcohol, and considered themselves sober.
The families also questioned why charges were brought against Mr. John ahead of toxicology results. (The Rockland County sheriff's office said the charges were based on "officer observation.") More pointedly, the families said that no one on the boat had seen the barge, even after it was too late.
The Coast Guard has said the barge was adequately lighted in line with federal law, with two lights at opposing ends, bright enough to be visible at one nautical mile; more lights were added after the crash.
Feelings of shock continue to radiate through the community, starting with owners and workers of the Tappan Zee Marina, where the couple had come to be regarded as near family.
For the past three or so years, Ms. Stewart and Mr. Bond, 35, had rented a 1,500-square-foot ground-floor apartment in the craft-style bungalow by the driveway to the marina, along with their Chihuahua, Jackson. They kept the place tidy and cheerful, nurturing houseplants and stringing patio lanterns across the front porch.
Audrey Maffei Schneider, whose family has owned the marina for 40 years, reserved deep affection for the pair, especially Ms. Stewart. When repairs were done to their apartment, Ms. Stewart sent thank-you notes. When electricity was finally fully restored many weeks after Hurricane Sandy, she sent Ms. Schneider a gift, thanking her for working so hard. Mr. Bond, a schoolteacher, had gone to high school with two of her sons, Ms. Schneider said in an interview on Tuesday, tightening the connection. Ms. Schneider had also never allowed her tenants to have dogs, but when she met Jackson, she melted: he was as friendly as his owners.
Ms. Schneider sometimes inquired whether the couple might leave, especially with the coming wedding, scheduled for Aug. 10. But Ms. Stewart, she said, always assured her they would not.
" 'We love it here,' " Ms. Schneider recalled Ms. Stewart saying. " 'We want to have babies here.' "
"She was the kind of woman that appreciated everything," Ms. Schneider said tearfully. "I used to say I wished she was my daughter."
Ms. Stewart worked as a human resources manager at an insurance company in nearby Nyack, but had also begun work at Pier 701, to make extra money for the wedding. "She was lovely," Mr. Stern, the restaurant's owner, said.
It was not immediately clear how Mr. John, 35, knew the couple, though a friend described him to The Associated Press as Mr. Bond's "other best friend." His LinkedIn profile says he works as a "relationship banker" at JPMorgan Chase; he had previously faced two drug charges, one for possession of marijuana, which resulted in community service and probation.
Sheelagh McNeill contributed reporting.
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The company is run on a shoestring budget, supported one play at a time by a community college that does not even have a theater department.
But on Thursday, the student repertory company at Hostos Community College will travel across the Atlantic to join thousands of seasoned and heralded performers in Edinburgh, Scotland, for one of the largest and most prestigious arts festivals in the world. Months of grueling rehearsals, fund-raising and anticipation will culminate on Tuesday with a performance of "Rough Magic," a modern take on Shakespeare's "The Tempest" that is set partly in New York City.
"I wonder if we'll stick out," said Jenesis Scott, 29, a student who lives in a housing project in the Bronx and until recently worked as a teaching assistant at a charter school. "At first I was intimidated, but now I'm more positive. Different is good; we'll be more memorable."
They will be among more than 24,000 artists from 41 countries who will perform during the three-week Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which for the true aficionado is considered a must on the theater calendar. The Hostos students are to perform along with three other college groups, through a program that received applications from more than 200 schools in the United States and Canada.
The Hostos Repertory Company grew out of an effort by the college to give its 7,000 students — many of whom are poor and the first in their families to pursue higher education — a taste of literature, art and the finer things in life. It was originally founded in 1983 as a professional group performing Spanish-language dramas, and was revived in 2005 with students, said Angel Morales, a humanities professor who doubles as the artistic director.
The students started with a bilingual translation of "Romeo and Juliet" by Pablo Neruda that filled the college's 362-seat theater. Soon there was one play every semester, many with Latino themes and authors, including "A Bicycle Country" by Nilo Cruz, and "Chain Reaction," a work about the Puerto Rican activist Antonia Pantoja written by Tere Martinez, an adjunct professor at Hostos.
The college, an often overlooked branch of the City University of New York that is known for its training programs in nursing, dental hygiene and radiologic technology, took the unusual step of bringing the plays into the classroom. Professors in English, the humanities, education, sociology and the sciences collaborated to teach ideas and lessons from the various works, and post online study guides.
George Alvarenga, 23, the middle of three children of a home attendant and a building handyman, said that until he landed at Hostos, he had only seen theater performed in his high school, "so I'm thinking what's so great about seeing it live."
But after taking a class with Professor Morales last year, he waited in line for four hours for free tickets to Shakespeare in the Park. He has been back twice, so far. "Every show is a different show, anything can happen," he said. "I like that because it's a unique morsel that you get to savor. What you see today is not what you'll get tomorrow."
In 2011, Professor Morales was invited to visit the Edinburgh festival by the International Collegiate Theater Festival, an organization that presents college productions as part of the Festival Fringe. Hostos students had started to attract notice outside the Bronx, and performed that year alongside groups from Yale and Boston Universities in a regional college theater festival.
"We bring ethnic diversity," Professor Morales, 42, said. "We bring energy. We bring the thirst of young students from the South Bronx to showcase their talents at a time when opportunities for them are scarce."
Hostos raised $40,000 through donations from alumni and others to cover airfare, housing, festival fees and most meals. The students will be accompanied by Professor Morales and the college president, Felix V. Matos Rodriguez.
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Scott Audette/Reuters
Alex Rodriguez hopes to rejoin the Yankees on Monday, but a suspension from Major League Baseball could come before that.
Alex Rodriguez's effort to return to the Yankees' lineup before Major League Baseball issues its expected suspension of him is moving into a decisive phase, with the possibility that the games he is set to play in minor league settings over the next few days could be his last ones for a long time.
Rodriguez, the 38-year-old third baseman now in baseball's cross hairs, will play in a simulated game Thursday at the Yankees' complex in Tampa, Fla., followed by a minor league game Friday at an undisclosed location, perhaps Class AA Trenton.
All that, however, could change abruptly if he comes to an agreement to accept a substantial suspension. That possibility grew on Wednesday with the disclosure that baseball and Rodriguez's representatives, through the players union, were engaged in a dialogue about his situation.
In the meantime, a tentative plan calls for Rodriguez to meet his Yankees teammates Monday in Chicago, where the team will begin a series against the White Sox. But that may be too late for Rodriguez, who at this point is hardly the master of his own fate.
For the second time in two days, baseball officials met with their union counterparts Wednesday to inform them of the suspensions the league is about to hand down in connection with its investigation of a South Florida clinic suspected of dispensing performance-enhancing drugs.
Major League Baseball is preparing to suspend Rodriguez and other players, perhaps by Friday. Rodriguez is expected to incur the heaviest penalty by far, with the commissioner's office signaling it might give him a lifetime ban or even seek to punish him under provisions of the collective bargaining agreement that would not allow him to immediately appeal his punishment.
But that tough posture by baseball may be modified as a result of the current dialogue, which was cited by a person with knowledge of the matter. It was unclear whether the discussions would lead to Rodriguez's accepting a suspension that would prevent him from putting on a major league uniform for the rest of this season and much or all of 2014.
Meanwhile, Rodriguez continues to move closer to being able to play in major league games for the first time since he had hip surgery in January. The whole situation — a looming suspension, the possibility of a deal, Rodriguez's desire to play now — essentially puts the Yankees in uncharted waters, but General Manager Brian Cashman tried to deal with it during a conference call with reporters.
Cashman did not rule out Rodriguez's playing in more minor league rehabilitation games over the weekend. The Yankees have a three-game series against the Padres in San Diego this weekend, and Rodriguez, under any almost scenario, is unlikely to join them for that.
After that comes the three-game series against the White Sox. Rodriguez could take part in those games, although by then he might be appealing a hefty suspension, or already beginning an agreed-on exile from the sport.
Rodriguez and the other players expected to be suspended have been linked to the activities of a now-defunct anti-aging clinic that operated under the name Biogenesis. But Rodriguez stands out from the others because baseball officials believe he tried to obstruct the league's investigation of the clinic. For that reason, he is facing a penalty that could put the rest of his career in jeopardy.
But there have been indications that Rodriguez might be open to accepting a deal that would be less harsh than a lifetime ban. And it is quite possible that the players union is counseling him to take that approach. Michael Weiner, the head of the union, has said that in instances in which there is overwhelming evidence against a player in the Biogenesis investigation, the union would want that player to make a deal with baseball rather than fight a suspension.
If Rodriguez did agree to a deal, he would be following the example of another star player, Milwaukee's Ryan Braun, who was likewise ensnared in the Biogenesis case and 10 days ago agreed to a suspension that immediately barred him from playing.
In Braun's case, the suspension is for 65 games, through the end of the 2013 season. In Rodriguez's case, the suspension would presumably be for much longer, perhaps lasting through the 2014 season. And in that case, Rodriguez would not be rejoining his teammates at any point this season.
In the conference call, Cashman said he had no information about baseball's investigation and its expected suspensions and was proceeding as if Rodriguez would play for him again this season. Cashman said that Rodriguez was due to get on a plane and rejoin the team soon.
"That is correct, absolutely," he said. "We have a plan in place with a schedule that Alex; my trainer, Tim Lentych; and myself all worked through the other day."
Rodriguez turned 38 on Saturday. If he ultimately accepted a deal that would leave him unable to play until 2015, he would be 39 by the time he got back on the field. Coming back at that age after missing two full seasons in the major leagues would be a steep challenge, and maybe an impossible one.
For now, Rodriguez continues to work out as if his return were within days. But with a suspension looming, and baseball hoping to pressure Rodriguez's side into a deal, it is unclear when, or if, that return may take place.
