Baseball Dumping Dugout-to-Bullpen Landlines

The reserve clause is dead. And so are wool uniforms. There are no longer eight teams in each league. And the Houston Astros have departed the National League.

 Major League Baseball is now about to disconnect the landlines that link dugouts to bullpens. Long after the rest of society embraced cellphones, managers and coaches will soon be able to discuss pitching changes on Samsung Galaxy S III phones.

The 21st-century 4G dugout-to-bullpen connection that is being created by T-Mobile USA as part of its wireless sponsorship with Major League Baseball was announced Tuesday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

 “This is baseball’s continued push into the digital age,” said Tim Brosnan, Major League Baseball’s executive vice president for business. “It’s also about a very aggressive wireless provider that sought us out to create this unique communications platform.”

Baseball had not thought of a dugout-to-bullpen phone system in its talks with various wireless providers about a national sponsorship over the past decade, Brosnan said.

The wireless system will be tested at the World Baseball Classic in Arizona in March. After assessing how it works and fixing any problems, baseball will roll it out in the major leagues. Whether each stadium will have it in 2013 has not been determined.

T-Mobile’s sponsorship plans also include enhancing network connectivity for fans at all ballparks and helping MLB Advanced Media create content for smartphones and tablets.

To create the dugout-to-bullpen communications system, each ballpark will get the equivalent of a small cellular system with a miniature cell tower.

But while wireless companies like T-Mobile are continuously trying to broaden their national coverage territory, the dugout-to-bullpen system will have limits enforced by a technology called geo-fencing. So, managers and pitching coaches will not be able to chat with the bullpen coach from the pitcher’s mound. And bullpen coaches cannot ask, “Can you hear me now?” once they leave the bullpen’s environs.

“The guidance we’ve been given is that we shouldn’t fundamentally change what makes baseball baseball,” said Mark McDiarmid, T-Mobile’s vice president for engineering. “There is reason to be cautious about how far the coach could move away from the dugout before the umpires might think it’s inappropriate.”

Baseball is not shifting to cellphones because of an incident during the eighth inning of Game 5 of the 2011 World Series when the noise at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington caused Derek Lilliquist, the Cardinals’ bullpen coach, to misunderstand Manager Tony La Russa’s instructions about which relievers should start warming up.

Twice, La Russa asked that Jason Motte get up. Lilliquist apparently did not hear the first request. When La Russa called again to get Motte ready, Lilliquist thought he was asking for Lance Lynn. The miscommunication led to La Russa’s surprise when he summoned a right-hander and Lynn arrived at the mound, not Motte. Lynn stayed in long enough to issue an intentional walk; Motte quickly got ready and replaced him.

Lilliquist might well have heard La Russa’s instructions if they had used the cellphone system, with multiple microphones, noise mitigation and the ability to raise audio levels.

 Given T-Mobile’s investment over the next three years, it is not surprising that each dugout’s branded cellphone docking station — about the size of a personal computer tower — will be about as visible to TV cameras as the Gatorade vessel is.

But, Brosnan said, baseball has not ordained the obvious commercial tie-in: that each call to the bullpen on Fox, ESPN and TBS’s national telecasts be sponsored by T-Mobile.

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Three Kurdish Activists Killed in Central Paris

Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Members of the Kurdish community in France protested on Thursday near the institute in Paris where three Kurdish women were found killed.

PARIS — Three Kurdish women, including a founding member of a leading militant group fighting for autonomy in Turkey, were shot to death at a Kurdish institute in central Paris, police officials said on Thursday, potentially jeopardizing efforts to negotiate a cease-fire in the decades-old conflict.

News reports identified the women as Sakine Cansiz, a founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by the initials P.K.K. , Fidan Dogan, the head of the institute and a representative of the Kurdistan National Committee, and Leyla Soylemez, a youthful Kurdish activist.

The women’s bodies were discovered shortly before 2 a.m. on Thursday, according to Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, adding that the antiterror department of the prosecutor’s office will oversee the investigation. She confirmed that Ms. Dogan, born in 1984, and Ms. Soylemez, born in 1988, were victims in the killings, but declined to confirm the identity of the third woman.

“No hypothesis can be excluded at this stage” about the motive for the killing, she said.

Visiting the crime scene on Thursday, Interior Minister Manuel Valls called the shootings “intolerable” and said they were “without doubt an execution.” The violence at the Kurdish Institute of Paris, in the city’s 10th district near the Gare du Nord railroad station, seemed to open a new chapter in the often murky annals of Kurdish exile life.

In recent years, Turkey has sought to clamp down on the activities of Kurdish activists outside of Turkey. Sizable exile communities in France, Germany, Belgium and Denmark have established civic and media organizations that Kurdish officials say are a refuge from Turkish censorship.

Turkey has accused some of the institutions of being fronts for separatist activities or terrorism.

Analysts in Turkey argued that it seemed to be no coincidence that the killings had come just days after reports of the peace negotiations involving Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the P.K.K. who was incarcerated in 1999 in a fortresslike prison on the western Turkish island of Imrali.

While Kurdish militants blamed Turkey for the shootings in Paris, Turkish officials said the women could have been killed because of feuding within the P.K.K.

Huseyin Celik, the deputy chairman of the ruling party in Turkey, said the episode seemed to be part of an internal dispute but offered no evidence to support the claim.

“Whenever in Turkey we reach the stage of saying ‘friend, give up this business, let the weapons be silent,’ whenever a determination emerges on this, such incidents happen,” Mr. Celik told reporters in Ankara. “Is there one P.K.K.? I’m not sure of that.”

French police officials said a murder investigation had been opened. The bodies and three shell casings were found in a room at the institute. The women were all said to hold Turkish passports.

The P.K.K. has been fighting a bitter guerrilla war against the Turkish authorities for almost three decades to reinforce demands for greater autonomy. The conflict, which has claimed some 40,000 lives, is fueled by competing notions of national identity rooted in the founding of modern Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey, the United States and the European Union have labeled the P.K.K. a terrorist organization, but sympathy for the group and its goals remains widespread in many towns in Turkey’s rugged southeast.

Restive Kurdish minorities span a broad region embracing areas of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and parts of the former Soviet Union. Regional turmoil in recent years has emboldened Kurdish separatists inspired by the example of Iraqi Kurds who control an autonomous zone. Turkey also fears that the civil war in neighboring Syria could strengthen the separatist yearnings of Kurds there, feeding Kurdish activism in Turkey.

The killings, which apparently took place Wednesday, inspired hundreds of Kurdish exiles to gather outside the institute on Thursday, chanting “We are all P.K.K.!” and accusing Turkey of assassinating the three women, abetted by the French president, François Hollande.

The bodies were first discovered in the early hours of Thursday by Kurdish exiles who had become concerned about the whereabouts of the women.

The victims had been alone in the building on Wednesday and could not be reached by telephone in the late afternoon, according to Leon Edart, who manages the center. Mr. Edart, speaking to French reporters, suggested the victims may have opened the door to their killer or killers.

Dan Bilefsky reported from Paris, Alan Cowell from London, and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul. Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.

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Analysts Skeptical as Majority Owner Takes Role as Chief Executive of Sears

Elise Amendola/Associated Press

A Sears in Peabody, Mass.

Just hours after a board discussion on Monday, a note went out to Sears Holdings employees from Edward S. Lampert, the company’s majority owner and chairman, that he would now be its chief executive.

“I believe in our company,” Mr. Lampert wrote.

But not everyone shares his optimism.

Seven years after he engineered the merger of Sears and Kmart, Mr. Lampert’s plans for the company face a new round of skepticism.

On Monday, Sears announced that its chief executive of two years, Louis J. D’Ambrosio, would be stepping aside because of a health issue in his family and that Mr. Lampert would assume the role. Despite the unexpected departure, Sears is not expected to change course.

“The reality is, Eddie’s been running the company the whole time,” said Gary Balter, an analyst at Credit Suisse.

Mr. Lampert once stepped back from day-to-day management, but more recently he has increased involvement in Sears as he has scaled back his influence on other investments. He maintains an office at Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Ill., although he lives on the East Coast.

If employees “wanted to make merchandising decisions, they had to fly up to Connecticut to get approval from Eddie. He was making day-to-day decisions in this company, and clearly he’s making the capital decisions,” Mr. Balter said.

But Mr. Lampert is a money man, not a merchant, and analysts question his plans for reviving Sears, which has faltered since he combined Sears and Kmart. It has valuable assets, they say, but sales and profitability continue to slide. In his most recent chairman’s letter, Mr. Lampert outlined some ways he wanted to take Sears forward, including building on its loyalty program and expanding what he called “integrated” options — allowing shoppers to buy online, in stores, via mobile devices or a combination. He highlighted Sears’s liquidity options and its ownership of and access to cash from Lands’ End, the clothing retailer Sears bought in 2002, and its real estate, “should the circumstances warrant.” He further wrote, “We do not expect to utilize or execute all of these options,” but he said he wanted to reassure vendors.

“If you’re unwilling to try new things, and to fail and learn, you don’t have a shot,” Mr. Lampert said in an interview last year. “That doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful, but you have to try to change.”

Mr. Lampert’s new role as chief executive of a struggling company is a new one for him.

When he was younger, Mr. Lampert made a name for himself with his fast rise through the ranks at Goldman Sachs, his brash courtship of Wall Street idols like Richard Rainwater and Robert Rubin and, when he started his investment fund ESL Investments in 1988, the high returns at the fund. He invested in struggling retailers like AutoNation and AutoZone in the 1990s and early 2000s, then bought a controlling stake in Kmart when it was in bankruptcy. In 2005, he completed the merger with Sears.

And, adding some Hollywood flair to the story line, after being kidnapped at gunpoint from a parking garage in 2003, Mr. Lampert, after being held for about 30 hours, managed to negotiate his own release.

Fortune called the billionaire “the best investor of his generation.” Bloomberg Businessweek asked if he was “The Next Warren Buffett?”

But Sears value has declined since then. His initial idea was to combine the best of Sears and Kmart and sell some appealing locations to competitors. But the recession meant the real estate was no longer in demand, and now many large retailers are downsizing or closing stores.

As the real estate options diminished, Sears was losing sales. The people Mr. Lampert hired to run the company were not retailers, and instead had backgrounds in fast food, supply chains and technology.

Sears’s sales have declined for five straight years, and its market capitalization now is 15 percent of what it was at the beginning of 2006. In the third quarter, the company lost $498 million, up from $410 million for the same quarter in 2011. Sales fell by $548 million, to $8.9 billion.

In the last year, Mr. Lampert has directed a cleanup of the balance sheet. He sold some valuable real estate, spun off business units and reduced inventory to assuage liquidity concerns after a dismal 2011 holiday sales season.

This year, it spun off a profitable hardware retail division and part of its stake in Sears Canada.

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Gaps Seen in Therapy for Suicidal Teenagers

Most adolescents who plan or attempt suicide have already received at least some mental health treatment, raising questions about the effectiveness of current approaches to helping troubled youths, according to the largest in-depth analysis to date of suicidal behaviors in American teenagers.

The study, in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found that 55 percent of suicidal teenagers had received some therapy before they thought about suicide, planned it or tried to kill themselves, contradicting the widely held belief that suicide is due in part to a lack of access to treatment.

The findings, based on interviews with a nationwide sample of more than 6,000 teenagers and at least one parent of each, linked suicidal behavior to complex combinations of mood disorders like depression and behavior problems like attention-deficit and eating disorders, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.

The study found that about one in eight teenagers had persistent suicidal thoughts at some point, and that about a third of those who had suicidal thoughts had made an attempt, usually within a year of having the idea.

Previous studies have had similar findings, based on smaller, regional samples. But the new study is the first to suggest, in a large nationwide sample, that access to treatment does not make a big difference.

The study suggests that effective treatment for severely suicidal teenagers must address not just mood disorders, but also behavior problems that can lead to impulsive acts, experts said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,386 people between the ages of 13 and 18 committed suicide in 2010, the latest year for which numbers are available.

“I think one of the take-aways here is that treatment for depression may be necessary but not sufficient to prevent kids from attempting suicide,” said Dr. David Brent, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study. “We simply do not have empirically validated treatments for recurrent suicidal behavior.”

The report said nothing about whether the therapies given were state of the art or carefully done, said Matt Nock, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the lead author, and it is possible that some of the treatments prevented suicide attempts. “But it’s telling us we’ve got a long way to go to do this right,” Dr. Nock said. His co-authors included Ronald C. Kessler of Harvard and researchers from Boston University and Children’s Hospital Boston.

Margaret McConnell, a consultant in Alexandria, Va., said her daughter Alice, who killed herself in 2006 at the age of 17, was getting treatment at the time. “I think there might have been some carelessness in the way the treatment was done,” Ms. McConnell said, “and I was trusting a 17-year-old to manage her own medication. We found out after we lost her that she wasn’t taking it regularly.”

In the study, researchers surveyed 6,483 adolescents from the ages of 13 to 18 and found that 9 percent of male teenagers and 15 percent of female teenagers experienced some stretch of having persistent suicidal thoughts. Among girls, 5 percent made suicide plans and 6 percent made at least one attempt (some were unplanned).

Among boys, 3 percent made plans and 2 percent carried out attempts, which tended to be more lethal than girls’ attempts.

(Suicidal thinking or behavior was virtually unheard-of before age 10.)

Over all, about one-third of teenagers with persistent suicidal thoughts went on to make an attempt to take their own lives.

Almost all of the suicidal adolescents in the study qualified for some psychiatric diagnosis, whether depression, phobias or generalized anxiety disorder. Those with an added behavior problem — attention-deficit disorder, substance abuse, explosive anger — were more likely to act on thoughts of self-harm, the study found.

Doctors have tested a range of therapies to prevent or reduce recurrent suicidal behaviors, with mixed success. Medications can ease depression, but in some cases they can increase suicidal thinking. Talk therapy can contain some behavior problems, but not all.

One approach, called dialectical behavior therapy, has proved effective in reducing hospitalizations and suicide attempts in, among others, people with borderline personality disorder, who are highly prone to self-harm.

But suicidal teenagers who have a mixture of mood and behavior issues are difficult to reach. In one 2011 study, researchers at George Mason University reduced suicide attempts, hospitalizations, drinking and drug use among suicidal adolescent substance abusers. The study found that a combination of intensive treatments — talk therapy for mood problems, family-based therapy for behavior issues and patient-led reduction in drug use — was more effective than regular therapies.

“But that’s just one study, and it’s small,” said Dr. Brent of the University of Pittsburgh. “We can treat components of the overall problem, but that’s about all.”

Ms. McConnell said that her daughter’s depression had seemed mild and that there was no warning that she would take her life. “I think therapy does help a lot of people, if it’s handled right,” she said.

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Gaps Seen in Therapy for Suicidal Teenagers

Most adolescents who plan or attempt suicide have already received at least some mental health treatment, raising questions about the effectiveness of current approaches to helping troubled youths, according to the largest in-depth analysis to date of suicidal behaviors in American teenagers.

The study, in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found that 55 percent of suicidal teenagers had received some therapy before they thought about suicide, planned it or tried to kill themselves, contradicting the widely held belief that suicide is due in part to a lack of access to treatment.

The findings, based on interviews with a nationwide sample of more than 6,000 teenagers and at least one parent of each, linked suicidal behavior to complex combinations of mood disorders like depression and behavior problems like attention-deficit and eating disorders, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.

The study found that about one in eight teenagers had persistent suicidal thoughts at some point, and that about a third of those who had suicidal thoughts had made an attempt, usually within a year of having the idea.

Previous studies have had similar findings, based on smaller, regional samples. But the new study is the first to suggest, in a large nationwide sample, that access to treatment does not make a big difference.

The study suggests that effective treatment for severely suicidal teenagers must address not just mood disorders, but also behavior problems that can lead to impulsive acts, experts said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,386 people between the ages of 13 and 18 committed suicide in 2010, the latest year for which numbers are available.

“I think one of the take-aways here is that treatment for depression may be necessary but not sufficient to prevent kids from attempting suicide,” said Dr. David Brent, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study. “We simply do not have empirically validated treatments for recurrent suicidal behavior.”

The report said nothing about whether the therapies given were state of the art or carefully done, said Matt Nock, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the lead author, and it is possible that some of the treatments prevented suicide attempts. “But it’s telling us we’ve got a long way to go to do this right,” Dr. Nock said. His co-authors included Ronald C. Kessler of Harvard and researchers from Boston University and Children’s Hospital Boston.

Margaret McConnell, a consultant in Alexandria, Va., said her daughter Alice, who killed herself in 2006 at the age of 17, was getting treatment at the time. “I think there might have been some carelessness in the way the treatment was done,” Ms. McConnell said, “and I was trusting a 17-year-old to manage her own medication. We found out after we lost her that she wasn’t taking it regularly.”

In the study, researchers surveyed 6,483 adolescents from the ages of 13 to 18 and found that 9 percent of male teenagers and 15 percent of female teenagers experienced some stretch of having persistent suicidal thoughts. Among girls, 5 percent made suicide plans and 6 percent made at least one attempt (some were unplanned).

Among boys, 3 percent made plans and 2 percent carried out attempts, which tended to be more lethal than girls’ attempts.

(Suicidal thinking or behavior was virtually unheard-of before age 10.)

Over all, about one-third of teenagers with persistent suicidal thoughts went on to make an attempt to take their own lives.

Almost all of the suicidal adolescents in the study qualified for some psychiatric diagnosis, whether depression, phobias or generalized anxiety disorder. Those with an added behavior problem — attention-deficit disorder, substance abuse, explosive anger — were more likely to act on thoughts of self-harm, the study found.

Doctors have tested a range of therapies to prevent or reduce recurrent suicidal behaviors, with mixed success. Medications can ease depression, but in some cases they can increase suicidal thinking. Talk therapy can contain some behavior problems, but not all.

One approach, called dialectical behavior therapy, has proved effective in reducing hospitalizations and suicide attempts in, among others, people with borderline personality disorder, who are highly prone to self-harm.

But suicidal teenagers who have a mixture of mood and behavior issues are difficult to reach. In one 2011 study, researchers at George Mason University reduced suicide attempts, hospitalizations, drinking and drug use among suicidal adolescent substance abusers. The study found that a combination of intensive treatments — talk therapy for mood problems, family-based therapy for behavior issues and patient-led reduction in drug use — was more effective than regular therapies.

“But that’s just one study, and it’s small,” said Dr. Brent of the University of Pittsburgh. “We can treat components of the overall problem, but that’s about all.”

Ms. McConnell said that her daughter’s depression had seemed mild and that there was no warning that she would take her life. “I think therapy does help a lot of people, if it’s handled right,” she said.

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Chinese Man Pleads Guilty in Copyright Violation Case

Nearly five years ago, a Chinese man named Xiang Li registered several domain names, including www.crack99.com, and embarked on an ambitious, and ultimately illegal, venture.

Mr. Li, who was based in Chengdu, paid a network of computer experts to scour the Internet to find commercial software they could “crack,” meaning they bypassed security protocols designed to prevent unauthorized access or reproduction.

Ultimately, Mr. Li offered more than 2,000 pirated software products that could be used as applications in the military, engineering, space exploration, mathematics and explosive simulation, and sold them at a fraction of their retail price, which federal prosecutors said was over $100 million.

Among his biggest customers were an electronics engineer at NASA and the chief scientist at a government military contractor, but his clients also included students, inventors and small-business owners. Mr. Li sold the products for $20 to $1,200, accepting payments by Western Union and MoneyGram, according to government documents.

But Mr. Li’s criminal enterprise officially ended last year when he was arrested by undercover agents. On Monday, he pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in Delaware to one count of conspiring to steal copyrighted software. He faces a maximum of five years in prison.

Mr. Li, who is 36, could not be reached for comment, nor could his lawyer, Mingli Chen. Mr. Li’s wife, Chun Yan Li, was also indicted on charges of participating in the illegal scheme; she remains at large, presumably in China, officials said.

Mr. Li was arrested in June 2011 in Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands during a meeting that had been arranged by undercover agents posing as American businessmen. The agents arranged the meeting under the guise of picking up their purchase of pirated software, design packaging and 20 gigabytes of proprietary data, and to discuss a plan to transmit cracked software over the Internet so they could resell it to small businesses in the United States.

After the arrest, agents recovered six disks from Mr. Li containing an assortment of data pirated from an unidentified American software company, including military and civilian aircraft image models and a software module containing data about the International Space Station.

Edward J. McAndrew, one of the prosecutors on the case, said Mr. Li’s arrest was among the largest criminal copyright cases to be successfully prosecuted by the government.

Mr. McAndrew and his colleague, David L. Hall, explained in court documents that once Mr. Li obtained cracked software, he would advertise it on his Web sites, which also included www.cad100.net and www.dongle-crack-download.com. Mr. Li’s customers would then wire him money, some of which he deposited in an account at the Bank of China. From February 2008 to June 2011, Mr. Li and his customers exchanged more than 25,000 e-mails about pirated products, according to the government, which obtained a search warrant for his Gmail account.

Mr. Li used his Gmail account to orchestrate more than 500 illegal transactions with customers in at least 28 states and more than 60 foreign countries, according to court documents. Software was pirated from more than 200 manufacturers.

Mr. McAndrew said none of the pirated software obtained by the undercover agents from Mr. Li contained classified material. But Mr. McAndrew said the government could not determine whether any classified material was distributed to other buyers since it did not have access to all the pirated products that Mr. Li sold.

One of Mr. Li’s biggest customers was Cosburn Wedderburn, a NASA electronics engineer, who bought 12 cracked software programs with a retail value exceeding $1.2 million. Another was Dr. Wronald Best, chief scientist at an unidentified government contractor that provides services to the United States military and law enforcement, like radio transmissions, microwave technology and vacuum tubes used in military helicopters. Dr. Best exchanged more than 260 e-mails with Mr. Li to obtain 10 cracked software programs, with a retail value of more than $600,000, prosecutors said.

Both Mr. Wedderburn and Dr. Best pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Both are awaiting sentencing.

Starting in January 2010, undercover agents began buying pirated software from Mr. Li’s Web sites, receiving electronic files with the pirated software or hyperlinks that allowed the agents to download the software from servers in the United States.

In all, the agents paid the Lis $8,615 for the software.

For instance, in January 2010, the agents bought a pirated copy of Satellite Tool Kit 8.0, a software product from Analytical Graphics that has a retail value of more than $150,000. The software includes several functions used by the military and intelligence communities, including three-dimensional warfare simulations.

Mr. Li’s e-mails suggest he was aware of the illegality of his venture, prosecutors say. “I am not a crack production engineers (my job is to collect)(.) This is an international organization created to crack declassified document (s),” he said in a 2009 e-mail. In another he wrote, “I need to use your money to seek the help of experts to cracker master I earn 10 percent of the profits.”

One customer asked who did the cracking. “Experts crack,” Mr. Li wrote. “Chinese people. Sorry can not reveal more.”

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The Lede Blog: Armstrong Set to Appear on Oprah Next Week, as New Allegation Surfaces

Last Updated, Wednesday, 10:48 a.m. The year before his seventh and final Tour de France victory, Lance Armstrong offered to donate “in excess of $150,000″ to the antidoping agency in charge of keeping American athletes from using performance-enhancing drugs, according to the organization’s chief executive.

The latest accusation against Armstrong, the disgraced former cyclist, was made by the current head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, in an interview with CBS News posted online on Tuesday. In October, Usada stripped Armstrong of all of his titles and barred him from competition for life following the release of a 202-page report into what the agency called “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”

As my colleague Juliet Macur reported, Armstrong, who has so far denied all allegations of cheating, “has told associates and antidoping officials that he is considering publicly admitting that he used banned performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions during his cycling career.” Late Tuesday, Oprah Winfrey announced that she “will speak exclusively with Lance Armstrong in his first no-holds-barred interview,” to be broadcast next week on her network.

BREAKING NEWS: Looking forward to this conversation with @lancearmstrong: http://t.co/GwSmBhdW #NextChapter

— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) 9 Jan 13

As the cycling journalist Lionel Birnie notes, the Oprah Winfrey Network is a joint venture with Discovery Communications, the broadcaster that sponsored Armstrong’s team in 2005.

Lance is going on Oprah, partly-produced by Discovery Channel, sponsors of Lance’s 7th and final fraudulent Tour win. Somehow fitting.

— Lionel Birnie (@lioneljbirnie) 9 Jan 13

Samantha Lane, a reporter for The Age in Australia, pointed out on Twitter that Winfrey and Armstrong looked comfortable together in a photograph published in the May 2004 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine with an interview of the cyclist before that year’s Tour de France.

Oprah & Lance, in happier times (pic from her website). http://t.co/TMpMfYfk

— Sam Lane (@SamJaneLane) 9 Jan 13

The network’s logo was emblazoned across the victor’s yellow jersey Armstrong wore on the top step of the podium in Paris that year, as he lectured “the people that don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the skeptics.”

Directly addressing those who accused him of doping that day, Armstrong said, “I’m sorry for you, I’m sorry you can’t dream big and I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles, but this is one hell of a race, this is a great sporting event and you should stand around and believe. You should believe in these athletes and you should believe in these people. I’m a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live and there’s no secrets — this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it.”

The notion of Armstrong confessing on Oprah was pre-mocked nearly two years ago by the bike racers and cartoonists Andy Shen and Dan Schmalz in their cult comic strip about the soap-operatic world of professional cycling, “As the Toto Turns,” for nyvelocity.com.

Another journalist who writes about cycling, Shane Stokes, suggested that Armstrong might expect Winfrey to go easy on him, since she let another disgraced athlete, Marion Jones, claim during a 2008 interview that she had used performance-enhancing drugs unintentionally.

Marion Jones claimed during a 2008 interview with Oprah Winfrey that she had used performance-enhancing drugs unintentionally.

Just after news of the interview broke, Kathy LeMond, whose husband, Greg, is now the only American to win the Tour de France, offered to put Winfrey in touch with people who could give her a crash course on the culture of professional cycling.

.@Oprah I hope you get educated before the interview. I know people that can help you.

— Kathy LeMond (@KathyLeMond) 9 Jan 13

Joe Lindsey of Bicycling Magazine asked his Twitter followers to help Winfrey by suggesting some tough questions.

I am trying to anticipate some of “no holds barred” questions in Oprah’s Lance interview. How about some suggestions? #questionsforlance

— joelindsey (@joelindsey) 9 Jan 13

That’s pretty good. RT @BBQ44 what did you tell your kids or will/have you? #questionsforlance

— joelindsey (@joelindsey) 9 Jan 13

The complete CBS interview with the antidoping official is scheduled to be broadcast on Wednesday, during the premier of a new program, “60 Minutes Sports.” In one portion released on Tuesday, Tygart said it was “totally inappropriate” that Armstrong had donated about $100,000 to the International Cycling Union, a regulatory body involved in drug testing, during his career. He then revealed that someone representing Armstrong had offered to give the American antidoping agency more than $150,000 at some point in 2004. “It was a clear conflict of interest for Usada,” Tygart said. “We had no hesitation in rejecting that offer.” Pressed further about the amount of the proposed donation, Tygart said that it was about $250,000.

In another portion of the interview, broadcast on the CBS Evening News on Tuesday, Tygart said that Armstrong had tried to intimidate former teammates who had testified to a federal grand jury about his doping. The official also revealed that he personally had received death threats as a result of his investigation into the cancer survivor who was once a hero to millions.

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Frequent Flier: When Even 4 Hours of Layover Time Isn’t Enough

William Boutelle cycling on Lismore Isle in Scotland. He is  a psychiatrist at ServiceNet, which provides clinical services in Northampton, Mass.

Q. How often do you fly for business?

A. About twice a month, mostly domestic.

Q. What’s your least favorite airport?

A. Philadelphia International. Something always gets messed up there, without fail.

Q. Of all the places you’ve been, what’s the best?

A. The Greek islands. I love the people, their sense of independence, the ambience and, let’s face it, the islands are great for a beer on the beach.

Q. What’s your secret airport vice?

A. I don’t know if it’s a vice, but I try to always book a layover in Denver. There’s a great restaurant in the airport where I can get the best filet mignon. It’s my red meat quota until I get another chance to fly through there.

I WORKED for more than 30 years for the government as a psychiatrist with the Department of Veterans Affairs system. I flew all the time for meetings and other bureaucratic events. I now work in the private sector as a psychiatrist, and still fly for business about  twice a month.

I don’t like flying much. If I could take a train, that’s what I would do.  I don’t mind talking to seatmates, but I don’t advertise what I do. I might say I’m a doctor, and if they ask me what kind, I’ll usually answer “a pretty good one.”  I don’t want to get into a discussion about psychiatry when I’m trapped in a plane.

I’ve had my share of flying misadventures, but nothing like one recent experience where everything that could go wrong, did.

My wife and I were coming home  from Scotland. We booked plenty of time between our flight from Edinburgh to London and then on to Boston. We booked through a  British carrier, but the  London-to-Boston leg was subcontracted to an American carrier. We were feeling very hopeful that everything was going to go smoothly. That is, until we  got to the airport and saw the plane we were supposed to board was empty. Other travelers were gathering, so we figured that we were in the right place. After about  90 minutes, we found out the delay was caused by fog at Heathrow.

We finally boarded, but then we sat on the runway for another hour because we couldn’t take off because of the backup at Heathrow. We started with a four-hour cushion of time between leaving Scotland, landing in London and then going to Boston. So much for that, and even more time was eaten up as we  circled Heathrow because of continued congestion.

We finally landed, but then had to wait for an open gate, and then found out we had to be bused to a terminal. By the time we got to Heathrow Terminal 5, our Boston flight was gone.

We went to the flight connections desk, where about 2,000 people were in line ahead of us. I called the American carrier whose flight we missed and was told that since it wasn’t a simple round-trip booking, I would have to buy another ticket to get home. I refused, and was told to call  the British carrier with whom I booked the ticket originally.

They told me that we could get on a flight offered by the same American carrier I had just spoken with. Fine by me. It was leaving in 90 minutes. I asked what gate the flight was departing from. It was Terminal 3. It took 45 minutes to get there, only to find out bookings for the flight had closed.

I’m pretty sure tears of frustration were streaming down my face as I explained we had just been sent there from Terminal 5. They found our names, which was great, but we still had to clear security, and then make it to the gate. I was beat up at this point, but we finally boarded our flight home only to discover that we left a backpack at security. The attendant gave me 10 minutes to run back to security and then run back to the plane.

I’m 72 years old. I thought I was going to die, but somehow ran the mini-marathon. When I finally sat down on the plane, we were delayed another 30 minutes. I drank wine. We landed in Boston. My luggage was lost. It did arrive one week later, dirty laundry still intact. After that ordeal, I figured someone might have at least washed it.

 

 

By William Boutelle, as told to Joan Raymond. E-mail: joanraymond@nytimes.com

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Oil Sand Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level

Todd Korol/Reuters

An oil sands mine Fort McMurray, Alberta.

OTTAWA — The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than had previously been believed.

For the study, financed by the Canadian government, the researchers set out to develop a historical record of the contamination, analyzing sediment dating back about 50 years from six small and shallow lakes north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, the center of the oil sands industry. Layers of the sediment were tested for deposits of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, groups of chemicals associated with oil that in many cases have been found to cause cancer in humans after long-term exposure.

“One of the biggest challenges is that we lacked long-term data,” said John P. Smol, the paper’s lead author and a professor of biology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. “So some in industry have been saying that the pollution in the tar sands is natural, it’s always been there.”

The researchers found that to the contrary, the levels of those deposits have been steadily rising since large-scale oil sands production began in 1978.

Samples from one test site, the paper said, now show 2.5 to 23 times more PAHs in current sediment than in layers dating back to around 1960.

“We’re not saying these are poisonous ponds,” Professor Smol said. “But it’s going to get worse. It’s not too late but the trend is not looking good.” He said that the wilderness lakes studied by the group were now contaminated as much as lakes in urban centers.

The study is likely to provide further ammunition to critics of the industry, who already contend that oil extracted from Canada’s oil sands poses environmental hazards like toxic sludge ponds, greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of boreal forests.

Battles are also under way over the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would move the oil down through the western United States and down to refineries along the Gulf Coast, or an alternative pipeline that would transport the oil from landlocked Alberta to British Columbia for export to Asia.

The researchers, who included scientists at Environment Canada’s aquatic contaminants research division, chose to test for PAHs because they had been the subject of earlier studies, including one published in 2009 that analyzed the distribution of the chemicals in snowfall north of Fort McMurray. That research drew criticism from the government of Alberta and others for failing to provide a historical baseline.

“Now we have the smoking gun,” Professor Smol said.

He said he was not surprised that the analysis found a rise in PAH deposits after the industrial development of the oil sands, “but we needed the data.” He said he had not entirely expected, however, to observe the effect at the most remote test site, a lake that is about 50 miles to the north.

Asked about the study, Adam Sweet, a spokesman for Peter Kent, Canada’s environment minister, emphasized in an e-mail that with the exception of one lake very close to the oil sands, the levels of contaminants measured by the researchers “did not exceed Canadian guidelines and were low compared to urban areas.”

He added that an environmental monitoring program for the region announced last February 2012 was put into effect “to address the very concerns raised by such studies” and to “provide an improved understanding of the long-term cumulative effects of oil sands development.”

Earlier research has suggested several different ways that the chemicals could spread. Most oil sand production involve large-scale open-pit mining. The chemicals may become wind-borne when giant excavators dig them up and then deposit them into 400-ton dump trucks.

Upgraders at some oil sands projects that separate the oil bitumen from its surrounding sand are believed to emit PAHs. And some scientists believe that vast ponds holding wastewater from that upgrading and from other oil sand processes may be leaking PAHs and other chemicals into downstream bodies of water.

Read More..

Oil Sand Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level

Todd Korol/Reuters

An oil sands mine Fort McMurray, Alberta.

OTTAWA — The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than had previously been believed.

For the study, financed by the Canadian government, the researchers set out to develop a historical record of the contamination, analyzing sediment dating back about 50 years from six small and shallow lakes north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, the center of the oil sands industry. Layers of the sediment were tested for deposits of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, groups of chemicals associated with oil that in many cases have been found to cause cancer in humans after long-term exposure.

“One of the biggest challenges is that we lacked long-term data,” said John P. Smol, the paper’s lead author and a professor of biology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. “So some in industry have been saying that the pollution in the tar sands is natural, it’s always been there.”

The researchers found that to the contrary, the levels of those deposits have been steadily rising since large-scale oil sands production began in 1978.

Samples from one test site, the paper said, now show 2.5 to 23 times more PAHs in current sediment than in layers dating back to around 1960.

“We’re not saying these are poisonous ponds,” Professor Smol said. “But it’s going to get worse. It’s not too late but the trend is not looking good.” He said that the wilderness lakes studied by the group were now contaminated as much as lakes in urban centers.

The study is likely to provide further ammunition to critics of the industry, who already contend that oil extracted from Canada’s oil sands poses environmental hazards like toxic sludge ponds, greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of boreal forests.

Battles are also under way over the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would move the oil down through the western United States and down to refineries along the Gulf Coast, or an alternative pipeline that would transport the oil from landlocked Alberta to British Columbia for export to Asia.

The researchers, who included scientists at Environment Canada’s aquatic contaminants research division, chose to test for PAHs because they had been the subject of earlier studies, including one published in 2009 that analyzed the distribution of the chemicals in snowfall north of Fort McMurray. That research drew criticism from the government of Alberta and others for failing to provide a historical baseline.

“Now we have the smoking gun,” Professor Smol said.

He said he was not surprised that the analysis found a rise in PAH deposits after the industrial development of the oil sands, “but we needed the data.” He said he had not entirely expected, however, to observe the effect at the most remote test site, a lake that is about 50 miles to the north.

Asked about the study, Adam Sweet, a spokesman for Peter Kent, Canada’s environment minister, emphasized in an e-mail that with the exception of one lake very close to the oil sands, the levels of contaminants measured by the researchers “did not exceed Canadian guidelines and were low compared to urban areas.”

He added that an environmental monitoring program for the region announced last February 2012 was put into effect “to address the very concerns raised by such studies” and to “provide an improved understanding of the long-term cumulative effects of oil sands development.”

Earlier research has suggested several different ways that the chemicals could spread. Most oil sand production involve large-scale open-pit mining. The chemicals may become wind-borne when giant excavators dig them up and then deposit them into 400-ton dump trucks.

Upgraders at some oil sands projects that separate the oil bitumen from its surrounding sand are believed to emit PAHs. And some scientists believe that vast ponds holding wastewater from that upgrading and from other oil sand processes may be leaking PAHs and other chemicals into downstream bodies of water.

Read More..