Byline: By richard siklos section: Section C; Column ; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. Length
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URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (90%); WEATHER (90%); NATURAL DISASTERS (90%); HURRICANES (89%); SMALL BUSINESS ASSISTANCE (89%); DISASTER RELIEF (89%); SMALL BUSINESS (89%); GOVERNMENT CONTROLLERS & AUDITORS (89%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (89%); LEGISLATORS (89%); POLITICAL PARTIES (78%); DELAYS & POSTPONEMENTS (77%); APPROVALS (77%); US DEMOCRATIC PARTY (76%); TROPICAL STORMS (72%) Disasters; Finances; Budgets and Budgeting; Hurricanes and Tropical Storms; Katrina (Storm) ; Rita (Storm); Disasters ORGANIZATION: SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (91%) Small Business Administration; Government Accountability Office PERSON: NYDIA VELAZQUEZ (53%) Ron Nixon; Leslie Eaton GEOGRAPHIC: NEW ORLEANS, LA, USA (79%) LOUISIANA, USA (79%); MIDWEST USA (79%); SOUTHEAST USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%) United States; New Orleans (La); Louisiana LOAD-DATE: January 18, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1211 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final The Titans Return, Carrying Lacrosse Sticks BYLINE: By GEORGE VECSEY. E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com SECTION: Section D; Column 2; Sports Desk; SPORTS OF THE TIMES; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 887 words Casey Powell made a big mistake bringing his wife to New York to watch him play Saturday night in the first lacrosse game ever at Madison Square Garden. ''Now she wants to live here,'' Powell, a former Syracuse all-American, said yesterday. Derek Jeter can afford the island of Manhattan. So can David Wright. Professional lacrosse players are not quite there yet. Powell sometimes drives down from his home in the Syracuse area with his teammate Gewas Schindler, who lives on an Indian reservation. New York's insane real estate market is out of range for members of the New York Titans, an expansion team of the National Lacrosse League. The average salary is said to be around $14,000, with almost every player working another job. Madison Square Garden, which has been host to lion tamers and rock stars, slam-dunkers and even a pope, is part of the dream for lacrosse. ''You'd love to be able to live in this market and not have to split time,'' said Ryan Boyle, a former Princeton star who signed a lease in Austin, Tex., before he was acquired by the Titans. There are former lacrosse players all over New York, particularly in the financial institutions, using the same aggressiveness they once demonstrated with sticks in their hands. One former intramural player at Johns Hopkins, Michael R. Bloomberg, currently works at City Hall, in the top job. The horror of 9/11 cut deeply into the lacrosse community. A friend of mine, who played for Hopkins, said he attended five funerals in the days after the attack. Another casualty that day was Eamon J. McEneaney of Cantor Fitzgerald, a former star at Cornell, who left behind an aura of family man, professional, athlete and poet. His widow, Bonnie, found poems he had written, and allowed them to be published three years later under the title, ''A Bend in the Road.'' Other famous Americans have played lacrosse, including Jim Thorpe, the Olympic champion; Jim Brown, the football running back; and Bruce Arena, the former national soccer team coach. None of them were from the preppy side of town. ''My father worked in a steel mill, and I'm the first member of the family to go to college,'' said Powell, from Carthage, N.Y., whose two younger brothers, Ryan and Mike, also starred at Syracuse. Boyle, originally from Hunt Valley, Md., said, ''I'm one of six children, and we're definitely middle class.'' Their sport has taken a beating in the past year after rape charges were filed against three Duke University lacrosse players after two women had been hired to strip at a team party. The initial rape charges were recently dismissed, but sexual offense and kidnapping charges are pending. The bulk of Duke's 2006 season was terminated, and the coach resigned, but the district attorney, who had labeled the Duke players hooligans, took himself off the case last week. ''It's like any legal situation, you hold your judgment until the facts are in,'' Boyle said yesterday. ''But as time progressed, this case has definitely gotten weakened.'' Boyle added that some of the players may have ''made a mistake in judgment.'' Powell said he did not like the way ''the media put its spin on it.'' Many of the players in this indoor league come from the top lacrosse colleges, but some come directly from Indian regions in the northeast quadrant of the continent, where the sport began centuries ago. (The first men's intercollegiate game, between Manhattan College and New York University, was played in Central Park in 1877. The Titans held a publicity jaunt to the cold, sun-dappled park yesterday, as homage.) The players on the league's 13 teams have occupations as diverse as firefighter, teacher, insurance agent, electrician, soldier, winemaker, refrigerator repairman and police officer. ''We were having a league telephone conference, and Paul Day, the coach of Edmonton, who's a police officer, said, 'I've got to get off the call because I've got a situation,' '' said George Daniel, the president of the Titans. ''He was in some kind of chase, because we could hear the sirens in the background.'' Powell and Boyle each run a business -- Powell Brothers Lacrosse and Boyle's Trilogy Lacrosse. As entrepreneurs, they seem to appreciate the thin margin for operating this league. Reebok has invested more than $10 million for five years, while other sponsors include Dodge, Progressive Insurance and Supercuts. The league has a weekly game on the Versus cable network and the average attendance is said to be more than 11,000, with crowds of 18,000 recorded twice last weekend, in Buffalo and in Denver. Nearly half the teams have common ownership with franchises in the N.H.L., sharing large arenas comfortably because an indoor lacrosse carpet can be laid on ice in an hour or two. The New York team (which will play four games at the Garden and four at Nassau Coliseum) is owned by a group led by Gary Rosenbach, the founder of the Galleon Group, a hedge fund. Fans voted for the nickname, Titans, which was also the nickname of the original New York team in the American Football League in 1960, before they became the Jets. Does this mean a Joe Namath is in the near future? Not necessarily. Powell and Boyle are big names in their sport, but for the foreseeable future they are commuters to the big city they represent. URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: STADIUMS & ARENAS (89%); SEX OFFENSES (89%); ATHLETES (89%); SEXUAL ASSAULT (86%); SPORTS & RECREATION (78%); SPORTS (78%); CHILDREN (78%); HOUSING MARKET (76%); FAMILY (74%); REAL ESTATE (71%); BANKING & FINANCE (70%); WAGES & SALARIES (69%); LEASE AGREEMENTS (66%); OLYMPICS (62%); SOCCER (61%); KIDNAPPING & ABDUCTION (60%); IRON & STEEL MILLS (50%); SUITS & CLAIMS (50%); SPORTS & RECREATION EVENTS (90%); LACROSSE (96%); SOCCER TOURNAMENTS (78%) Lacrosse; Sports of the Times (Times Column) COMPANY: CANTOR FITZGERALD LP (53%); CANTOR FITZGERALD INTERNATIONAL (53%) ORGANIZATION: New York Titans PERSON: DEREK JETER (58%); MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (54%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (51%) George Vecsey GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (92%); AUSTIN, TX, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (95%); TEXAS, USA (79%); MARYLAND, USA (69%) UNITED STATES (95%) LOAD-DATE: January 18, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Photo: Casey Powell, left, and Ryan Boyle of the New York Titans visiting Central Park, the site of the first men's college lacrosse match in 1877. (Photo by Barton Silverman/The New York Times)(pg. D3) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1212 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Inquiry Faults Management At BP in Blast That Killed 15 BYLINE: By HEATHER TIMMONS SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 3 LENGTH: 904 words DATELINE: LONDON, Jan. 16 An investigation led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III has concluded that weak leadership at BP and a lack of attention to effective safety helped create a dangerous setting that led to 15 deaths at the oil giant's Texas refinery, according to the report released Tuesday. Based on hundreds of interviews with employees, the 374-page report painted a layered picture of recurring neglect, avoidance and wrong-headed corporate directives that culminated in the fatal explosion at the refinery in 2005. The panel made 10 recommendations, including the creation of an independent monitor to report to the company's board over a five-year period. BP responded that it would carry out the 11-member panel's findings. The company's departing chief executive, John Browne, denied that there were fundamental problems with BP's structure or that a succession of problems were related. But he said he ''has a responsibility to implement these findings'' and a ''moral responsibility'' to make sure the company is improved. Mr. Browne said last week that he would retire from BP in July, 18 months sooner than expected. He will be succeeded by Tony Hayward, the head of exploration and production, who will face the challenge of trying to repair the company's reputation with investors and the public. The Baker report said the company had fundamental problems in its ''decentralized management system and entrepreneurial culture,'' which left safety processes to the discretion of managers and did not define what was expected of them. Executive management was not held accountable for safety process of the United States refineries, the report said. Though the panel did not explicitly blame Mr. Browne, he was a key proponent of the entrepreneurial culture. The Baker report said that workers at BP's United States refineries were overworked and the refineries thinly staffed and that employees there did not report accidents and safety concerns because they feared repercussions or judged that the company would not do anything about them. Internal company audits were focused on making sure that refineries were in compliance with laws, rather than ensuring that management systems were making the refineries safe, it added. The report made a series of suggestions about improving safety culture, including improving the auditing and safety education at all the United States refineries. Since the explosion, BP has created a safety and operations division that reports to the chief executive and has increased its budget for its refining operations. BP has said in the past that it will spend $200 million to pay for 300 external experts to conduct audits and redesigns. It has also said it has set aside money to compensate victims of the explosion at Texas City, Tex., near Galveston, which also injured 170 people. Though it did not conclude that BP purposely reduced safety spending, the report said that cost-cutting at BP had been severe. At the Texas City refinery, total maintenance spending fell 41 percent from 1992 to 1999, and total capital spending fell 84 percent from 1992 to 2000. On top of those cuts, BP challenged its managers to reduce costs by 25 percent after its merger with Amoco in 1998. The investigation was initiated after the Texas City refinery explosion. Investigators at the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board say that flammable liquids overflowed at the plant, creating a cloud of vapor that ignited. BP has had a succession of diverse problems in recent years, including leaks in its Alaska pipeline and accusations of market manipulation at its trading desks, leading some to re-examine a once highly praised company and its longtime chief executive, Mr. Browne. Many workers at Texas City, Toledo and Whiting refineries complained about a lack of funds that helped create unsafe conditions, the report said, telling investigators they thought that ''profit comes before safety'' at the company. On Tuesday, BP officials denied that this was the case. Mr. Baker served as chairman of a panel reviewing BP's safety practices. The chairman and president of BP America, Robert A. Malone, said in an interview that the report is ''hard-hitting and it hurts.'' Mr. Malone emphasized that reducing costs did not necessarily translate into safety problems, and that the company had never refused to finance a safety matter. BP managers were flooded with what the report called ''initiative overload.'' The company required that managers follow numerous initiatives, on issues as diverse as health, environmental matters and asset sales, which took attention away from day-to-day safety concerns. The ''large number of initiatives and related paperwork contributed to a heavy workload and prevented the work force from being as focused on safety and operations as they would like,'' the report found. Employees at BP's United States refineries also worked significant amounts of overtime, it found. According to minutes of a 2003 meeting, some laboratory staff members worked 24 hours consecutively. High turnover at BP refineries, particularly in management, also contributed to inconsistent safety procedures. It was clear from the report that BP managers had been aware there were problems at refineries. In 2003 and 2004, managers said the refinery in Texas City was at risk because of ''infrastructure integrity and mechanical reliability.''
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1213 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Two Charged In Payments From Wagers On Internet BYLINE: By The Associated Press SECTION: Section C; Column 6; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 6 LENGTH: 315 words Two founders of a company that processes Internet gambling transactions were arrested and charged with laundering billions of dollars in gambling proceeds, federal prosecutors announced yesterday. The charges against John David Lefebvre, 55, and Stephen Eric Lawrence, 46, who founded the company, Neteller, in 1999, were in two criminal complaints unsealed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Monday, Michael J. Garcia, United States attorney, said in a statement. The prosecutor said the men, both Canadian citizens, knew when they took their company public that its activities were illegal and conceded that they were risking prosecution by the federal government. ''Blatant violations of U.S. law are not a mere 'risk' to be disclosed to prospective investors,'' Mr. Garcia said. ''Criminal prosecutions related to online gambling will be pursued even in cases where assets and defendants are positioned outside of the United States.'' Mr. Lefebvre and Mr. Lawrence were charged in connection with the creation and operation of an Internet payment services company that transferred billions of dollars of illegal gambling proceeds from American citizens to the owners of overseas Internet gambling companies. Mr. Lefebvre was arrested on Monday in the Malibu area of Los Angeles, and Mr. Lawrence, who lives in Paradise Island, Bahamas, was arrested on Monday in the United States Virgin Islands. Peter Neiman, a lawyer for Mr. Lawrence, said he had no comment. A lawyer for Mr. Lefebvre did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Neteller is based in the Isle of Man and is publicly traded in Britain. The company began processing Internet gambling transactions in approximately July 2000. Prosecutors said Neteller in 2005 alone processed more than $7.3 billion in financial transactions, 95 percent of them derived from money transfers involving Internet gambling.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1214 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final The Power and the Potential of India's Economic Change BYLINE: By WILLIAM GRIMES SECTION: Section E; Column 1; The Arts/Cultural Desk; BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Pg. 9 LENGTH: 943 words In Spite of the Gods The Strange Rise of Modern India By Edward Luce Illustrated. 383 pages. Doubleday. $26. All eyes are on China as it races to become the world's next great power. Smart bettors would be wise to put some money on India to get there first, and Edward Luce explains why in ''In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India,'' his highly informative, wide-ranging survey. Mr. Luce, who reported from New Delhi for The Financial Times from 2001 to 2005, offers an Imax view of a nation so enormous that it embraces every possible contradiction. Always it seems to be teetering on the edge of either greatness or the abyss. Right now the future looks inviting. India's dizzying economic ascent began in 1991, when the government abruptly dismantled the ''license raj,'' a system of tight controls and permits in place since independence in 1947. Mr. Luce, as you might expect from a Financial Times reporter, does a superb job of explaining the new Indian economy and why its transformation qualifies as strange. Unlike China, India has not undergone an industrial revolution. Its economy is powered not by manufacturing but by its service industries. In a vast subcontinent of poor farmers whose tiny holdings shrink by the decade, a highly competitive, if small, technology sector and a welter of service businesses have helped create a middle class, materialistic and acquisitive, along with some spectacularly rich entrepreneurs. ''If Gandhi had not been cremated,'' Mr. Luce writes, ''he would be turning in his grave.'' Mr. Luce, notebook in hand, matches faces to trends as he tours India from the affluent, relatively well-governed south to the poor, hopelessly mismanaged north, where the age-old problems of illiteracy, poverty, government corruption and caste divisions persist. Much of the book consists of interviews and colorful vignettes intended to illustrate the myriad statistics that, out of context, can numb the mind. The blend of anecdote, history and economic analysis makes ''In Spite of the Gods'' an endlessly fascinating, highly pleasurable way to catch up on a very big story. As Mr. Luce dryly observes, ''India never lacks for scale.'' This is a country where 300 million people live in absolute poverty, most of them in its 680,000 villages, but where cellphone users have jumped from 3 million in 2000 to 100 million in 2005, and the number of television channels from 1 in 1991 to more than 150 last year. India's economy has grown by 6 percent annually since 1991, a rate exceeded only by China's, yet there are a mere 35 million taxpayers in a country with a population of 1.1 billion. Only 10 percent of India's workers have jobs in the formal economy. Its excellent engineering schools turn out a million graduates each year, 10 times the number for the United States and Europe combined, yet 35 percent of the country remains illiterate. Despite its robust democracy and honest elections, India faces the future saddled with one of the most corrupt government bureaucracies on earth. Mr. Luce encounters a woman in Sunder Nagri, a New Delhi slum, whose quest for a ration card entitling her to subsidized wheat and other staples involved bribing an official to get an application form. The form was in English, which she could not read, so she had to pay a second official to fill it out. When she turned up to claim her wheat, it was moldy and crawling with insects. The store owner had evidently sold his good government wheat on the black market. In the northern state of Bihar, Mr. Luce writes, more than 80 percent of subsidized government food is stolen. Most ration cards are obtained through bribery, by Indians who are not poor. It's the same story in nearly every area of an economy touched by the groping tentacles of a government that ''is never absent from your life, except when you actually need it.'' As a former cabinet official tells Mr. Luce, corruption is not simply a nuisance or an added burden on the system. Rather, he says, ''in many respects and in many parts of India it is the system.'' Mr. Luce, traveling the country's rickety rail system, covers an enormous amount of ground. He inquires into the Kashmir dispute while dissecting India's fraught relationship with Pakistan; marvels over New Delhi's spanking-new subway system; describes the middle class rage for megaweddings; pays a visit to Bollywood and, in some of his most absorbing chapters, analyzes the changing caste system, the status of India's Muslims and the alarming rise of Hindu nationalism. All this and a visit to C2W.com, a Mumbai company that markets brands through the Internet, cellphones and interactive television shows. Its founder, Alok Kejriwal, is still in his 30s, and to Mr. Luce represents the new India. ''I am greedy,'' he tells the author. ''I have no trouble admitting to that.'' At one point, Mr. Luce ponders India's constant state of chaos and compares it to a swarm of bees. From inside the swarm, things look random, but from the outside, the bees hold formation and move forward coherently. Sometime in the 2020s, at current growth rates, India will overtake Japan to become the world's third-largest economy. Greatness lies within its grasp, Mr. Luce argues, if it can figure out a way to restructure its inefficient agriculture, put millions of desperately poor people in jobs that pay more than a pittance, wake up to a potential H.I.V.-AIDS crisis and root out government corruption. Mr. Luce takes a cautiously optimistic view. ''India is not on an autopilot to greatness,'' he writes. ''But it would take an incompetent pilot to crash the plane.''
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