Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/164653222?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Monday, November 21, 2011
Stewart wins Homestead to win NASCAR championship
HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) ? Tony Stewart nearly wrote off his season during a summer slump, then dismissed his chances at the beginning of NASCAR's championship chase.
Then something suddenly changed ? with his cars, with his attitude, with his driving ? and old Smoke was back.
With a vengeance.
Stewart thrust himself early into title contention, then never let up as he drove all over the competition and chased down Carl Edwards. He seized his third championship Sunday night with a powerful and relentless drive that will go down with the greatest in NASCAR history.
He won at Homestead-Miami Speedway, holding off Edwards for a tie in the final Sprint Cup Series standings ? good enough to win the title based on his five victories. All of Stewart's wins came in the Chase, and Edwards' lone victory this season was in March. It was the first tie in the points standings in NASCAR history.
How good was Stewart, who drove from the back ? twice! ? and passed 118 cars during the race?
"I think Tony drove the best race of his life," said A.J. Foyt, Stewart's childhood idol.
The compliment nearly brought Stewart to tears.
"Not many people can hear your lifelong hero say that. Just really, really flattering," said Stewart, who wasn't sure it's the best drive of his 31-year career, but knew it was pretty strong.
"I feel like I passed half the state of Florida; 118 cars is a lot of cars to pass in one race. To do it under the circumstances and pressure we had, I'm very, very proud of that. I can't even remember how many races I've won, but I would have to say under this set of circumstances I've got to believe one of the greatest races of my career."
Stewart became the first owner/driver to win the championship since the late Alan Kulwicki in 1992, and the driver to end Jimmie Johnson's record five-year title run. His last title was in 2005, the year before Johnson's began his reign.
Stewart overcame a hole in the grill of his Chevrolet, a rain delay, used debatable fuel strategy and made aggressive passes that stunned racing veterans to win Sunday. He's been driving that way for at least a month, buoyed in part by a race-winning pass of Johnson on the outside at Martinsville that gave him his third Chase victory.
"He's been the one to go three- and-four wide when everyone else is scared and lifts," said crew chief Darian Grubb, who was told in the middle of the Chase he was being let go at the end of the season because the Stewart-Haas Racing team wasn't performing. His status is now uncertain.
Edwards, who started the race with a three-point lead in the standings, did everything he could from the minute he arrived in Florida. His Roush-Fenway Racing team put his Ford on the pole, he led a race-high 119 of the 267 laps and still finished a helpless second.
Edwards, who had a 4.9 average finish over the 10 Chase races, was disappointed but held his head high after the race.
"This night is about Tony Stewart. Those guys rose to the occasion, and they beat us fair and square," Edwards said. "That is all I had. We came here and sat on the pole, led the most laps and Tony still managed. That's it. That's all I got at the end. That's as hard as I can drive.
"I told my wife, 'If I can't win this thing, I'm going to be the best loser NASCAR has ever had.' So, I'm going to try really hard to keep my head up and know that we'll just go next year and we'll be just as hard to beat."
As third-place finisher Martin Truex Jr. did his post-race news conference, Edwards sat silently off to the side, his eyes fixed on a bank of televisions showing Stewart's championship celebration.
"If I could do it all over again, there's nothing I could have done differently," he whispered. "That's my maximal effort, and Tony beat us. We knew that of all the circumstances possible, this was the least probable. But I was prepared for this."
Edwards, despite being the most consistent driver this season and points leader for 21 weeks, has been on the ropes the last month as Stewart turned up his energy, effort and trash-talking. His quick wit and sharp tongue kept the entire industry entertained as he did everything possible to get inside Edwards' head.
Maybe it was really for Stewart's benefit, a driver trying to talk himself into believing he had a shot at the title after struggling all summer long. He maybe didn't rattle Edwards, but Stewart for sure talked himself into this title.
He arrived in Miami insistent he'd race with nothing to lose and did just that from the moment the race began. He was moving through the field from his 15th starting spot when caution came out 14 laps into the race. His Stewart-Haas Racing crew discovered a hole in his grill, and the repairs dropped him to 40th in the field.
Stewart then blew by car after car and was up to 23rd in a matter of minutes. Another caution sent him into the pits for more repairs, and he restarted in 32nd.
His yapping then resumed, as he scoffed on his radio how embarrassed Edwards and the No. 99 team would be when Stewart drove from the back of the field ? twice! ? to beat them.
When more rain forced NASCAR to stop the field for 75 minutes, Stewart confidently walked pit road and sent a message to Edwards.
"We are fixin' to keep delivering this whoopin'; we got more in mind for him the rest of the day," he said in an ESPN interview.
Edwards, meanwhile, huddled with crew chief Bob Osborne atop the pit box and declined to be interviewed. His Roush Fenway Racing team had to be nervous about engine durability ? three Roush Yates engines failed over the course of the race ? and Edwards eventually retreated to his motorhome to snack on popcorn and keep his focus.
When racing resumed, Stewart continued to slice through the field and used several spectacular three- and four-wide passes to close in on Edwards. Then crew chief Grubb made an unusual call to keep Stewart out on the track until he was just about out of gas. It was a risky call but worked perfectly when the rain came moments after Stewart finally stopped for gas.
It gave Stewart breathing room as he was able to save gas under yellow. He was fourth on the final restart, Edwards was sixth, and Stewart used a three-wide pass over Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski and AJ Allmendinger to reclaim the lead.
Although Edwards quickly moved into second, he couldn't catch Stewart as he sailed to his fifth Chase victory.
"They got 5 wins in 10 races," Osborne said. "That's pretty unbelievable. But they did it, and it got them the championship."
The championship completes a total turnaround for co-owner Gene Haas, who sold half his slumping organization to Stewart in 2008 in a hope the driver could bring a spark to a team that struggled to stay inside the top-35 in points.
"Tony Stewart's a superstar, we knew that," Haas said. "You need a wheelman. You can have all the best equipment in the world, and without a wheelman, you don't have a whole lot."
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Sunday, November 20, 2011
More deals in focus as Olympus scandal widens (Reuters)
TOKYO (Reuters) ? As attention in the Olympus (7733.T) accounting scandal turns to whether funds used to cover up losses were funneled to criminal groups, scrutiny is set to increase on deals not yet in the spotlight, including an ill-fated $780 million investment in technology firm ITX.
Olympus and affiliated firms spent $4.1 billion on 57 acquisitions since 2000 in an aggressive push to diversify its operations and grow outside Japan. The largest was its $2.2 billion buyout of British medical equipment firm Gyrus in 2008, Thomson Reuters data shows.
To date the scandal has centered on a $687 million advisory fee tied to the Gyrus deal and its purchase of three obscure, loss-making domestic firms for $773 million between 2006 and 2008. Olympus has admitted it paid excessively in both cases to cover securities losses stretching back 20 years.
With suspicion growing among investigators that criminal groups may have been involved, a more thorough review now appears certain.
Much of the focus will likely fall on ITX, a former technology venture investor that played a key role in the group's diversification drive since 2000.
"There needs to be a full house-cleaning and ultimately everything needs to be checked, including ITX," said Josh Shores, a principal at Southeastern Asset Management, which holds 5 percent of Olympus, the camera and medical device maker's top non-Japanese shareholder.
A unit from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's organized crime division has joined an investigation into the scandal, though gangster involvement has not yet been confirmed, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Friday.
The New York Times has reported that Japanese officials were investigating an apparent $4.9 billion hole in Olympus' accounts and possible payoffs to crime syndicates, citing a memo circulated at a meeting of regulators, prosecutors and police.
Olympus has said a former vice president told the company none of the funds involved in the cover-up had gone to "anti-social forces" -- a euphemism for mafia in Japan -- but the firm was waiting for a report from an independent panel, due next month.
CONTROVERSIAL BUY
The scandal erupted on October 14 when Olympus ousted chief executive Michael Woodford after he questioned the Gyrus fee and the purchase of medical waste recycler Altis, cooking container maker News Chef and health food firm Humalabo. It wrote down most of the value of the 3 domestic deals in 2009.
Since then Woodford has expressed doubts about ITX and other deals, though he has not provided any evidence of wrongdoing.
Olympus bought ITX, now primarily a mobile phone retailer, for about 60 billion yen ($780 million) in a series of transactions between 2000 and 2011. It has written off a third of that investment and still carries 23 billion yen in ITX-related goodwill on its books.
The ITX purchase had been seen as controversial from the outset given the risky nature of venture investments and the lack of synergy with Olympus' core businesses of diagnostic endoscopes and digital cameras.
The scandal has also brought to light a potential conflict of interest involving Akinobu Yokoo, a director and president of ITX between 2000 and 2005.
Akinobu is the older brother of Nobumasa Yokoo, an ex-Nomura banker who ran a consulting firm, Global Company, that was hired by Olympus in 2000 to scout out new businesses and steered the investment into Altis, News Chef and Humalabo.
Repeated attempts to reach Nobumasa have been unsuccessful and his whereabouts are unknown. Akinobu, who went on to serve as an executive officer at Olympus between 2005 and 2009 and is now president of a parts unit of Japan Airlines, has denied any involvement in the deals brokered by his brother.
The New York Times report also said the memo identified one company acquired by ITX as having possible links with a major crime syndicate. Reuters has not been able to verify the existence of the memo or its assertions.
ITX cut 20 deals for $700 million since 2000, playing a pivotal role in Olympus's diversification strategy under the stewardship of former president Tsyuoshi Kikukawa, one of three executives targeted by investigators for orchestrating the scam.
The number of Olympus subsidiaries and affiliates jumped from 67 to 199 over the past 10 years. While many of the acquisitions were related to the medical business, there were also outliers like the 2005 investment in a country club.
Probing all those investments could complicate the task of the independent panel commissioned by Olympus to investigate its dubious deals. The panel is due to report its findings early next month, in time for Olympus to submit its first half earnings by a December 14 deadline to avoid having its shares delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
"The cover-up goes back at least 20 years. The investigation into past deals will require a considerable amount of scrutiny and time," said Yo Ota, a lawyer at Nishimura & Asahi in Tokyo.
(Additional reporting by Emi Emoto and Junko Fujita, Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
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Saturday, November 19, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Simone Landon: Detroit Is the Only Place That Matters
When people ask me to tell them about myself, the first thing I say is that I'm from Detroit. I'm not just making polite conversation; I've learned to carry Detroit as a badge of honor, something to invoke rather than defend. I brag, "I'm from Detroit -- the city, not the suburbs," qualifying my answer even before the clarifying question can come.
I like to say Detroit is the only place that matters -- a claim that is sure to draw a sneer at worst, and at best a few follow-up questions.
But I believe that statement. Detroit has seen it all and seen it all first, and this city's seen things we hope others will never have to see. If living here doesn't make you hard, it does make you a little more hard to shock.
I once toured an abandoned factory here with a friend who said the devastation made him want to cry. I shrugged. My car window has been smashed and my battery and catalytic converter have been stolen. I've run into packs of semi-wild dogs while riding my bike in Boston Edison late at night. I've picnicked in the abandoned lots in North Corktown and worried about toxins seeping into my skin from a swim at the (rarely tested) beaches of Belle Isle.
It's difficult to say whether Detroit simply displays our nation's problems in microcosm, or whether post-Great Recession, the rest of the country has become Detroit writ large. Detroit has unemployment, decaying infrastructure, ill-used land, drained municipal resources, political stalemates, a continued legacy of racial segregation, failing schools and, of course, those inklings of redevelopment and gentrification. The "Imported from Detroit" tagline to Chrysler's infamous Super Bowl ads hints that the city is like the third world. And maybe it is; maybe it some ways it's worse. In others it's better.
The point is that Detroit is not any other place. It's not the new Brooklyn, it's not the new Pittsburgh, it's not the new Berlin. It's just Detroit, built upon layers and layers of older Detroits. Recognizing those layers and the city's history is key, I think, to responsible journalism about this place. Even more key is accepting the fact that Detroit is almost overwhelmingly complicated, messy and above all difficult. The phoenix implied by Detroit's motto, "Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus," is still too young to rise again. But we do hope for better things.
There was a time when I was a city booster. I stubbornly refused to apologize for Detroit. If anything, I reasoned, everyone else owed Detroit an apology for all the mean things they've said over the years. I lauded the cheap bars and the cheap rent. I encouraged everyone I met to move here, or at least visit. "Anything is possible in Detroit!" I would say.
But the idea that Detroit is all good is just as detrimental as the idea that Detroit is all bad. The glowing reports on the city's burgeoning art scene are in some ways just as exasperating as the endless harping about the city's murder rate. A story about a 101-year-old woman being evicted from her home is true. It's also true that Detroit Tiger Justin Verlander won this year's American Leauge Cy Young Award. It's not hard to find a story about Detroit that's true. What's hard is to find a story about Detroit that's complete.
Sensationalism has never been difficult -- that's why we pretend not to respect it (while still clicking with awe through the "ruin porn" slideshows of abandoned houses and crumbling factories). Whether we buy into it is another question.
There is so much Detroit (138.8 square miles) that the spokes of the city streets may as well stretch into infinity. But journalists still need to treat this place respectfully and offer real engagement, not voyeurism. We need to develop an extended relationship with the city, its history, its institutions and its people. We must dive into the ignored stories and remember to blink at the spectacles. We must understand that any extended metaphor for this place is insufficient, yet still strive to be thorough.
Detroit is difficult, but that is the point. There's plenty Detroit that I have little experience with -- so much that intending to be a good journalist here proves daunting. But I wouldn't want to live anywhere or write about anything else. Detroit may not be the only place that matters, but it is the place that matters most to me.
?
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simone-landon/detroit-is-the-only-place-that-matters_b_1098085.html
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