Month: April 2011

  • Sidney Lumet, Director of American Film Classics, Dies at 86

    Luc Skeudener/European Pressphoto Agency

    Sidney Lumet at a 2007 screening of his Film ‘Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead’ in France.

     

     

     

    April 9, 20

    Sidney Lumet, Director of American Film Classics, Dies at 86

    By ROBERT BERKVIST

    Sidney Lumet, a director who preferred the streets of New York to the back lots of Hollywood and whose stories of conscience — “12 Angry Men,” “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “The Verdict,” “Network” — became modern American film classics, died Saturday morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.       

    His stepdaughter, Leslie Gimbel, said the cause was lymphoma.       

    “While the goal of all movies is to entertain,” Mr. Lumet once wrote, “the kind of film in which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience. It stimulates thought and sets the mental juices flowing.”       

    Social issues set his own mental juices flowing, and his best films not only probed the consequences of prejudice, corruption and betrayal but also celebrated individual acts of courage.       

    In his first film, “12 Angry Men” (1957), he took his cameras into a jury room where the pressure mounted as one tenacious and courageous juror, played by Henry Fonda, slowly convinced the others that the defendant on trial for murder was in fact innocent. (Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor of the United States Supreme Court said the film had an important influence on her law career.)       

    Almost two decades later, Mr. Lumet’s moral sense remained acute when he ventured into satire with “Network” (1976), perhaps his most acclaimed film. Based on Paddy Chayefsky’s biting script, the film portrays a television anchorman who briefly resuscitates his fading career by launching on-air tirades against what he perceives as the hypocrisies of American society.       

    The film starred William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch as the commentator-turned-attack-dog whose proclamation to the world at large — “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” — became part of the American vernacular.       

    “Network” was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including best film and best director, and won four, including best actor (Mr. Finch), best actress (Ms. Dunaway), best original screenplay (Mr. Chayefsky) and best supporting actress (Beatrice Straight.)       

    Honorary Oscar

    Yet for all the critical success of his films and despite the more than 40 Academy Award nominations they drew, Mr. Lumet himself never won an Oscar, though he was nominated four times as best director. (The other nominations were for “12 Angry Men,” “Dog Day Afternoon” and “The Verdict.”)       

    Only in 2005 did the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences present him with an honorary Academy Award. Manohla Dargis, writing in The New York Times, called it a “consolation prize for a lifetime of neglect.”       

    In 2007, in an interview that was videotaped to accompany this obituary online, Mr. Lumet was asked how it felt to win an Academy Award at long last. He replied, “I wanted one, damn it, and I felt I deserved one.”       

    That he was more a creature of New York than of Hollywood may have had something to do with his Oscar night disappointments. For Mr. Lumet, location mattered deeply, and New York mattered most of all. He was the quintessential New York director.       

    “Locations are characters in my movies,” he wrote. “The city is capable of portraying the mood a scene requires.”       

    He explored New York early on in “The Pawnbroker” (1964), the story of a Holocaust survivor, played by Rod Steiger, numbed and hardened against humanity by the horrors he has endured, who deals with racketeers in his Harlem pawnshop until his conscience is reawakened by a vicious crime on his doorstep.       

    ‘Serpico’

    The city loomed large in Mr. Lumet’s several examinations of the criminal justice system. Police corruption particularly fascinated him, beginning with “Serpico” (1973). The film, based on a book by Peter Maas, was drawn from a real-life drama involving two New York City police officers, David Durk and Frank Serpico, who told David Burnham, a reporter for The New York Times, that they had ample evidence of police graft and corruption.       

    Publication of their story led to the mayoral appointment of a commission to investigate the charges and ultimately to major reforms. Both the book and the film concentrated on Detective Serpico, played by Al Pacino, and his efforts to change the system. Mr. Pacino’s performance brought him an Oscar nomination.       

    Mr. Lumet returned to the theme in 1981 with “Prince of the City,” for which he shared screenwriting credit with Jay Presson Allen. Based on the book by Robert Daley, the film dealt with an ambitious detective (Treat Williams) who goes undercover to gather evidence for an investigative commission and who winds up alienated and alone after being manipulated into destroying the lives and careers of many of those around him.       

    Mr. Lumet focused on criminals, rather than the police, in “Dog Day Afternoon” (1975), telling the story (again, based on fact) of a botched attempt to rob a Brooklyn bank. Mr. Pacino again starred, this time as Sonny, the leader of an amateurish gang of bank robbers whose plans go awry and who winds up taking hostages and demanding jet transport to a foreign country. It turns out that Sonny, although he has a wife at home, had planned the robbery to pay for his boyfriend’s sex-change operation. In 2009 the film was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.       

    New York, or at least a fantasy version of it, was even the backdrop for Mr. Lumet’s most uncharacteristic film, “The Wiz,” his 1978 musical version of the “The Wizard of Oz” starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. Roundly panned, it was also a box-office failure.       

    By the time he finished shooting “Night Falls on Manhattan” in 1996, Mr. Lumet had made 38 films, 29 of them on location in New York City. That film, written by Mr. Lumet and based on another Daley novel, “Tainted Evidence,” once again looked at the justice system as it moved from a shootout with drug dealers into a revealing courtroom trial.       

    The courthouse was one of Mr. Lumet’s favorite arenas for drama, beginning with “12 Angry Men.” He returned to it again in “The Verdict” (1982), with a screenplay by David Mamet and a cast led by Paul Newman as a down-at-the-heels lawyer who redeems himself and his career when he represents a malpractice victim in a legal battle with a hospital.       

    But his concerns could also range more broadly, to issues of national survival itself. One of the most sobering films of the cold war era was his 1964 adaptation of Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s novel, “Fail-Safe,” a taut examination of the threat of accidental nuclear war with Henry Fonda as the president of the United States and a young Larry Hagman as his Russian-speaking interpreter. The film concluded with a harrowing suggestion of an atomic blast on American soil, rendered as a series of glimpses of ordinary life — children playing, pigeons taking wing — simply stopping. The scenes were from the streets of New York.       

    Sidney Lumet was born on June 25, 1924, in Philadelphia. His father, Baruch, an actor, was born in Poland and moved his family to New York when Sidney was a baby and joined the Yiddish Art Theater. By the time he was 4, Sidney was appearing onstage with his father, and he went on to make his Broadway debut in 1935 as a street kid in Sidney Kingsley’s “Dead End.” He appeared in several more Broadway shows, including Maxwell Anderson’s “Journey to Jerusalem” in 1940, in which he played the young Jesus.       

    After wartime service as a radar technician in the Far East, Mr. Lumet returned to New York and started directing Off Broadway and in summer stock. His big break came in 1950 when he was hired by CBS and became a director on the television suspense series “Danger.” Other shows followed, including the history series “You Are There.”       

    His career soared in 1953 when he began directing original plays for dramatic series on CBS and NBC, including “Studio One,” “Playhouse 90” and “Kraft Television Theater,” eventually adding some 200 productions to his credits. He also returned to the theater to direct Albert Camus’s “Caligula,” with Kenneth Haigh as the Roman emperor, and George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman,” among other plays.       

    Among the highlights of Mr. Lumet’s television years were a full-length production of Eugene O’Neill’s play “The Iceman Cometh,” with Jason Robards as the salesman Hickey and “12 Angry Men,” which he directed for television before turning it into his first film.       

    Some of Mr. Lumet’s early films had their origin in the theater. He directed Anna Magnani and Marlon Brando in “The Fugitive Kind” (1960), an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play “Orpheus Descending”; he traveled abroad to film part of Arthur Miller’s “View from the Bridge” (1962) in Paris, with Raf Vallone, Maureen Stapleton and Carol Lawrence, completing the film on the Brooklyn waterfront; and he returned to the world of O’Neill to film “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (1962), with Katharine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson as the tormented Tyrones. His 1968 adaptation of Chekhov’s “Sea Gull,” however, was generally deemed uneven despite a stellar cast that included James Mason, Simone Signoret and Vanessa Redgrave.       

    A trainload of stars turned out for Mr. Lumet’s 1974 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” a project that took him abroad again, this time to Britain, France and Turkey, to film the famous whodunit in which the detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) must single out a murderer from a crowd of suspects that included Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery and John Gielgud.       

    There was a run of less than successful films, including “Running on Empty” (1988), with Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti as ’60s radicals still in hiding from the F.B.I. 20 years after participating in a bombing; the police drama “Q & A” (1990), with a screenplay by Mr. Lumet, about a racist New York detective (Nick Nolte); and “Critical Care” (1997), a satiric jab at the American health care system.       

    Return to Televison

    In 1995 Mr. Lumet published a well-received memoir, “Making Movies,” in which he summed up his view of directorial style: “Good style, to me, is unseen style. It is style that is felt.”       

    In 2001 he returned to television as executive producer, principal director and one of the writers of a new courtroom drama for cable television, “100 Centre Street” (the title was the address of the criminal court building in Lower Manhattan). The series, which ran for two seasons on A&E, had an ensemble cast with Alan Arkin as an all-too-forgiving judge known as Let-’em-Go Joe.       

    The director seemed immune to advancing age. Before long, he was behind the camera again. “Find Me Guilty” (2006), which starred Vin Diesel, was a freewheeling account of the events surrounding the federal prosecution of a New Jersey crime family.       

    And he marked his 83rd year with the 2007 release of his last feature film, “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” the bleakly riveting story of two brothers (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke) propelled by greed into a relentless cycle of mayhem. The film drew raves.       

    Mr. Lumet’s first three marriages, to the actress Rita Gam, Gloria Vanderbilt and Gail Jones, the daughter of Lena Horne, ended in divorce. He married Mary Gimbel in 1980. She survives him. Besides his stepdaughter, Ms. Gimbel, he is also survived by two daughters he had with Ms. Jones, Amy Lumet and Jenny Lumet, a screenwriter; a stepson, Bailey Gimbel; nine grandchildren and a great-grandson. Ms. Dargis called Mr. Lumet “one of the last of the great movie moralists.” Yet Mr. Lumet said he was never a crusader for social change. “I don’t think art changes anything,” he said in The Times interview. So why make movies? he was asked.       

    “It’s a wonderful way to spend your life,” he said.     

     

    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.  


     

  • Millions Without Power After Japan Aftershock

    Dai Kurokawa/European Pressphoto Agency

    People in Osaki, a city in Miyagi Prefecture, tried their cellphones after a 7.1 magnitude aftershock struck northeastern Japan on Thursday night, causing blackouts.

     

    April 8, 2011

    Millions Without Power After Japan Aftershock

    By HIROKO TABUCHI and ANDREW POLLACK

    TOKYO — More than 900,000 households remained without electricity on Friday after the strongest aftershock to hit since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan rocked a wide section of the country’s northeast.

    The aftershock on Thursday night prompted a tsunami alert, raised fears of new strains on the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and knocked out external power at three other nuclear facilities.

    The public broadcaster, NHK, said two people had died in Miyagi and Yamagata, including a 63-year-old woman whose ventilator stopped working in the blackout. Many more were injured. Of about 3.6 million households initially affected, 950,000 were still without power Friday afternoon, The Associated Press reported, quoting the utility that serves the region.

    No tsunami was detected, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. The aftershock had a magnitude of 7.1, according to the United States Geological Survey; last month’s quake, which devastated much of the northeastern coast, was measured at 9.0.

    But the agency warned of more aftershocks going forward. Many coastal communities were ravaged last month, and some have become even more vulnerable to tsunami waves because sea walls were breached and land levels sank.

    Early Friday, injuries were reported in Sendai City and across the region, and blackouts continued in some areas, according to NHK. Five coal-powered power plants also shut down, adding to concerns over energy shortages.

    Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were told to take cover until the tsunami warning was lifted, but Japanese officials said at a news conference that water was still able to be pumped into three damaged reactors and a spent-fuel pool at a fourth in the crucial effort to keep their nuclear fuel cool. The plant’s cooling systems were knocked out by last month’s quake and tsunami.

    Nitrogen also continued to be piped into the No. 1 reactor, the company said, in an effort to prevent a possible explosion.

    The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the power station, said Friday that it had found no new damage to the plant, and workers had resumed work to identify the source of leaks, found last week, of radioactive water into pipes and tunnels under the complex. Monitoring posts at the plant were not showing any immediate increase in radiation levels, the company said.

    A big aftershock is thought to pose an additional risk to the Fukushima plant because its containment structures, now filled with water that is highly radioactive, may be more vulnerable to rupture, according to an assessment by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in late March.

    The temblor has also underscored the sensitivity of other power plants in the region to seismic shocks.

    Two other nuclear facilities — a fuel reprocessing plant at Rokkasho and a power plant at Higashidori, both in northern Aomori Prefecture — ran temporarily on emergency diesel generators after their external power was knocked out. Grid power was restored at both plants on Friday morning, according to Japan’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

    The single reactor at Higashidori is shut down for maintenance, and all nuclear fuel had been transferred to the facility’s spent fuel pool, which are being cooled by back-up diesel power, according to the operator, Tohoku Electric.

    A third site, the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station in Miyagi Prefecture, lost two of its three external power systems, and cooling stopped temporarily at a spent fuel pool there, Tohoku Electric said. All three plants have been shut down since the March 11 quake, but power is needed to cool the nuclear fuel.

    The aftershock hit at 11:32 p.m. local time and was centered 41 miles east of Sendai, 72 miles from Fukushima and 205 miles from Tokyo, officials said. It was about 30 miles below the ocean floor, about 10 miles deeper than the March 11 quake. Hundreds of aftershocks have followed the initial quake, but Thursday’s was the strongest, according to the United States Geological Survey.

    The police say about 12,600 people have died as a result of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. More than 14,700 are listed as missing.

    Early Thursday, before the quake struck, nearly 240 police officers from Tokyo and about 100 from Fukushima Prefecture fanned out wearing protective suits in a search of bodies in the 12-mile evacuation zone around the Daiichi plant, according to Mikio Murakoshi, a police spokesman. Japanese and American soldiers conducted a huge search for the missing last weekend, but avoided the evacuation zone because of the radiation risk. But Mr. Murakoshi said radiation levels had dropped.

    Still, concerns about the plant remain high. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission speculated Wednesday that some of the core of the No. 2 reactor had flowed from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of the containment structure. The theory implies more damage at the unit than previously believed.

    While a spokeswoman for Tokyo Electric dismissed the analysis, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of Japan agreed that it was possible that the core had leaked into the larger containment vessel.

    The possibility raised new questions. The Nuclear Regulator Commission said that its speculation about the flow of core material out of the reactor vessel would explain high radiation readings in an area underneath, called the drywell.

    But some of the radiation readings at Reactors Nos. 1 and 3 over the last week were nearly as high as or higher than the 3,300 rems per hour that the commission said it was trying to explain, so it would appear that the speculation would apply to them as well. At No. 2, extremely radioactive material continues to ooze out of the reactor pressure vessel, and the leak is likely to widen with time, a western nuclear executive asserted.

    “It’s a little like pulling a thread out of your tie,” said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect business connections in Japan. “Any breach gets bigger.”

    Flashes of extremely intense radioactivity have become a serious problem, he said. Tokyo Electric’s difficulties in providing accurate information on radiation are not a result of software problems, as some Japanese officials have suggested, but stem from damage to measurement instruments caused by radiation, the executive said.

    Broken pieces of fuel rods have been found outside of Reactor No. 2, and are now being covered with bulldozers, he said. The pieces may be from rods in the spent-fuel pools that were flung out by hydrogen explosions.

    Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.


    Copyright 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • At Yale, Sharper Look at Treatment of Women

    Douglas Healey for The New York Times

    Hannah Zeavin, a Yale junior from Brooklyn, said, “If you’re not expelling people who are committing rape, as was the case with my friends’ assailants, that means those men are still around.”

     

    Andrew Sullivan for The New York Times

    “I don’t think that the sexual culture is worse here than it is at other places,” said Caroline Tracey, a sophomore from Denver.

     

    April 7, 2011

    At Yale, Sharper Look at Treatment of Women

    By LISA W. FODERARO

    NEW HAVEN — It has taken on the predictability of an annual ritual, like parents’ weekend or commencement: the outburst of raunchy male behavior that has shaken the Yale University campus in each of the last few school years.

    In 2008, fraternity members photographed themselves in front of the Yale Women’s Center with a poster reading, “We Love Yale Sluts.” In 2009, a widely e-mailed “preseason scouting report” rated the desirability of about 50 newly arrived freshman women by the number of drinks a man would need in order to have sex with them. And in October, fraternity pledges paraded through a residential quadrangle chanting: “No means yes!”

    Catherine Sheard, a junior from Canton, N.Y., heard the chants while studying, and reacted the way many students have. “I thought it was really obnoxious and closed the window,” she said.

    Suddenly, however, these episodes have the campus in a state of high alert. Yale acknowledged last week that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights was investigating a complaint filed by 16 students and recent graduates, accusing the university of violating Title IX, the federal gender-equality law, by failing to eliminate a hostile sexual environment on campus. The complaint alleges a range of acts against women, from taunts to assaults, over seven years.

    The Yale administration has responded swiftly, saying it had zero tolerance for sexual misconduct and announcing the creation of a university-wide committee to streamline a disciplinary process that is now handled differently at each of its schools. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. even weighed in this week; though not mentioning Yale, he urged colleges to do more to prevent sexual violence, emphasizing that “no means no.”

    In Yale dormitories and online forums, the federal investigation has been a prime topic, with many students echoing the frustrations voiced in the complaint.

    In interviews, some undergraduates said the administration had become bogged down in confidentiality rules and its own tortuous procedures, missing a bigger truth about the treatment of women, who make up slightly more than half of the student body.

    “I don’t think that the sexual culture is worse here than it is at other places,” said Caroline Tracey, a sophomore from Denver. “But the fact that we seem to have one incendiary, misogynistic act a year seems to say that the university isn’t being punitive enough against these large-scale activities.”

    Conor Crawford, a junior from Des Moines, said he had detected a tolerance on campus for crude comments about women that contrasted with a greater deference shown to gay and minority students. “There are a lot of close female friends I have here who have felt threatened,” he said. “You can hear the same language in some all-male suites, with the word ‘bitch’ used a lot and just general objectification.”

    Still, some students dismissed episodes like the fraternity chants as stupid pranks; the chanting, some said, was an act of hazing and humiliation for the pledges, calculated for maximum shock value on a campus known for its liberal leanings.

    “It was very inappropriate, but I genuinely believe that that’s not something they are preaching,” said Natalie Romine, a senior who has friends in the fraternity.

    The 26-page complaint, filed on March 15, has not been made public. But a news release by some who signed it detailed what they called the university’s “inadequate response to a long trend of public sexual harassment,” including the chanting last fall by pledges of Delta Kappa Epsilon. The complaint also cites “Yale’s failure to appropriately address” several instances of “private sexual harassment and assault,” the release said.

    A 2010 graduate who signed the complaint — Presca Ahn, a Fulbright scholar in London — said in a phone interview that one of those cases involved an undergraduate who had been sexually assaulted. Ms. Ahn said that in the complaint, the student describes reporting her case to the university’s Sexual Harassment Grievance Board, which, according to Yale, offers “a range of formal and informal resolution procedures”; the student writes that the board discouraged her from going to the police or to Yale’s more punitive disciplinary board, the Executive Committee.

    “It’s so weird that something that is actually a crime should be lost in the quote, ‘confidential private family court of Yale,’ ” Ms. Ahn said.

    Yale officials said they had not seen the complaint, and were trying to obtain it through a Freedom of Information Act request. In a letter to students, Mary Miller, dean of Yale College, urged students to report all sexual crimes to the Yale police, and said the university welcomed the investigation as an “opportunity to learn more and do better.”

    “To all of you, I can say that I am saddened and troubled by the allegations of the complaint,” Dr. Miller wrote. “I can also say without equivocation that Yale does not tolerate sexual harassment or misconduct of any kind.”

    Administrators said they sympathized with those who were unhappy with the disciplinary process. Punishing students in public episodes like the chanting is complicated by a hallowed tradition of free speech on campus, as well as by fraternities’ independence from the university and by confidentiality requirements that prevent Yale from naming students it disciplines.

    The private cases are even more problematic, officials said, with victims often not wanting to go to the police or even a disciplinary board. Some victims prefer to deal with sexual harassment informally — having a male student moved to another dorm, for example. Most do not go to the administration at all: Studies show that nationwide, more than 90 percent of college students who are sexually assaulted do not tell anyone in authority.

    Dr. Miller said that efforts to discipline students for the chants last fall were continuing; a faculty fact-finder has filed a report, she said, and the case will be resolved by the end of the semester. As for the “scouting report” that circulated two years ago, The Yale Daily News reported that a senior who forwarded the e-mail was reprimanded.

    While some students saw the chanting of “No means yes” as mere provocation, Hannah Zeavin, a junior from Brooklyn who signed the complaint, said she found the question of sexual consent no joking matter. She said that a Yale friend was raped during her first month on campus in 2008, and that she knew of others who had been sexually assaulted.

    “If you’re not expelling people who are committing rape, as was the case with my friends’ assailants, that means those men are still around,” she said. “That means that I’ve been in class with them, and I’ve been in parties where there’s more than one of them.”

     

    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • Bahrain’s Rulers Tighten Their Grip on Battered Opposition

    Hasan Jamali/Associated Press

    Sayed Hameed Sayed Mahfood’s relatives awaited his funeral on Wednesday in Saar, Bahrain. They blame the police in his death.

     

    April 6, 2011

    Bahrain’s Rulers Tighten Their Grip on Battered Opposition

    By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

    SAAR, Bahrain — Thousands of weeping mourners filled the streets of this dusty village on Wednesday, pumping their fists and calling for the death of the royal family.

    The protesters did not seem intimidated by the presence of police cars and an army helicopter overhead. “We only bow to God,” they chanted as they carried a coffin draped in Bahraini flags.

    The funeral march was for Sayed Hameed Sayed Mahfood, a 60-year-old plumber, who was found dead in a garbage bag, 100 feet away from his car.

    Doctors said that there was no sign of trauma and that it appeared that he had died of a heart attack, but no one here believed them. Only the week before, a 15-year-old boy in the village was bludgeoned to death by the police, several villagers said, for doing nothing more than running away from them.

    With Saudi troops now in the country to support King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, Bahrain has taken on the likeness of a police state. There have been mass arrests, mass firings of government workers, reports of torture and, on Sunday, the forced resignation of the top editor of the nation’s one independent newspaper.

    Emergency laws give the security forces the right to search houses at will without a warrant and dissolve any organization, including legal political parties, deemed a danger to the state. Even two members of the national soccer team were arrested this week, despite apologizing on television for attending antigovernment rallies last month.

    In response, a once joyous but splintered opposition has been forced to come up with new strategies. The intensity of the repression is pushing some toward militancy, while others are holding back, at least for now.

    “People are in shock because of the intensity of the crackdown,” said Aqeelah Wahab, the daughter of Abdul Wahab Hussein, the leader of a militant Shiite party, Al Wafa, who was pulled out of his home and imprisoned last month. She is an activist herself. “With this government, you don’t know what they will do. The people are taking a break to see what the government will do with the prisoners.”

    There have been signs of wavering. Protest leaders who have not been imprisoned keep their followers informed by Facebook and Twitter, but some recent calls to action have received little response. The 10 Shiite members who protested by quitting the appointed Advisory Council, the upper house of Parliament, have returned to their desks in recent days, as have several Shiite judges who had stepped down.

    Only last month, euphoric crowds appeared on the verge of shaking serious concessions from the monarchy. Thousands filled Pearl Square in Manama, the capital, to listen to a cacophony of speeches calling for freedom.

    But ever since troops cleared the square in a cloud of tear gas and bullets three weeks ago and then bulldozed the Pearl monument, the area around it has been empty of everything but tanks and armored cars.

    The protesters were inspired by the upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt, but their struggle and challenges were different. They are predominantly Shiites, who make up 70 percent of the population, in a country whose monarchy and much of the business elite are Sunnis. While their struggle is tinged by ethnic animosity, their chief opponents in the streets are an army and security force who are predominantly foreigners, principally Pakistani, Yemeni, Iraqi and Jordanian.

    The demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people last month have given way to small marches and protests at funerals. The centers of rebellion are now in villages outside Manama like Saar and Shahrakkan, where residents have set up barricades of stones and bricks so police officers on patrol need to leave their armored cars and walk through the narrow stone pathways. Every night at 10, residents climb to their roofs and anonymously cry in protest, “God is great!”

    “The people will not give up,” said Jawad F. G. Fairooz, a leader of Al Wefaq National Islamic Society, a moderate Shiite party, who resigned in protest last month from the elected Council of Representatives. “The government can keep people silent for a time, but they cannot guarantee that another uprising will not come at any moment.”

    The government and pro-government media are celebrating the relative calm in downtown Manama as a return to the kind of normality that has made this tiny island nation an important banking center and regional tourist destination. They charge that the predominantly Shiite opposition is inspired and even aided by Iran, although most Bahraini Shiites are Arabs, unlike Iranians, and associate themselves more closely with Iraqi Shiites.

    The Bahraini government had originally appeared willing to compromise with the opposition, particularly the more moderate faction that wants the country to evolve into a true parliamentary monarchy that gives elected lawmakers more power. At one point last month the king even apologized for the deaths of demonstrators on television, and government officials say they are still open to reform.

    “Reform is continuing and will never stop,” the prime minister, Prince Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, was quoted in the Bahraini media as telling members of the royal family on Monday. “The determination to carry on with it will never diminish, for it is a means to achieve a sublime goal, which is the national interest.”

    Despite the calls for reform, by the accounts of Bahraini human rights activists, 26 people have been killed, most in the past three weeks since Pearl Square was cleared. More than 300 have been imprisoned, and at least 35 people are missing.

    Two political prisoners who were released have said that many detainees have been tortured with electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse, said Mohammed al-Maskati, president of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights. As many as 800 workers have been fired from the government and companies partly owned by the government, apparently on the suspicion that they had attended the rallies, said the lawmakers who resigned in protest. And scores of university students have lost government-sponsored scholarships.

    “They are leaving no oppressive stone unturned,” said Dan Williams, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch who is in Bahrain. “They enter the homes of people already detained and ransack their homes; they are keeping people in detention with limited access to their lawyers and families.”

    The Obama administration, which considers Bahrain a crucial ally, has issued tempered criticisms of the crackdown but has not pressed for a change in government. Bahrain hosts the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet, and its Sunni monarchy is strongly backed by Saudi Arabia.

    As the mourners in Saar marched in their village, they called for the death of the Saudi and Bahraini royal families.

    Members of the dead man’s family insisted that he had never been involved in politics, unlike many others in the village. “Maybe they killed him because he is Shiite, no other reason,” said his cousin Mohammed Saeed.

    Whatever the man’s politics, he was hailed as a martyr of the cause. Members of the crowd called out for revenge.

    “Whether you participate or not, this is what happens,” Mr. Saeed said. “Now, we have to fight for our rights.”

     

    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • Fiona Joy Hawkins. Australian Composer and recording Artist

    Fiona Joy Hawkins
    Fiona Joy Hawkins PDF Print E-mail
    Written by Admin   
    Sunday, 20 June 2010 17:43

    Welcome to

    Fiona Joy Hawkins

    &

    Little Hartley Music

     

     

     

                                                                      Concerts

            LA (Tustin) 16th April with Kori Carothers & Denise Young buy HERE

         Marietta GA 15th May with Ronnda Cadle and Debbie Schrodt buy HERE 

                                  BOSTON 4th June tickets on sale 11th May HERE                              

                           DENVER  11th June with Liz Story & Lisa Downing TBA

           

     

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  • Rec Room Treasures: Special Hand-Me-Down Paintings

    Susan Stava for The New York Times

    Auctioneers at the Clarke Auction House in Larchmont, N.Y., holding recently discovered paintings by Jasper Cropsey.

    Susan Stava for The New York Times

    Ronan Clarke and Nelia Moore of Clarke Auction Gallery with a rediscovered Cropsey work

     

    April 5, 2011

    Rec Room Treasures: Special Hand-Me-Down Paintings

    By JOSEPH BERGER

    LARCHMONT, N.Y. — The two oil paintings hung for decades in the basement recreation room of the man’s childhood home in Connecticut, over the Ping-Pong table alongside a paint-by-numbers picture by his older sister.

    When his mother died a year ago at 99, an estate removal company offered the man, by now a graying health professional and Fordham University administrator living in Westchester, $125 apiece for the pictures, gilt frames included. But he decided he might do a little better if he had them appraised. There was obviously no hurry because it was not until last month that the man and his wife drove to a fund-raising event here, where an auction house was offering to appraise old toasters, china dishes or other objects collecting dust.

    There the man, who agreed to an interview on condition that he not be identified because of the confidential nature of his profession, was astonished by the murmur and buzz among the delighted appraisers.

    “Basically the whole floor stopped,” he said.

    The two landscapes — one a winter hunting scene at Niagara Falls and the other an autumn view of Mount Washington in New Hampshire — turned out to be canvases by Jasper F. Cropsey, a leading 19th-century artist of the Hudson River School. His paintings can be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art.

    The paintings have been authenticated, through the artist’s signatures, brush strokes, themes and earlier sketches, by the Newington-Cropsey Foundation in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., which is on the site of Cropsey’s last home and is regarded as the authority in all matters Cropsey.

    “Every year new paintings that have been lost come to light, but these are two of the more exciting paintings that have surfaced,” said Kenneth W. Maddox, the foundation’s art historian, who is compiling a catalogue raisonné of Cropsey’s 2,500 paintings. “I can’t say I like the Niagara Falls in that the human figures are clumsy, but these are paintings from his peak period.”

    The two 15-by-24-inch paintings, their varnish yellowed and crusted with dirt, are scheduled to be auctioned off May 15 at the Clarke Auction Gallery in Larchmont. While Mr. Maddox said Cropseys of that size have sold in a bustling art market for between $250,000 and $500,000 and the record for larger Cropseys is $2.5 million, the auction house is starting the bidding at between $40,000 and $60,000 each, which it thinks is very conservative.

    “At the end of the day we hope it flies through the roof,” said Ronan Clarke, owner of the 14-year-old auction house.

    Rembrandt-in-the-attic fantasies do come to life from time to time with Hudson River School painters. Mr. Maddox told of one framed Cropsey that hung in a school in Seneca Falls, N.Y., and in the 1980s was given away to the custodian with the directions that he use the glass inside the frame to fix a shattered window. Someone from the local historical society eventually recognized the painting’s value, and it now hangs at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

    Mr. Maddox said that Hudson River painters like Cropsey, who lived from 1823 to 1900, were esteemed in their lifetimes, but by the 20th century their works were often forgotten. Descendants of the original buyers sometimes did not appreciate what they had and neglected the works.

    The paintings’ owner said his artworks had been acquired by his paternal grandmother, a Swedish immigrant, and he speculated that she was given them after she was widowed and worked as a seamstress for wealthy families along Fifth Avenue. She died in 1930, and the family simply assumed the paintings were cheap reproductions.

    So when the paintings’ owner and his wife were standing in line waiting for their appraisal behind the owner of a 1950s chrome toaster (valued at $50), they were not expecting much.

    “I thought ‘the toaster is probably worth more than these paintings,’ ” he said.

    Mr. Clarke and another appraiser, Nelia Moore, realized the paintings were of very good quality and worth investigating. They checked the Internet and found that Sotheby’s had sold a painting in 1988 called “Three Indians Stalking Deer” that resembled the autumn scene. They called the foundation.

    The winter painting, “Prospect Point, Niagara Falls in Winter,” depicts two hunters and a dog on a snow-blanketed bluff overlooking the falls. It has Cropsey’s signature in the lower left corner. Cropsey went to Niagara Falls three times around 1856, and the painting probably dates from the decade afterward, Mr. Maddox said. Sketches for that painting are in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and another Niagara winter scene is at the Art Institute of Chicago.

    The autumn scene, “Autumn in America,” a title that Cropsey inscribed in pencil on the back, casts the leaves in vivid russet, with American Indians and deer that are hard to discern. It was part of the first of six sets of the four seasons that Cropsey painted around 1860 while working in England.

    That set was sold off individually, so the autumn landscape’s discovery was especially satisfying to the foundation because it was the one missing member. The foundation owns the spring scene among its collection of 150 Cropseys and knows the locations of the two other seasons.

    “It solved a very nice problem for me,” Mr. Maddox said.

    The auction house decided not to clean the paintings on the chance that among the bidders would be a museum or two, who would do the restoration, according to the appraiser, Tom Curran.

    Meanwhile, the delighted owner thinks back on how the paintings survived the close calls of his youth, hanging in the basement during teenage rock ’n’ roll parties. Family photographs and needlepoints were given a more honored spot in the living room.

    “Thank God we didn’t use them as a dartboard,” he said.

    This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

    Correction: April 6, 2011

    A picture caption with an earlier version of this article misstated the location of Larchmont. It is in New York, not Connecticut.

     

    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • Classic F1 2011 – Michael Schumacher

    Post categories:

    Andrew Benson | 06:00 UK time, Tuesday, 5 April 2011

    Michael Schumacher has chosen his five greatest all-time grands prix for the second edition of this year’s new-look classic Formula 1 feature.

    To those unfamiliar with the concept, BBC Sport has asked all the F1 drivers to name their five favourite races, and we will select one of them ahead of each grand prix this season to whet your appetites for the action to come.

    World champion Sebastian Vettel started the ball rolling with his selection prior to the Australian Grand Prix, and now it is his friend and countryman’s turn.

    The drivers are free to choose whether they pick races from their own career, or those from the wider history of F1 that have resonated with them. And like Vettel, Schumacher has selected only races from his time in the sport.

    Whereas the Red Bull driver made his F1 debut only in 2007, Schumacher’s career dates back to 1991 and the 42-year-old has raided the memory banks to come up with what he considers, for different reasons, key highlights of that time.

    Not all of them are races in which he starred. Some of them are intended to highlight his admiration for rivals. Some fulfil both aims.

    In chronological order, and in his own words, this is Schumacher’s list:

    “The 1991 Spanish Grand Prix.

    “This was one of the first few races of my career, but that’s not why I remember it. It’s for the wheel-to-wheel battle down the pit straight between Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell, when they came within inches of touching. It was two great drivers pushing each other to the edge, but with the respect to leave each other just enough room. It’s one of the coolest moments I’ve seen in F1.”

    “The 1993 European Grand Prix.

    “Not one of my greatest races – I spun out in the pouring rain. I’ve picked this because of Ayrton. My time racing against him was too short. He was a great talent, and I always have been impressed by his driving, and this race showed exactly why.”

    “The 1998 Hungarian Grand Prix.

    “This race sums up the great relationship I had – and still have – with Ross Brawn. We were behind the McLarens of Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard for the first part of the race and Ross decided that the only chance of beating them was to switch to a three-stop strategy – one stop more than them. It was a brilliant plan but it wasn’t easy. I still remember the radio message from Ross that I had to make up something like 25 seconds in 19 laps.”

    “The 2000 Belgian Grand Prix.

    “I enjoyed many great battles with Mika Hakkinen, who was very fast and a very tough competitor, and this was one of the best. I got into the lead when it was wet early on, but as it dried up Mika had a big pace advantage and he caught up easily. I managed to fend him off for one lap, but on the next he pulled off a great move to pass me as we went either side of Ricardo Zonta’s BAR.”

    “The 2000 Japanese Grand Prix.

    “This is probably both the toughest and most beautiful race of my career. Mika and I were flat out all the way, really on the edge every lap on a great drivers’ circuit with the world championship at stake. And the race was really tricky because of changing conditions in the drizzle. I managed to get out ahead after my final pit stop and won. What makes it all the more special was that it was my first world title for Ferrari – this race certainly is my personal number one.”

    As with Vettel, we have chosen one race to highlight in this blog – and how we could choose any other than Schumacher’s number one?


     

    In addition, we have decided to make available the full BBC ‘Grand Prix’ highlights programme of the time from one of his other choices – the 1991 Spanish Grand Prix. You can watch it here.

    You can also enjoy highlights of last year’s Malaysian Grand Prix in both short and extended form.

    The classic races will also be available on the red button on digital television in the UK. On satellite and cable they will be broadcast from 1900 BST on Tuesday 5 April until 0845 on Friday 8 April. On Freeview, they will be shown from 2215 on Tuesday until 0645 on Wednesday, on Thursday from 0415-0645 and again from 1915-2045.

    A final word. In my last blog, I said that we would feature Schumacher’s team-mate Nico Rosberg this time around. We were not able to do so because of unforeseen problems. His choices will appear later in the season.

     

    Copyright. 2011. BBC.com All Rights Reserved.

  • After Breach, Companies Warn of E-Mail Fraud

    Jessica Ebelhar/The New York Times

    The breach exposed the names and e-mail addresses of customers of some of the nation’s largest concerns, including JPMorgan Chase

     

    April 4, 2011

    After Breach, Companies Warn of E-Mail Fraud

    By MIGUEL HELFT

    SAN FRANCISCO — Security experts said Monday that millions of people were at increased risk of e-mail swindles after a giant security breach at an online marketing firm.

    The breach exposed the names and e-mail addresses of customers of some of the nation’s largest companies, including JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Target and Walgreens.

    While the number of people affected is unknown, security experts say that based on the businesses involved, the breach may be among the largest ever. And it could lead to a surge in phishing attacks — e-mails that purport to be from a legitimate business but are intended to steal information like account numbers or passwords.

    “It is clearly a massive hemorrhage,” said Michael Kleeman, a network security expert at the University of California, San Diego.

    The marketing firm that suffered the breach, Epsilon, which handles e-mail marketing lists for hundreds of clients, disclosed the problem in a brief statement on Friday. But its sheer scale became clear over the weekend and on Monday, as banks, retailers and others began alerting their customers to be on the lookout for fraudulent e-mails.

    While e-mail addresses may not seem particularly vulnerable, experts say that if criminals can associate addresses with names and a business like a bank, they can devise highly customized attacks to trick people into disclosing more confidential information, a technique known as “spear phishing.”

    “Any time you have an organization that loses the contact information of customers for some of the biggest banks in the world, that’s a big deal,” said Brian Krebs, editor of Krebs on Security, a Web site that specializes in online security and crime. “You’ve just given the bad guys a road map between the banks and their customers.”

    In traditional phishing attacks, criminals e-mail millions of people with a message that appears to be from a bank or other real business, hoping that some of the recipients will be customers of that business and will follow instructions to, for example, “update your account information.”

    A spear-phishing e-mail is far more dangerous because it can include a person’s name and is sent only to people who are known to be customers of a certain business, greatly increasing the likelihood that the targets will be duped.

    Phishing has remained a major challenge, especially for banks and other financial institutions, which want to encourage customers to do business with them online.

    The Anti-Phishing Working Group, an organization that tries to prevent Internet crime, received reports of more than 33,000 phishing attacks worldwide last June, the most recent month for which data is available. Roughly 70 percent of the attacks were in the financial services and online payment industries.

    With the information stolen from Epsilon, thieves could send customers of JPMorgan Chase an e-mail that appeared to be from the bank, complete with their names, said Mark Seiden, an information security consultant in Silicon Valley. If the criminals cross-check a name with the property records of mortgage holders, they could even include the customer’s address in the e-mail, he said.

    “Something that is that customized and has the right graphical elements, people will fall for it,” Mr. Seiden said.

    The companies that alerted customers or acknowledged being affected also include Barclays Bank, U.S. Bancorp, Walt Disney, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, Best Buy, L. L. Bean, Home Shopping Network, TiVo and the College Board.

    In e-mails to their customers, the companies asked them to be cautious but also sought to reassure them that the hackers had obtained only e-mail addresses and names, not passwords, account numbers, credit card information or other more confidential data.

    “Your account and any other personally identifiable information were not at risk,” the clothing retailer New York & Company told its customers in an e-mail. “Please note, it is possible you may receive spam e-mail messages as a result. We want to urge you to be cautious when opening links or attachments from unknown third parties. We also want to remind you that we will never ask you for your personal information in an e-mail.”

    Ron Baldwin, a technology consultant in Laguna Niguel, Calif., said that over the weekend he received an e-mail alerting him to the security breach from U.S. Bank, where he is a customer. He said he was particularly upset that the bank, a unit of U.S. Bancorp, would entrust his information to another company.

    “They shared my information with a third party unbeknownst to me,” Mr. Baldwin said. “I don’t know Epsilon from some guy walking down the street.” Mr. Baldwin said that when he contacted the bank, he was told that he had given permission to share information with suppliers.

    Jessica Simon, a spokeswoman for Epsilon, which is based in Irving, Tex., said in an interview: “We are currently working with authorities and are conducting a full investigation. We are limited in what we can share.”

    Epsilon is a unit of Alliance Data and has some 2,500 clients, though not all of them use its e-mail marketing services. The company said that about 2 percent of its clients were affected. It declined to say how the hack had occurred or why the e-mail addresses had not been encrypted.

    “Epsilon has some explaining to do about the numbers, how it was penetrated and what they have done to protect the information they have,” said Mr. Kleeman, the security expert.

    Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher at Cisco Systems, said that because e-mail addresses were not considered of great value in the criminal underground, she suspected the attack on Epsilon began as something random. Hackers often scan the Internet looking for machines that have a certain vulnerability or misconfiguration and then, once they hit upon something, look further to see if the victim interests them. Ms. Landesman speculated that the attackers had found themselves on Epsilon’s system, realized what they had and then worked to acquire their customer lists.

    The breach points out the significant risks for companies that outsource even seemingly low-risk activities like e-mail marketing, said Avivah Litan, an analyst focused on online fraud at the research firm Gartner. It also highlights the lack of regulation on security when it comes to consumer data that is not directly tied to financial accounts, which are subject to industry standards, Ms. Litan said.

    Riva Richmond and Stephanie Clifford contributed reporting from New York.

    This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

    Correction: April 4, 2011

    An earlier version of this article misspelled part of the name of a city in California where Ron Baldwin is a technology consultant. It is Laguna Niguel, not Laguna Nighel.

     

    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved


  • Michael Schumacher: Once a red, always a red

     

    Michael Schumacher: Once a red, always a red

    From humble beginnings as the son of a chimney-builder, Michael Schumacher’s 14-year relationship with Ferrari saw him become an idol, a celebrity and a seven-time Formula One world champion. We explore the driver’s record-breaking spell with the Prancing Horse in this exclusive extract from The Official Ferrari Opus.

     

    Tuesday, 5 April 2011

     

    In the beginning there was a young man who was both ambitious and successful, but who had no sense of the great history. He had never really given any thought as to what a myth was.

    His world was four wheels, race tracks and engines; his conversations primarily revolved around the technical aspect of motorsport. For the young man, who came from a lower middle-class background, a car was an item of sporting equipment and a thing of necessity, but never an aesthetic object.

    Until 1996, the young Michael Schumacher was barely aware that the fascination racing exerts on people around the world is fuelled by much more than just the technology. Perhaps this was even an advantage at the end of 1995 during the first tests and at the start of 1996 when he began his collaboration with Ferrari.

    Unburdened by all the expectations that had been imposed for around 60 years on every driver who joined the best-known racing team in the world, Schumacher faced the new adventure of the Scuderia. He had never particularly concerned himself with the Ferrari name and the legend – this world was simply too far away from him.

    That a car could be a cult object had never been a topic of discussion in his family environment. And he still had to learn that a Ferrari driver in Italy was far more than just the driver for a Formula 1 team. Schumacher, the son of a chimney-builder, had worked his way to success through his own efforts. He learnt early on that he must make personal sacrifices and that he could only advance by performing well. He experienced first hand the need to make use of his few chances, because they would not come twice to someone like him.

    By the time Michael Schumacher left the Scuderia Ferrari for Mercedes in 2010, in order to face once again the challenge of Formula 1, the inexperienced young man had matured into a legend, a celebrity, an icon acclaimed around the world, and not only among the Ferraristi.

    He drove for Ferrari for 14 years, 11 in Formula 1 and three more in the development of road cars. In those 14 years both partners learned a lot about each other and greatly profited from the relationship, each basking in the glory of the other. Together they established a golden era, with successive victories and successes in the premier class of motorsport that might prove unsurpassable.

    Schumacher had thereby become a different man; a development that was not just due to the normal ageing and maturing process. “I have really enjoyed my time at Ferrari, not just because of the successes,” he says. “When you are part of a community for 14 years, it inevitably shapes you. I will always have a part of Ferrari beside me; a part of my heart will always be red. The Scuderia has a really special bond, it rightly speaks of itself as a family – a family that I have long felt a part of and that I still feel a part of. My time with Ferrari was wonderful. I have found friends and had experiences that I would not want to be without. Concepts that I had never contemplated before my time at Ferrari came to life for me there: myth, cult, history. All of that had said nothing to me; I had never concerned myself with it. Once I experienced at first hand the significance that Ferrari had for Italy and the tifosi, only then did I grasp that these concepts were well justified. That they originate in a passion for engines and cars among those who build these cars as well as those who admire them. I am certainly not a lyrical man, but this passion I understand well enough. My deep passion is racing, and in that we are very much the same. After my initial misunderstanding I soon felt secure in this context.”

    When Michael Schumacher arrived at Ferrari, he was already a made man. After he had got into Formula 1 through a combination of talent and luck, he had quickly made a name for himself. He became world champion in 1994, in only his fourth year in Formula 1, and he won the title again in 1995, both times with Benetton, also an Italian racing team but one which operated from England. At first he was received with scepticism in Italy: was a two-times world champion from the greatest national rival now to be the face of the Scuderia? This German, who seemed so cool, distant and pragmatic? One could scarcely have imagined that in the coming years Schumacher would become the face of the Scuderia and would embody the frequently evoked concepts of the Ferrari family like no one else before him.

    For 16 years he shaped Formula 1, before ending his driving career in 2006. Nico Rosberg, his team-mate at the new Team Mercedes GP, was just four years old when the record world champion began his career. For 16 years, Schumacher opened himself up to the whole world as he encased himself in the cockpit. He expressed his feelings through racing. The Italian tifosi, who had been so sceptical at the start, had come to understand that over the years. When you call to mind his joy after victories or duels, his passionate drives or his anger after his own mistakes, you realise that his robot image has been more self-protection than truth all along. The team concept was never just PR talk for him. He simply transferred the footballer saying ‘the star is the team’ over to motorsport. His team felt that and loved him for it.

    Michael Schumacher is a man who loves harmony. A combatant on the track, he needs to feel at ease outside the cockpit. The same is true in his private life as it is in his professional one: disagreements disturb his total commitment to his work. He is someone who likes to solve conflicts quickly and satisfactorily for all sides. If they are unsolved, they worry him too much. Therefore it was extremely important for him to have a good relationship with all the technicians, engineers and mechanics in the team. At Ferrari he felt secure, as strange as that may sound. This is one of the reasons his departure was so difficult. When he suddenly and unexpectedly left the team at the end of 2009, he said goodbye to each Ferrari worker with an email: ‘Dear Friend,’ it read ‘The love of Ferrari unites us all, and this love has carried us for years. We have experienced wonderful emotions and celebrated historical successes together over the years. I have found friends, just as you have found a friend in me. Together we have suffered and rejoiced, and we could always rely on each other. That I now, after 14 years, take on a new challenge will change nothing. I would like to thank you emphatically for the warmth, affection, commitment and professional work that I have received from all of you. I have often said, and I would like to repeat it, that every one of you has contributed to this great time. Without each one of you, in the team and in the factory, we would all never have achieved it. We can all be proud of it. I embrace you, Yours Michael.’

    Iconic, mysterious and polarising – the attributes of great superstars. They suit Michael as well as they do Ferrari. Perhaps that is the reason this connection was so friendly and so loyal over such a long time. In the 16 seasons up until his first retirement at the end of 2006 he raced for only two teams, or three if you count his first race: Jordan, Benetton and Ferrari. But when you think of Schumacher, you think of red, Ferrari red. In the 60-year-plus history ‘With Ferrari, Schumacher matured into a legend, a global celebrity, an example for people from all parts of the world and an acclaimed icon’ of Scuderia Ferrari, no other driver before him has raced for so long for the Italian racing team.

    When Michael Schumacher first tested for the legendary marque at Maranello at the end of 1995, he was in his mid-twenties and had just married Corinna. During his time at Ferrari he experienced highs and lows in his private life, and they were often linked to a particular race. Thus at an interview on the starting grid of the Italian Grand Prix in 1997, he blurted out that he was to become a father for the first time, which was eagerly taken up by a media always on the lookout for a new story about the Formula 1 star. His strange clownish leap at a race in Hockenheim in another year appeared to be a greeting to the children at home – he had promised Gina and Mick that if he won he would try a leap that they had practised at home on the trampoline.

    Small anecdotes about the family, who Schumacher always kept out of the public eye, gave rise to often colourful stories in the tabloids. Whether it was a pinky-red hairbrush that his daughter had given him for luck, or a talisman from Corinna that he could suddenly no longer find at a race in Malaysia (his then physiotherapist Balbir Singh had to drive crazily back to the hotel to fetch the chain because Michael did not want to start without it).

    In contrast, the Imola race weekend of 2003 remains a sad memory, when his mother died in a hospital in Cologne some time in the night between Saturday and Sunday. Together with his brother Ralf and their wives, Michael had hurried one last time to the hospital bed on Saturday after qualifying, to then drive a lonely race on Sunday. “Our mother loved to watch us karting,” said both brothers. “She would not have wanted us not to be here at the start. We drove for her.”

    In addition to his family there was the great Ayrton Senna, who had triggered unforgettable moments not only in his own career, but also in Michael Schumacher’s – and not only in a sporting respect. Michael saw the Brazilian drive a kart once as a child. At a race in the Netherlands the little Schumacher saw this boy from Brazil who accomplished the greatest things with the kart. “I noticed him immediately because he controlled the kart so playfully and drove such a great line. From that moment I followed his career. I admired Ayrton for the way he drove,” he would say later.

    When Michael came to Formula 1 years later, Senna was the undisputed top dog and star of the show. But Schumacher had meanwhile acquired considerable self-confidence in the sport thanks to many successes, so it was not long before Senna noticed that a rival he should not underestimate had appeared in the paddock. The stormy clash between them at a test in Hockenheim – when their lines crossed too closely on the route, resulting in Senna reprimanding the youngster – remains unforgotten. Senna’s tragically premature death due to his accident at Imola in 1994 took from Formula 1 not only its greatest star, but also the prospect of a fascinating duel between two full-blooded racers. But the remembrance of Senna also gives the Ferrari community one of the most memorable moments in Schumacher’s time at Ferrari. Monza 2000.

    The German twice-world-champion and his team had been trying for almost five years to bring the world title back to Maranello. In 1997 and 1998 they had lost in the final races; in 1999 an accident had stopped Michael; 2000 had to be the year. The season had begun well, but the summer brought failures and disillusionment. The Italian Grand Prix in Monza was suddenly a fateful race. There had to be a victory or the title would once more disappear over the horizon. Michael won the race, but at the subsequent press conference he lost control. In response to the statement that with this victory he had equalled the number of victories by Senna, he broke into convulsive sobbing, much to everyone’s surprise, and which to his great consternation he could not subdue. That moment of distress would in hindsight be the ice-breaker between the Ferrari idol and his fans. “On that day everything was somehow too much for me,” explained Michael. “I had found out just before the race that an old acquaintance had suffered a heart attack; then there was the story with the injured track marshal. Additionally the pressure that we absolutely had to win. But when I was told that I had caught up with Ayrton’s number of victories that was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. For me he was always the best. I had never put myself on the same level as him, but suddenly there was the evidence. I don’t know why – suddenly this sobbing burst out of me.” The media reacted just as positively as supporters worldwide. “Schumi, we have seen your heart,” was the headline in one big German newspaper. And in thousands of emails he met with much sympathy. If proof were still needed that this eager combatant also had a weak side, here it was. Then there was a similar outburst in 2006 at the race in Bahrain.

    Michael raced there as undisputed champion, the record holder of his sport, already an icon. He had broken almost every record; only in one area did Ayrton Senna still have the edge: the number of pole positions. At qualifying in Bahrain Michael obtained his 65th pole, equalling Senna’s record. Back in the motor home that evening he was suddenly certain that this would be his last season. “Sometimes strange things happen,” he said later. “I was never actively chasing these records; I never tried to top these lists. But then there was this sign and it felt like a release. I don’t know why but the story of Ayrton is a story that always pursued me. Every time I was confronted with it I became very emotional. Of course you don’t want to admit it at the time. You try to hide your emotions, so as not to show weaknesses to others. I believe it’s the same for every sportsman. Suddenly I knew how tiring this life was and how much I yearned not to always be travelling around. That was the moment when I decided that it would be my last season. In that moment I felt liberated – and I would never in my dreams have imagined that I would retract this decision three years later.

    “In the end, several things came together that made me wonder why I was still doing it. My private situation could not have been better; there were no financial reasons. I roamed about here and there at tests or meetings in which I was no longer really interested. I’m talking about the trappings, the preparation and the continuous debate on what could still be done. Always giving 100 per cent simply sapped your strength. Just after Bahrain, Malaysia and Australia, when in principle my decision had already been made, I caught myself wondering how I had done it all. There were so many hours, so many days, when I had to force myself to test. I don’t know whether it’s normal wear and tear, but these tests the whole year round kind of wore me down. I was simply tired.”

    Conspiracy theories surrounded Schumacher’s departure from Formula 1. The most popular was that the Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo had thrust him from the team, because he absolutely had to have Kimi Räikkönen and Schumacher did not want the Finn near him. The story went that when Ferrari signed Räikkönen, the German, who according to Montezemolo was too powerful, was forced to withdraw. Another version had it that, after Schumacher had given his okay to sign Räikkönen in 2005, Ferrari CEO Jean Todt had to deceive his supposed friend because Schumacher’s designated successor Felipe Massa was managed by Todt’s son Nicolas and blood runs thicker than water. As is often the case, the truth was far simpler. After almost 16 years of high-performance sport and almost 13 years in a non-stop battle to be world champion, Schumacher’s tank was simply empty. Another year seemed more of a burden than a delight.

    When Michael finally announced his decision at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, a small slip-up renewed speculation – the press office wanted to be professional and fast and issued the press release with the news of the retirement immediately after the race. Michael had still not made his decision public at this point because the press conference had not begun. From this many people concluded that he had been bounced into retirement. But his decision was then certain and he was naturally informed about the press release. That it would be at Monza was also not a problem for him. “The timing of the announcement was completely fine. Personally I could have announced it earlier, but Ferrari explained that such things traditionally took place at Monza and I had no problem with that. We decided on Monza together. The good thing then was that I no longer needed to talk rubbish or to seek refuge in excuses. I made my decision in a prevailing mood of positivity. It was going well for me at that time. I was at peace with myself. I always felt it was good that way. And of course I remarked with pleasure that people asked themselves: ‘But why? He’s still able to compete.’ Much better that way than people asking: ‘Why is he still driving? He is much too old, he is too slow.’ I wouldn’t have liked that at all.”

    Then on October 22, 2006, Schumacher, in what at the time appeared to be the last race of his career, once more gave proof of his driving ability as he fought back after a burst tyre from last place right through the whole field up to fourth, a drive which was celebrated wildly by his team. Together they lived through an era that will enter motorsport history as a golden one for Ferrari. With six constructors’ and five drivers’ titles, Ferrari was the team of the new century. Consequently, the first phase after his racing career was one in which cars, racing and race tracks played a huge role. You cannot cast off passions so easily.

    At first the record world champion was in close contact with the Ferrari Formula 1 team. As a technical advisor he was at the races less and spent more time at the engineers’ briefings before or after the grand prix. The technicians of the most successful team had already praised his eye for the essentials, his ability to determine the heart of the problem and to find suggestions for solutions during his time on the track. His experience also helped the young team, which had been completely reconstructed in the key positions after the departure of Schumacher, team principal Jean Todt and technical manager Ross Brawn. But the longer his separation from racing was, the closer Schumacher came to the development of road cars.

    His feedback to the engineers in this area was extremely helpful, and Michael himself could satisfy his desire for driving cars. Perhaps the speeds were not so high, perhaps the centrifugal forces were less powerful, but Michael Schumacher also felt that joy in driving at the limit at the road car test drives in Balocco or on the Nurburgring. And just as he had done during his time with Formula 1, he also enjoyed the interaction in the team and the direct implementation of technical feedback.

    Not for nothing did the last contract that Schumacher negotiated with Montezemolo (that would not be signed) refer in great part to his work in this area. “I very much enjoyed the work in this field,” said Michael. “When I still raced in Formula 1, Ferrari sometimes needed me to test certain models on the racing track because they wanted to know what I would say about their driveability. Later I had much more time for this. The Scuderia, the California and even the Italia were cars with whose development and refinement I was involved – they were all great cars that were fun to drive. I like working in a team, and at Ferrari there is always good cooperation. That was the phase when I could never have imagined ever wanting to race in Formula 1 again; in my eyes that part of my life was completely over. And I believe I was a good recommendation for such cars. I love driving sports cars myself, but sometimes, for example with the family, I also like to cruise and not battle with the car. I looked at the cars from a dual point of view: that of a racing driver and that of a normal customer.”

    Testing, discussing, analysing, rejecting – Michael Schumacher loved the interaction with the engineers or the mechanics, whether in Formula 1 or with road cars. Teamwork and team spirit were extremely important to him, and because his attitude was so natural, he was always considered a true team player. Michael Schumacher never forgot to praise and draw attention to his team after a victory; he never underestimated how important the motivation of the people around him was. This ability in team building is just one of the characteristics that explain his success, just like his understanding of what makes a team – clear, direct communication and purposeful and solution-oriented discussion. Politics and polemics were never his thing. He shared this understanding with the three people who for a long time formed the inner circle of the so-called dream team: Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne. His relationships with these key people in his career were just as loyal as his one with the racing team. This clearly shows in his relationship with Brawn: he attained all his world champion titles in conjunction with the calm, English engineer, and with him he began his last racing phase at the newly-created Silver Arrows.

    Michael Schumacher and Ferrari – it was, and is, a profound love. And as is often the case in life with great loves, you forgive the disappointments and wish each other all the best. There is a famous song from Schumacher’s home town of Cologne that best describes this relationship. It is called “Niemals geht man so ganz” (One never leaves whole). And so Michael’s departure turned out to be very positive. “I am very happy that the split went so harmoniously and we are still linked in friendship,” he said after the last team change of his career. “I would like to thank Luca di Montezemolo and the whole team for all the time together and for giving me the opportunity to make friends. Feats such as these create friendships. After these 14 years I will carry a large piece of Ferrari forever in my heart, and I will never forget the attachment and enthusiasm of the tifosi.

    “They have borne me around the world with their devotion and I would like to thank them from the bottom of my heart. I have experienced many wonderful moments with this team. The greatest part of my racing life is red and I feel a strong connection and loyalty to the guys who accompanied me and always produced a great car. This connection will remain with us forever.”

    The “guys” felt the same connection, giving him a team photo at his last Ferrari race in Brazil in 2006. That was the second time in his career when Schumacher could not hold back his tears on the race track. On the photo is written: “Sei uno di noi” – “You are one of us.”

    The Official Ferrari Opus is the most lavish and most valuable historical publication of Ferrari that has ever been produced. The Opus weighs in at 37 kilos and is 50 cm by 50 cm, with 852 pages, 200,000 words and more than 2,000 pictures, many of which were specially commissioned for the Opus or come from Ferrari’s historic records and have never previously been published. The Official Ferrari Opus also includes exclusive interviews with the motorsport legends that have been part of Ferrari’s unique history. for further information go to www.ferrariopus.com

  • Couric leaving news anchor post

     
     

    FILE – In this July 16, 2006 file photo, Katie Couric, CBS News anchor and correspondent, answers questions about her upcoming season anchoring “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” during a news conference in Pasadena, Calif. (AP Photo/Lucas Jackson, File)

     
     
    AP source: (AP)–1 hour ago

    NEW YORK (AP) — Katie Couric is leaving her anchor post at “CBS Evening News” less than five years after becoming the first woman to solely helm a network TV evening newscast.

    A network executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Couric has not officially announced her plans, reported the move to The Associated Press on Sunday night. The 54-year-old anchor is expected to launch a syndicated talk show in 2012 and several companies are vying for her services.

    Couric’s move from NBC’s “Today” show was big news in 2006, and she began in the anchor chair with a flourish that September. She tried to incorporate her strengths as an interviewer into a standard evening news format and millions of people who normally didn’t watch the news at night checked it out. But they drifted away and the evening newscast reverted to a more traditional broadcast.

    After those first few weeks, the “CBS Evening News” settled into third place in the ratings and is well behind leader Brian Williams at NBC’s “Nightly News” and second-place Diane Sawyer at ABC’s “World News.”

    No departure date has been set for Couric. Her CBS News contract expires on June 4.

    “We’re having ongoing discussions with Katie Couric,” said CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair on Sunday. “We have no announcements to make at this time. Until we do, we will continue to decline comment on rumor or speculation.”

    Said Matthew Hiltzik, Couric’s spokesman: “Ditto.”

    Still, discussions are already under way about who will replace Couric on the evening newscast. Russ Mitchell, Scott Pelley and Harry Smith are among the internal CBS candidates, and new CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager is also expected to look outside the company.

    Couric, who was on vacation last week, was reluctant to talk about her future when she appeared on fellow CBS host David Letterman’s show on March 22. “Once you take that anchor chair, that’s what you do,” Letterman told her.

    “Really?” Couric answered.

    “Look at Walter Cronkite, look at Tom Brokaw, look at Brian Williams, look at Peter Jennings, look at all these people,” Letterman said. “They get in it, they saddle up and they ride into the sunset.”

    Couric smiled widely and said she loved doing the evening news and was proud of her work, but made no future commitments. Despite the ratings problems, the “CBS Evening News” won the Edward R. Murrow Award as best newscast in 2008 and 2009. Couric’s interview with then-Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2008 was a memorable moment in the campaign after Palin couldn’t or wouldn’t answer Couric’s question about books or magazines she regularly read.

    Even with those high points, broadcast news economics had changed markedly since she signed on with CBS and her reported $15 million a year salary became increasingly hard to justify for a third-place telecast. Fager, the “60 Minutes” executive producer, was installed as CBS News chairman two months ago and new executives frequently like to put their own stamp on newscasts.

    Rome Hartman, Couric’s first executive producer at the “CBS Evening News,” said that while Couric’s tenure clearly didn’t work out as well as CBS hoped, “I don’t think it’s right to think of it as, or call it, a failure.”

    For the first time in many years, a network tried to increase the number of viewers watching the evening news instead of trying to steal a bigger slice out of an ever-shrinking pie, said Hartman, editor of “BBC World News America.”

    “There are people who love Katie and those who don’t love her and that was a factor,” he said. “But it was the overall dynamics. There was a rock that we couldn’t move and I don’t think it would have mattered who we would have put in there.”

    Although Couric will leave the evening news, she might not leave CBS. The CBS Corp. is a powerful force in the syndication business as owners of “Dr. Phil” and “Judge Judy,” and the upcoming departure in May of Oprah Winfrey will leave a huge void in the talk show marketplace. Through CBS-owned stations, the company could give a big head start to a Couric show. Due to the sales calendar, such a show would not likely begin until fall 2012.

    A syndication deal with CBS is seen as the only possibility that Couric would continue as evening news anchor on a temporary basis past June, if she were to agree to stay during an extended search for her successor.

    Other chief contenders for Couric’s services are NBC and Telepictures. NBC is her old home, but is not considered a big player in the talk show business. It tried and failed to launch a show for Jane Pauley, one of Couric’s predecessors on “Today.” Telepictures is bigger in the marketplace, producing “Ellen” and a new show with Anderson Cooper debuting in the fall, both of which could take potential time slots away from Couric.

    Each of the companies has related news divisions where Couric could have some visibility before starting a talk show — at CBS, NBC or CNN, through Telepictures.

    The personality that Couric could be expected to readily display on the talk show circuit could be seen last week in a video posted by aol.com. Couric, who has actively encouraged Americans to get colonoscopies since her husband died of colon cancer, took a humorous look at undergoing her own test. Her doctor jokingly noted that he had found a Batman doll while looking at Couric’s internal organs.