Baseball reflects on HOF pair Weaver, Musial


One was born in St. Louis, the other became a star there.


Aside from that, Earl Weaver and Stan Musial were about as different as two Hall of Famers could be.


"Talk about your odd couple," said George Vecsey, the longtime sports columnist for the New York Times who wrote a recent biography of Musial.


Weaver was a 5-foot-6 rabble rouser whose penchant for quarreling with umpires belied a cerebral approach to managing that has stood the test of time. Musial was a humble slugger with a funky batting stance who was beloved by Cardinals fans and respected by pretty much everyone else.


Saturday began with news of Weaver's death at age 82, and by the end of the night Musial had died, too, leaving baseball to reflect on two very different but very distinguished careers.


"Earl was well known for being one of the game's most colorful characters with a memorable wit, but he was also amongst its most loyal," Commissioner Bud Selig said.


Selig later released a statement after Musial's death at age 92.


"Stan's life embodies baseball's unparalleled history and why this game is the national pastime. As remarkable as 'Stan the Man' was on the field, he was a true gentleman in life," Selig said.


A three-time MVP and seven-time National League batting champion, Musial helped the Cardinals win three World Series championships in the 1940s. His popularity in St. Louis can be measured by the not one, but two statues that stand in his honor outside Busch Stadium. After his death Saturday, Cardinals of more recent vintage began offering condolences almost immediately.


"Sad to hear about Stan the Man, it's an honor to wear the same uniform," said a message posted on the Twitter account of Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday.


Albert Pujols, who led St. Louis to World Series titles in 2006 and 2011 before leaving as a free agent before last season, offered prayers for Musial's family via Twitter.


"I will cherish my friendship with Stan for as long as I live," said a message posted on Pujols' site. "Rest in Peace."


Weaver was born in St. Louis, but his greatest success came as a manager in Baltimore. He took the Orioles to the World Series four times over 17 seasons, winning one title in 1970.


Never a fan of smallball strategies like bunting and stealing bases, Weaver preferred to wait for a three-run homer, always hoping for a big inning that could break the game open.


"No one managed a ballclub or pitching staff better than Earl," said Davey Johnson, who played under Weaver with the Orioles.


Johnson now manages the Washington Nationals and ran the Orioles from 1996-97.


"He was decades ahead of his time," Johnson said. "Not a game goes by that I don't draw on something Earl did or said. I will miss him every day."


While Musial could let his bat do the talking, Weaver was more than willing to shout to be heard. His salty-tongued arguing with umpires will live on through YouTube, and Orioles programs sold at the old Memorial Stadium frequently featured photos of Weaver squabbling.


Former umpire Don Denkinger remembered a game in which the manager disputed a call with Larry McCoy at the plate.


"Earl tells us, 'Now I'm gonna show you how stupid you all are.' Earl goes down to first base and ejects the first base umpire. Then he goes to second base and ejects the second base umpire. I'm working third base and now he comes down and ejects me," Denkinger said.


Musial was a quieter type whose hitting exploits were on par with contemporaries Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio — but without the bright lights of the big city.


"I knew Stan very well. He used to take care of me at All-Star games, 24 of them," Hall of Famer Willie Mays said. "He was a true gentleman who understood the race thing and did all he could. Again, a true gentleman on and off the field — I never heard anybody say a bad word about him, ever."


Read More..

The Boss: New Leaders Inc. C.E.O. on Giving Children a Chance





I AM the youngest of 10 children in my family, and the only one born in the United States. My father was a municipal judge who fled Haiti during the Duvalier regime. He and my mother settled in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, but could not initially afford to bring over my four brothers and five sisters, who stayed in Haiti with relatives.







Jean S. Desravines is the chief executive of New Leaders Inc. in New York.




AGE 41


FAVORITE PASTIMES Karate and taekwondo


MEMORABLE BOOK "How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character," by Paul Tough






Since he did not speak English fluently, my father worked as a janitor and had a second job as a hospital security guard. He later took a third job driving a taxi at night to pay for my tuition at Nazareth Regional High School, a Roman Catholic school in Brooklyn. My parents were determined that I was going to get a good education, and wanted to keep me away from local troubles, which did claim two of my childhood friends.


Working so many jobs overwhelmed my father. He had a heart attack and died at age 59 behind the wheel of his taxi. My mother found it difficult to cope without my father and moved back to Haiti in 1989 with two of my siblings. I thought I would have to leave school because I had no money for tuition, but Nazareth agreed to pay my way.


I wound up sleeping in my car for almost three months, showering at school after my track team’s practice. I also held down two jobs, both in retailing, and one of my sisters and I rented a basement apartment in East Flatbush.


After graduating from high school in 1990, I attended St. Francis College in Brooklyn, on athletic and academic scholarships. I worked first at the New York City Board of Education, where H. Carl McCall was president, then in his office after he became New York State comptroller. I later worked in the office of Ruth Messinger, then the Manhattan borough president.


I broadened my nonprofit organization experience at the Faith Center for Community Development while earning my master’s of public administration at New York University. I married my high school sweetheart, Melissa, and we now have two children.


In 2001, I began to work toward my original goal — improving educational opportunities for children — and joined the city’s Department of Education. I was later recruited under the new administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to help start a program as part of his Children First reforms.


In 2003, I became the Department of Education’s executive director for parent and community engagement, and, two years later, senior counselor to Joel I. Klein, then the school chancellor. He taught me a great deal about leadership and how to change the education system. But I began to realize public education could not be transformed without great principals who function like C.E.O.’s of their schools.


So in 2006 I returned to the nonprofit world, to New Leaders, a national organization founded in 2000 to recruit and develop leaders to turn around low-performing public schools. Initially, I managed city partnerships and expanded our program in areas like New Orleans and Charlotte, N.C.


In 2011, I became C.E.O., and revamped our program to produce even stronger student achievement results, streamlined our costs, diversified funding sources and forged new partnerships. We have an annual budget of $31.5 million, which comes from foundations, businesses, individuals and government grants, and a staff of about 200 people at a dozen locations.


We have a new partnership with Pearson Education to provide greater learning opportunities to public school principals. The goal of these efforts is to have a great principal in each of our nation’s public schools — to make sure that, just as I did, all kids get a chance at success.


As told to Elizabeth Olson.



Read More..

Business Briefing | Medicine: F.D.A. Clears Botox to Help Bladder Control



Botox, the wrinkle treatment made by Allergan, has been approved to treat adults with overactive bladders who cannot tolerate or were not helped by other drugs, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday. Botox injected into the bladder muscle causes the bladder to relax, increasing its storage capacity. “Clinical studies have demonstrated Botox’s ability to significantly reduce the frequency of urinary incontinence,” Dr. Hylton V. Joffe, director of the F.D.A.’s reproductive and urologic products division, said in a statement. “Today’s approval provides an important additional treatment option for patients with overactive bladder, a condition that affects an estimated 33 million men and women in the United States.”


Read More..

The Lede Blog: Analysis of Armstrong’s Confession

As the second part of Lance Armstrong’s televised confession that he doped and lied his way to seven Tour de France titles is broadcast on the Oprah Winfrey Network Friday night, The Lede will have real-time fact-checking and analysis from New York Times reporters, including Juliet Macur and Naila-Jean Meyers. We will also round up reactions from fans, bloggers, journalists and fellow riders once the broadcast and live stream gets underway, at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.

10:20 P.M. |Video Highlights of Armstrong’s Confession

Now that the broadcast is over, the Oprah Winfrey Network has posted highlights on its YouTube channel.

Lance Armstrong on his “most humbling moment.”
Lance Armstrong on what he was thinking when he attacked his critics for telling the truth.
“If you’re asking me if I want to compete again? The answer’s, Hell yes.”
Lance Armstrong argued that his punishment was “a death penalty.”
Lance Armstrong on talking to his children about his cheating.

That concludes our live-blog coverage of Lance Armstrong’s confession. Thanks for joining us and thanks to all of the bloggers and journalists whose Twitter commentary we quoted.

Robert Mackey

10:09 P.M. |A More Emotional Interview

More than Part 1, the second part of the interview felt like the old Oprah Winfrey show. Among the questions Winfrey asked Armstrong in the final 10 minutes of the interview:

“Will you rise again? Are you a better human being? What is the moral of the story?”

The answers: “I don’t know.” “Without a doubt. “I don’t have a great answer.”

O.K., Armstrong said more than that:

“I do not know the outcome here and I’m getting comfortable with that. That would have driven me crazy in the past.”

“I am deeply sorry for what I did. I can say that thousands of times and it may never be enough.”

“When I was diagnosed, I was a better human being after that. And I was a smarter human being after that. And then I lost my way. Here’s the second time. And it’s easy to sit here and say I feel different, I feel smarter, I feel like a better man today, but I can’t lose my way again. And only I can control that.”

“The ultimate crime is the betrayal of these people that supported me and believed in me and they got lied to.”

Winfrey even ended the interview by repeating what Kristin Armstrong told her ex-husband in 2009: “The truth will set you free.” That’s the Oprah many people expected when the interview was announced.

Naila-Jean Meyers

10:04 P.M. |The Financial Implications of the Truth

Clarification was needed when Oprah asked him the financial toll of his demise.

“Have you lost everything?” she asked.

He would say only that he lost $75 million in future income.

”Gone,” he said, “and probably never coming back.”

But it would be wrong to imply that he is without money. The bigger question is not about lost earnings but what he believes he will lose.

What has he paid lawyers? What does he estimate that will pay in potential civil liability or settlements? What does he have to give back to sponsors? Oprah let Armstrong control the narrative.

One more point: did it seem to everyone that Armstrong never uncrossed his legs for the entire two and a half hours he talked to Oprah?

Richard Sandomir

10:02 P.M. |A Shifting Account of the Impact on Cancer

Tonight Armstrong is saying that following his cancer diagnoses “I was a better human being after that, I was a smarter human being after that.” Last night, however, he said that his recovery from cancer turned him into a no-holds-barred, win-at-all-costs hyper-competitor. Given that he’s now comparing his current situation to the cancer diagnoses, what does this all mean?

Ian Austen and Juliet Macur

9:52 P.M. |How Editing Changes Impressions

The previous segment saw Lance Armstrong talking at length, and breaking down in tears, talking about his children. After the commercial break, a seemingly composed Armstrong was asked whether anyone on his team had paid off the United States Anti-Doping Agency. He said no.

But the change in tone of the interview was abrupt and odd. It makes me wonder about how the interview was edited.

Naila-Jean Meyers

9:48 P.M. |Armstrong Chokes Up

Armstrong, in many ways, seems to be dictating this part of the interview. He’s asking a lot of questions of himself, and Winfrey is, again, not asking critical follow-ups.

When she asked, was there anybody who knew the whole truth? Armstrong said, “Yeah.” But Winfrey didn’t ask who.

Armstrong has been allowed to go on long narratives about his family, his children, his “process,” and change subjects without Winfrey asserting herself into the conversation.

Her silence, though, helped create what has so far been the most emotional part of the interview, Armstrong’s description of what he told his 13-year-old son, Luke, over the holidays about the case against him. “I told him not to defend me anymore,” Armstrong said after a long pause during which became choked up.

Naila-Jean Meyers

Oprah opened up a significant door with Armstrong that Armstrong danced around and then shut: did people tell him to stop doping, stop the lying and, one assumes, stop steamrolling people who disagreed with him?

“Could they have done anything?” she asked.

“Probably not,” he said. But then, he detoured, with Oprah’s help, into discussing a conversation with his ex-wife, Kristin, about whether he should return to cycling from his retirement. She told him if he did it without doping and not to cross the line again.

He said that Kristin was “not curious,” and perhaps “did not want to know.”

Still, did Kristin, or anyone else, plead with him, intervene with him, tell him he’s a jerk? Right now, we don’t know. “I said, `You’ve got a deal,’ ” he said. Of course, others disagree that he did not use performance-enhancing drugs during his comeback in 2009 and ’10.

Oprah opened yet another area of inquiry when she asked Armstrong if he is in therapy; he said that he was and that he had been in therapy sporadically throughout his life but now needed to do more. But just like that, the door closed before any questions about whether therapy enabled him to confess his doping sins, even if his admissions have not satisfied everyone.

Richard Sandomir

9:44 P.M. |On Losing the 2009 Edition of the Tour

Armstrong said he expected to win the 2009 Tour in his first year back from a several-year break. Finishing third was hard for him. He eventually rationalized that finish by saying he “just got beat” by two guys who were better than him. I would beg to disagree. Armstrong did everything he could to sabotage Alberto Contador’s victory that year, Contador has said. He left Contador stranded at the team hotel without a ride to the individual time trial. He also harassed Contador at team dinners, knowing full well that Contador, a Spaniard, could understand English. He also criticized Contador for attacking at the end of one mountaintop finish, but Contador later said he attacked because he thought his team was plotting against him.

Juliet Macur

9:38 P.M. |On the Yellow Jersey Twitter Picture

Oprah asked about the picture Armstrong posted on Twitter of him lying on his couch surrounded by framed yellow jerseys.

“That was another mistake,” he said.

Then Oprah basically laughed at him for showing such hubris, essentially saying, “What were you thinking?!??!”

“That was just more defiance,” he said.

Naila-Jean Meyers

9:33 P.M. |A More Contrite Armstrong, but Questions Linger

Armstrong is sounding much, much more contrite than he was in Oprah Part 1 on Thursday. He said his lowest moment was cutting all ties with his charity and that he was in therapy now. He called it “sick” that he told a lawyer in sworn testimony in 2005 that he would never dope because it would disappoint the millions of cancer survivors who looked up to him. Yet he still said he deserved a six-month suspension, which is the punishment his teammates received when they came clean to the United States Anti-Doping Agency. The difference, though, is that those teammates came forward to tell the truth about their doping, while he kept his secrets for months and months more. (And most likely would have kept them forever if he had never been caught.)

Armstrong said his former wife, Kristin, believed in honesty and the truth. But at least one rider who testified in the United States Anti-Doping Agency case said Kristin was complicit in Armstrong’s doping. She allegedly handed out cortisone pills to riders at the 1998 world championships, prompting another rider to say, “Lance’s wife is handing out joints.” Armstrong said Kristin was only on a “need to know” basis regarding the drugs, but some of Armstrong’s teammates would disagree.

Juliet Macur

9:31 P.M. |Armstrong Admits He Wants to Compete Again

As my colleague Juliet Macur reported two weeks ago, close associates said that he was considering making a confession “because he wants to persuade antidoping officials to restore his eligibility so he can resume his athletic career.”

In response to questions from Winfrey, Armstrong said that he did want to compete again and that was part of the reason he finally admitted cheating.

Armstrong was given a lifetime ban against competition after first attempted to use the courts to block the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s investigation of him and then, when that failed, he refused to participate in the process. The World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, has the power to amend that ban if he provides it with “substantial assistance.” But David Howman, its executive director, told me Friday that not only has Armstrong not done that yet, he hasn’t even contacted WADA.

Some observers of the interview who doubt Armstrong’s contention that he did not cheat during his comeback in 2009, when he continued to work with the infamous doping doctor Michele Ferrari, have suggested that he might be thinking of the statute of limitations, or presenting a case that his ban should be shorter and back-dated to 2005.

Armstrong continues to assert that he didn’t dope during his post retirement Tours de France. Here’s the conclusion of the United States Anti-doping Agency: “Armstrong’s Blood Test Results During the 2009 and 2010 Tours de France are Consistent with His Continued Use of Blood Doping.”

After Thursday’s broadcast, antidoping officials were clear. “If Mr. Armstrong truly wants to make amends for his doping past, then he needs to make a full confession under oath to the relevant anti-doping authorities,” the World Anti-Doping Agency said.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency added: “His admission that he doped throughout his career is a small step in the right direction. But if he is sincere in his desire to correct his past mistakes, he will testify under oath about the full extent of his doping activities.”

Robert Mackey and Ian Austen

9:22 P.M. |Oprah Presses for an Emotional Reaction

Oprah’s first question was: What was the humbling moment that brought you face to face with yourself?

Armstrong began talking about when his sponsors, starting with Nike, bailed out. He knew then that he was losing control of the story. But the most humbling moment came later:

“The one person I didn’t think would leave was the foundation,” Armstrong said. “And that was the most humbling moment.”

Calling the foundation his “sixth child,” he said that stepping aside from the foundation was “the lowest point.”

Armstrong said that he wasn’t forced out but was aware of the pressure and that it was the best thing for the organization that he leave.

After watching the clip of his 2005 deposition, Armstrong said, “I don’t like that guy.”

Winfrey followed up by asking, “Who is that guy?”

“That is a guy who felt invincible, was told he was invincible, truly believed he was invincible,” Armstrong said.

He conceded: “That guy’s still there. I’m not going to lie to you.”

He also talked more about apologies, and when Winfrey asked what he would say to the millions of people who supported him, Armstrong said: “I understand your anger, your sense of betrayal. You supported me forever through all of this, you believed, and I lied to you. And I’m sorry. I will spend — and I’m committed to spend — as long as I have to make amends.”

(And “process” continues to be Armstrong’s favorite word in this interview.)

Naila-Jean Meyers

9:19 P.M. |Did Armstrong’s Doping Cause His Cancer?

Winfrey finally asked Armstrong the question that many people have been wondering: If he thought his doping had caused his testicular cancer. She asked if he thought it did. He said no. And that was it! Winfrey, obviously, should have pushed him on that and asked why he doped even after cancer nearly killed him.

Juliet Macur

9:16 P.M. |Armstrong’s Lowest Point: Leaving Livestrong

Armstrong told Winfrey his lowest moment of his doping scandal: leaving his charity, Livestrong, behind. He said Livestrong had asked him to step down as chairman last fall, then weeks later asked him to cut all ties. He said he wasn’t forced out or told to leave. But that walking away from it “hurt the most.” The charity needed to distance itself from him because it was losing support, two people with knowledge of the situation said. Corporate sponsors were pulling their support or cutting their support in the aftermath of Armstrong’s scandal.

During the interview, Winfrey asked Armstrong to watch video of his own sworn testimony in 2005, when he said that the reason he would never dope was that he would lose “the faith of all of the cancer survivors around the world.” He added: “It’s not about the money for me — everything — it’s also about the faith that people have put in me over the years. So all of that would be erased. So I don’t need it to say in a contract, ‘You’re fired if you test positive.’ That’s not as important as losing the support of hundreds of millions of people.”

Part of Lance Armstrong’s deposition in a 2005 suit against SCA Promotions, a firm that had promised to pay him a huge bonus for winning the Tour de France five straight times.

Juliet Macur and Robert Mackey

9:06 P.M. |What Did Armstrong Tell His Children?

Oprah Winfrey did ask several of the questions that my colleague Juliet Macur suggested the other day, but based on the promos for Part 2, Winfrey will be asking about Armstrong’s children.

To refresh your memory, here is what Juliet suggested Oprah ask about Lance’s children:

When you briefly retired from cycling after winning the 2005 Tour, you said you did so to spend time with your children and be a better father. Do your five children, ages 2 to 13, know about your doping past? If so, when and how did you tell them?

Naila-Jean Meyers

9:03 P.M. |LeMond Gets In a Dig

Greg LeMond, the only American winner of the Tour de France not to be later stripped of the title for cheating, was at odds with Lance Armstrong for more than a decade over suspicions that the Texan had doped.

On Thursday, he reminded readers of his Twitter feed of one of Armstrong’s most adamant declarations that he never doped: a Nike commercial in which he declared that all he was “on” was his bike, six hours a day.

Writing on Twitter, LeMond made a puckish referee to that ad in a message drawing attention to his own latest product, a LeMond Revolution cycling trainer.

Robert Mackey

8:55 P.M. |Annals of Great Televised Confessions

While we are waiting for Lance Armstrong to complete the confession of all confessions, let us revisit some memorable occasions from the past when public figures went on television to express remorse (or not) for things they did.

Who could forget Bill Clinton’s humiliating declaration that oops, he had in fact had an inappropriate relationship with “that woman … Miss Lewinsky” after all?

Or Mark Sanford’s ragged, rambling confession that “hiking the Appalachian Trail” had nothing to do with hiking, or even with Appalachia, and everything to do with his South American mistress?

Or the excruciating spectacle of a squirming Tiger Woods owning up to “irresponsible and selfish behavior” after being exposed as a serial philanderer and sender of unsavory hook-up texts?

Then there was Anthony Weiner’s teary confession that he had for some horrifying reason posted on Twitter a photograph of his underpants (with him inside them) and then lied about it.

There are many more, obviously: this is a great American ritual, the televised confession and plea for forgiveness. But the most interesting one in recent years, to my mind, was David Letterman’s extraordinary admission, in a long, often ruefully funny, monologue in 2009 that seemed to be a brilliant shaggy-dog story until it wasn’t, that he had slept with women on his staff. (He revisited the issue the following week, when he apologized to his staff and to his wife, Regina).

Sarah Lyall

8:51 P.M. |What About the Ratings?

The question on the minds of media types Friday night is: how well will Part 2 of Winfrey’s interview fare?

Part 1 of her sit-down with Armstrong attracted about 3.2 million viewers to OWN. Another 1.1 million watched a repeat of the interview, for a total of 4.3 million for the night. While great for OWN, many executives and producers at other networks thought Armstrong’s confession would draw a bigger total audience.

Maybe the public knew enough from the leaks ahead of time (namely, that Armstrong was certain to confess) or maybe he wasn’t an appealing enough figure to spend 90 minutes with (he didn’t show all that much remorse to Winfrey, some said). Maybe they just wanted to watch “American Idol” instead. Regardless, Armstrong’s messages were seen and heard by a much bigger audience than the one that tuned into OWN — his story blanketed television newscasts on Thursday night and Friday morning.

Typically Friday nights are much lower-rated than Thursday nights across the American TV universe. But OWN is hoping to draw in millions of people for Part 2. The early ratings will be available as early as Saturday.

Brian Stelter

8:34 P.M. |Color Victims of Armstrong’s Bullying Unimpressed

As my colleague Ian Austen reported, among the viewers of Thursday’s broadcast who came away less than impressed by Lance Armstrong’s limited confession were several members of the professional cycling community he attacked after they testified to his doping over the years.

One was the Italian cyclist Filippo Simeoni, who angered Armstrong by testifying against the doping doctor both had been clients of, Michele Ferrari. Armstrong took his revenge by using his position as leader of the 2004 Tour de France to intimidate other riders into agreeing to block Simeoni from competing for a stage win.

Two women who were once part of Armstrong’s inner circle, Emma O’Reilly, his former masseuse, and Betsy Andreu, the wife of a former teammate, both told the Irish journalist David Walsh that the American champion had cheated. In part of his sworn testimony in a 2005 lawsuit, Armstrong denied the allegations made by both women and attacked their characters.

Part of Lance Armstrong’s deposition in a 2005 suit against SCA Promotions, a firm that tried not to pay him a huge bonus for winning the Tour de France because of allegations that he had cheated to win.

In the part of the interview broadcast on Thursday night, Armstrong said that he had tried to apologize to both women. He confirmed that he had lied under oath in denying O’Reilly’s account of how he managed to get out of a failed drug test after the very first stage of his first Tour win in 1999, but he refused to address Andreu’s contention that he had acknowledged using drugs in 1996 to doctors treating him for cancer.

Lance Armstrong admitting to Oprah Winfrey that he attacked critics who told the truth about his doping.

On Friday, O’Reilly responded by saying that it was too late for apologies and called him a “little runt” on British television.

Emma O’Reilly, Lance Armstrong’s former masseuse, on British television on Friday.

As my colleague Juliet Macur reported, Andreu reacted with anger on CNN minutes after the conclusion of Thursday’s night’s broadcast of Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Armstrong’s almost casual admission that he had, in fact, attempted to assassinate the characters of O’Reilly and Betsy Andreu were one of Thursday’s low points for some of his critics.

Two cyclists who admitted to doping during their careers but are leading a movement to reform the sport through better testing and a team committed to clean riding, Jonathan Vaughters and David Miller, responded to Armstrong’s confession in different ways. Vaughters called the admissions a good start, albeit one that Armstrong needed to back up by coming clean in real detail to the proper authorities.

Millar, who was in Spain working with antidoping authorities, pointed readers of his Twitter feed to a fierce destruction of Armstrong’s character by the ESPN writer Bonnie Ford.

The South African sports physiologists who run the Science of Sports blog drew attention to what they said was evidence that Armstrong lied to Winfrey about not doping during his aborted comeback to the sport in 2009.

Robert Mackey

Read More..

Twitter co-founders move Obvious Corp into spacious new digs






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Evan Williams and Biz Stone, the co-founders of Twitter, have leased three sprawling floors in a historic downtown San Francisco tower for their low-profile start-up incubator, The Obvious Corporation.


Obvious said Friday it leased 75,000 square feet at the busy 760 Market Street location – known as the Phelan Building – in one of the city’s larger commercial real estate deals in recent months.






The downtown space will be able to hold roughly 500 employees and signals ambitions at Obvious, which was re-constituted when Williams and Stone both left Twitter in 2011.


The incubator, with no more than two dozen employees, has mostly stayed out of the press except when it unveiled two new blogging platforms called Medium and Branch last September.


Although still thinly staffed, Obvious’s new space is larger than start-up Pinterest’s recently inked lease in the city.


“We need the right space from which to grow the Medium team and position Obvious to focus on bringing our new ideas to life,” Obvious CEO Williams said in a statement Friday about the new lease.


The company will occupy the seventh, eighth and ninth floors of the triangular building, which wraps around a central courtyard, said Jenny Haeg, a real estate agent who has brokered leases for Square Inc, Dropbox, Airbnb and other large tech startups.


(Reporting by Gerry Shih; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Twitter co-founders move Obvious Corp into spacious new digs
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/twitter-co-founders-move-obvious-corp-into-spacious-new-digs/
Link To Post : Twitter co-founders move Obvious Corp into spacious new digs
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Armstrong turns emotional in 2nd part of interview


CHICAGO (AP) — Lance Armstrong finally cracked.


Not while expressing deep remorse or regrets, though there was plenty of that in Friday night's second part of Armstrong's interview with Oprah Winfrey.


It wasn't over the $75 million in sponsorship deals that evaporated over the course of two days, or having to walk away from the Livestrong cancer charity he founded and called his "sixth child." It wasn't even about his lifetime ban from competition, though he said that was more than he deserved.


It was another bit of collateral damage that Armstrong said he wasn't prepared to deal with.


"I saw my son defending me and saying, 'That's not true. What you're saying about my dad is not true,'" Armstrong recalled.


"That's when I knew I had to tell him."


Armstrong was near tears at that point, referring to 13-year-old Luke, the oldest of his five children. He blinked, looked away from Winfrey, and with his lip trembling, struggled to compose himself.


It came just past the midpoint of the hourlong program on Winfrey's OWN network. In the first part, broadcast Thursday, the disgraced cycling champion admitted using performance-enhancing drugs when he won seven straight Tour de France titles.


Critics said he hadn't been contrite enough in the first half of the interview, which was taped Monday in Austin, but Armstrong seemed to lose his composure when Winfrey zeroed in on the emotional drama involving his personal life.


"What did you say?" Winfrey asked.


"I said, 'Listen, there's been a lot of questions about your dad. My career. Whether I doped or did not dope. I've always denied that and I've always been ruthless and defiant about that. You guys have seen that. That's probably why you trusted me on it.' Which makes it even sicker," Armstrong said.


"And uh, I told Luke, I said," and here Armstrong paused for a long time to collect himself, "I said, 'Don't defend me anymore. Don't.'


"He said OK. He just said, 'Look, I love you. You're my dad. This won't change that."


Winfrey also drew Armstrong out on his ex-wife, Kristin, whom he claimed knew just enough about both the doping and lying to ask him to stop. He credited her with making him promise that his comeback in 2009 would be drug-free.


"She said to me, 'You can do it under one condition: That you never cross that line again,'" Armstrong recalled.


"The line of drugs?" Winfrey asked.


"Yes. And I said, 'You've got a deal,'" he replied. "And I never would have betrayed that with her."


A U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report that exposed Armstrong as the leader of an elaborate doping scheme on his U.S. Postal Service cycling team included witness statements from at least three former teammates who said Kristin Armstrong participated in or at least knew about doping on the teams and knew team code names for EPO kept in her refrigerator. Postal rider Jonathan Vaughters testified that she handed riders cortisone pills wrapped in foil.


Armstrong said in the first part of the interview that he had stayed clean in the comeback, a claim that runs counter to the USADA report.


And that wasn't the only portion of the interview likely to rile anti-doping officials.


Winfrey asked Armstrong about a "60 Minutes Sports" interview in which USADA chief executive Travis Tygart said a representative of the cyclist had offered a donation that the agency turned down.


"Were you trying to pay off USADA?" she asked.


"No, that's not true," he replied, repeating, "That is not true."


Winfrey asks the question three more times, in different forms.


"That is not true," he insisted.


USADA spokeswoman Annie Skinner replied in a statement: "We stand by the facts both in the reasoned decision and in the '60 Minutes' interview."


Armstrong has talked with USADA officials, and a meeting with Tygart near the Denver airport reportedly ended in an argument over the possibility of modifying the lifetime ban. A person familiar with those conversations said Armstrong could provide information that might get his ban reduced to eight years. By then, he would be 49. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a confidential matter.


After retiring from cycling in 2011, Armstrong returned to triathlons, where he began his professional career as a teenager, and he has told people he's desperate to get back.


Winfrey asked if that was why he agreed to the interview.


"If you're asking me, do I want to compete again ... the answer is hell, yes," Armstrong said. "I'm a competitor. It's what I've done my whole life. I love to train. I love to race. I love to toe the line — and I don't expect it to happen."


Yet just three questions later, a flash of the old Armstrong emerged.


"Frankly," he said, "this may not be the most popular answer, but I think I deserve it. Maybe not right now ... (but) if I could go back to that time and say, 'OK, you're trading my story for a six-month suspension?' Because that's what people got."


"What other people got?" Winfrey asked.


"What everybody got," he replied.


Eleven former Armstrong teammates, including several who previously tested positive for PEDs, testified about the USPS team's doping scheme in exchange for more lenient punishments. Armstrong said in the first part of the interview that he knew his "fate was sealed" when his most trusted lieutenant, George Hincapie, who was alongside him for all seven Tour wins between 1999-2005, was forced to give Armstrong up to anti-doping authorities,


"So I got a death penalty and they got ... six months," Armstrong resumed. "I'm not saying that that's unfair, necessarily, but I'm saying it's different."


Armstrong said the most "humbling" moment in the aftermath of the USADA report was leaving Livestrong lest his association damage the foundation's ability to raise money and continue its advocacy programs on behalf of cancer victims.


Originally called the Lance Armstrong Foundation, the cyclist created it the year after he was diagnosed with a form of testicular cancer that had spread to his brain and lungs. Doctors gave him 50-50 odds of surviving.


"I wouldn't at all say forced out, told to leave," he said of Livestrong. "I was aware of the pressure. But it hurt like hell. ...


"That was the lowest," Armstrong said. "The lowest."


Armstrong's personal fortune had sustained a big hit days earlier. One by one, his sponsors called to end their associations with him: Nike; Trek Bicycles; Giro, which manufactures cycling helmets and other accessories; Anheuser-Busch.


"That was a $75 million day," Armstrong said.


"That just went out of your life," Winfrey said.


"Gone."


"Gone?" Winfrey repeated.


"Gone," he replied, "and probably never coming back."


So was there a moral to his story?


"I can look at what I did," he said. "Cheating to win bike races, lying about it, bullying people. Of course, you're not supposed to do those things. That's what we teach our children."


Armstrong paused to compose himself before a final mea culpa.


"I just think it was about the ride and losing myself, getting caught up in that, and doing all those things along the way that enabled that," he said. "The ultimate crime is, uh, is the betrayal of those people that supported me and believed in me.


"They got lied to."


___


AP Sports Writer Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, and National Writer Eddie Pells in Denver contributed to this report.


Read More..

DealBook: Despite Improving Profits, Morgan Stanley's Path Is Uncertain

8:40 p.m. | Updated

Morgan Stanley has taken aggressive action to bolster profit. Over the last year, the Wall Street bank has cut thousands of employees, sold costly assets and retooled major businesses.

Those efforts worked. In the fourth quarter, Morgan Stanley reported earnings of $481 million, in contrast to a loss of $275 million in 2011. Profit was equally strong for the year.

But the path to future growth is less clear. While the financial firm can find other ways to cut costs, its core operations face significant challenges, from both internal and external forces. Reflecting those issues, revenue was flat last year, excluding charges related to its debt.

“They are doing everything they can to boost returns,” said Glenn Schorr, an analyst at the Japanese bank Nomura. “But given the environment and the state of their franchise, they can only do so much.”

Investors are assessing the progress versus the prospects.

After Morgan Stanley beat analysts’ expectations, the bank’s shares increased nearly 8 percent, to close at $22.38 on Friday. Morgan Stanley’s stock is up nearly 50 percent since early 2012.

“The company has been steadily chipping away at areas of investor concern, and has shown evidence of that progress,” Roger Freeman, a Barclays analyst, wrote in a note to investors.

Still, investors don’t value the investment bank as highly as some of its peers.

Morgan Stanley is trading at approximately 70 percent of its book value, a crucial financial measure that refers to the liquidation value of a company’s assets if it were forced to sell everything. Goldman, in contrast, is trading at book value.

More than four years after the financial crisis, Morgan Stanley has emerged as a much stronger, albeit smaller, bank.

After getting badly bruised during the crisis, Morgan Stanley, under the leadership of James P. Gorman, the chief executive, has moved to remake itself. He has diversified operations, emphasizing less risky businesses like wealth management.

That group was a particular bright spot. In the latest quarter, wealth management, with its 16,780 financial advisers, posted decent revenue growth. Pretax profit margin rose to 17 percent, up from 7 percent a year ago. That trumped the firm’s internal goals of 15 percent.

Investment banking, too, showed signs of strength. The group posted revenue of $1.23 billion in the fourth quarter, up 26 percent from the previous year.

The bank has also cut expenses significantly to help drive profitability. In 2012, Morgan Stanley reduced its head count by 7 percent, to 57,061 employees. It laid off 1,600 people this month.

The firm has also been bringing its pay levels down modestly. The firm’s compensation ratio, excluding certain charges, came in at roughly 51 percent, down from 57 percent a year ago.

Such efforts will most likely continue. On Friday, the bank said it might cut expenses by as much as $1.6 billion over the next two years.

Mr. Gorman called this quarter “pivotal,” on Friday. “I am confident we are on the path to increasing shareholder value that will be evident regardless of the macro environment,” he said in a statement.

Even so, the latest results underscored the growing gap between the bank and its rivals.

Revenue was flat for the quarter at Morgan Stanley, while it increased by 19 percent at Goldman Sachs during the same period. Excluding charges related to its debt, Morgan Stanley’s return on equity, a measure of profitability, was 5 percent. That compares with 10.7 percent at Goldman. To simply cover its debt expenses and other capital costs, Morgan Stanley needs to achieve a return on equity closer to 10 percent.

The firm’s problem child is the fixed income department.

Fourth-quarter revenue from fixed income sales and trading, headed by Ken deRegt, was $811 million, excluding the charges related to the firm’s debt. This was well below analysts’ forecasts. The bank was hurt by poor results in commodities trading, Mr. Gorman said in an interview on CNBC. He said it was a “terrible quarter,” citing factors like Hurricane Sandy, adding that it was one of the worst for the commodities business since 1995.

Despite its successes, Morgan Stanley faces a tough road.

The bank, which has had its credit rating cut deeper than its rivals, is also adjusting to a new regulatory environment. It now has to put up more capital against its operations, forcing the bank to leave certain businesses, reducing profitability.

Morgan Stanley is also trying to build market share in less-capital-intensive businesses like interest rates trading. But it is a highly competitive area, with lower margins.

“They have made some clear progress, but still have their work cut out for them in fixed income,” said Mr. Schorr of Nomura.

Read More..

Well: The Fallout of a Chance Medical Finding

An incidental finding — I was convinced of it. My patient had undergone a CT scan of the abdomen at another hospital because of stomach pains and “incidentally noted” was a 2-centimeter mass in her adrenal gland. She brought in the report for me to see, nervous that she might have cancer.

I reassured her that it was exceedingly unlikely that she had cancer. Benign masses in the adrenal gland are nearly as common as birthmarks. They almost never cause symptoms and we stumble across them only because we do so many scans for other reasons. They’ve even earned their own appellation: incidentalomas, and that’s what I was sure she had.

Of course a tiny fraction — 1 to 2 percent — of these adrenal masses can wreak havoc by churning out an excess of adrenal hormones or by being cancerous. Luckily, the mass on my patient’s scan possessed all the reassuring characteristics of benignity: it was small, low-attenuating, well circumscribed, with smooth borders. And she had no symptoms to suggest adrenal hyperactivity or cancer. It was most likely a benign adrenal adenoma that would never cause her harm.

Nevertheless, once the incidentaloma had been given life, so to speak, it was no longer incidental. We were now obliged to run some highly complicated — and expensive — lab tests. I winced as I ordered urinary metanephrines to test the adrenaline-producing capacity of the adrenal. The computer warned me with exclamation points and asterisks that this was a “greater-than-$100-send-out test.” Explaining how to correctly collect a 24-hour urine sample was its own involved discussion. Then I had to explain the even more complicated logistics of the overnight dexamethasone-suppression test to evaluate the cortisol-producing capacity of the adrenal.

After that, I considered the follow-up CT scans, recommended at six months, one year and two years, to ensure that the mass wasn’t growing. What about all that radiation? One group of endocrinologists estimated that the chance of uncovering a malignant cancer in patients like mine was roughly equal to the chance of causing a fatal cancer from the radiation of these follow-up CT scans. And might these CT scans pick up other incidental findings, opening yet more Pandora’s boxes of medical evaluation?

And what about the issue of skyrocketing medical costs? The evaluation of this incidentaloma was going to cost more than a thousand dollars. Tens of millions of CT scans are done every year in the United States. It doesn’t take many back-of-the-envelope calculations to see how quickly the costs of incidental findings, and their subsequent evaluations, add up. How much should the societal obligation weigh into the decisions for my patient?

My thoughts flitted back to the doctor who had ordered this CT in the first place. Perhaps if the doctor had had more time to spend on the history and physical, the CT would not have been necessary. From my 15 years with this patient, I knew that her symptoms could be voluminous in quantity and quality. This wasn’t to say that something serious couldn’t squeak in, but over the years I have learned that it takes immense perseverance and patience to tease out the significance of each symptom. Otherwise we’d be doing a CT every week for her.

But I could understand how a doctor in a busy ER on a weekend might have been overwhelmed by the plethora of symptoms and simply ordered a CT “to be on the safe side.” I wished that doctor had tried to call me before ordering the scan, but what’s done was done. The fallout of that decision was now in my lap.

By now we had run well over our allotted time and my patient was utterly overwhelmed by the complex testing procedures and schedules. The adrenal mass was an incidental finding, after all, but it had completely steamrolled our visit. My patient’s diabetes, obesity, depression, arthritis and elevated cholesterol all ended up with the short end of the clinical stick — an outcome that surely is not incidental to her health.


Danielle Ofri is an associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine and editor in chief of the Bellevue Literary Review. Her most recent book is “Medicine in Translation: Journeys With My Patients.”

Read More..

The Lede Blog: Analysis of Armstrong’s Interview With Winfrey

The Lede rounded up online reaction to Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday night in real-time, with additional fact-checking and context provided by Juliet Macur, Sarah Lyall, Brian Stelter, David Carr and Robert Mackey. The second part of the interview is scheduled to be broadcast at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday and will be streamed live on the Oprah Winfrey Network’s Web site.
Read More..

Ex-Red Sox pitcher Schilling puts bloody sock up for auction after video game company collapse






PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling — whose video game company underwent a spectacular collapse into bankruptcy last year — is selling the blood-stained sock he wore during the 2004 World Series.


Chris Ivy, director of sports for Texas-based Heritage Auctions, says online bidding begins around Feb. 4. Live bidding will take place Feb. 23.






The sock previously had been on loan to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. It has been at Heritage’s Dallas headquarters for several weeks and will be displayed at the auction house’s Manhattan office before it is sold, according to Ivy.


He said the sock is expected to fetch at least $ 100,000, though he described that as a conservative estimate.


“I do expect the bidding to be very spirited,” Ivy said.


Schilling’s company, 38 Studios, was lured to Providence, R.I., from Massachusetts with a $ 75 million loan guarantee in 2010. In May, it laid off all its employees and it filed for bankruptcy in June. The state is now likely responsible for some $ 100 million related to the deal, including interest.


Schilling also had personally guaranteed loans to the company and listed the sock as bank collateral in a September filing with the Massachusetts secretary of state’s office.


Messages left for his publicist were not immediately returned.


The bloody sock is one of two that sent Schilling into the annals of baseball lore in 2004.


The other was from Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, when Schilling pitched against the New York Yankees with an injured ankle. That sock is said to have been discarded in the trash at Yankees Stadium.


The one being sold is from the second game of the World Series, which the Red Sox won that year for the first time in 86 years.


Schilling has said he invested as much as $ 50 million in 38 Studios and has lost all his baseball earnings. He told WEEI-AM in Boston last year that possibly having to sell the sock was part of “having to pay for your mistakes.”


“I’m obligated to try and make amends and, unfortunately, this is one of the byproducts of that,” he told the station.


Brad Horn, a spokesman for the hall of fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., said the loaned sock was returned in December under the terms of the hall’s agreement with Schilling. The hall had had it since 2004.


The Feb. 23 live bidding will be held at the Fletcher-Sinclair mansion in New York City, now home to the Ukrainian Institute of America. The auction will feature other “five- and six-figure items,” including a jersey and cap worn by New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig, Ivy said.


Heritage last May auctioned off the so-called “Bill Buckner ball,” which rolled through the legs of the Red Sox first baseman in the 1986 World Series. Ivy said that item, like Schilling’s sock, was listed at the time as being expected to bring in “$ 100,000-plus,” but it was sold to an anonymous bidder for $ 418,000.


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News




Read More..