Academic Articles

First he set the tee for a high pitch, and swung at the ball left-handed for a while. Then he lowered the tee and swung some more. Switching to the other batter’s box, Mark Teixeira raised the tee and took right-handed cuts. The thwack of the bat, coming from the Yankees’ indoor cage before practice on Tuesday, was a much better sound than a cough. The severe bronchial congestion that has ravaged Teixeira all season makes an easy excuse for his .229 batting average and startling lack of power. Kevin Long, the hitting coach, said he did not know what impact it has had.

WASHINGTON — For more than a year, a federal inquiry of Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s 2010 election campaign has smoldered in the nation’s capital. After raids and subpoenas, intrigue flared and receded. Through it all, rumors swirled around the secret work of a grand jury. On Tuesday, the investigation roared back into the public eye when Thomas W. Gore, a former campaign fund-raiser for Mr. Gray, pleaded guilty in a plea deal to obstruction of justice and violations of the city’s campaign finance laws. The charges are the first in the investigation of Mr. Gray’s campaign, but many in the city predict more to come.

MOSCOW — With the unveiling of his Kremlin cabinet on Tuesday, President Vladimir V. Putin made it clear that power would be concentrated in his hands for the next six years, and gave no quarter to opposition demands to bring new voices into the highest levels of government. Mr. Putin’s presidential administration — an organ whose influence reaches into every corner of the state — will be dominated by the confidants who have surrounded him for a decade, including fellow veterans of the intelligence and security services.

Some music can instantly seduce with eclectic elements, whether Bach’s counterpoint and Schubert’s melodies or Steve Reich’s hypnotic energy and Georg Friedrich Haas’s soundscapes. Then there are works, including pieces by Morton Feldman, that often require substantial effort from listeners. Indeed, those who have mastered the art of lengthy meditation may be best equipped to concentrate on his glacially slow, highly repetitive sounds. For those who haven’t, it can be a struggle to ward off tedium in pieces like Feldman’s vast Piano and String Quartet (1985). A saintlike patience is necessary, even with a committed and focused performance like that given by the Eclipse Quartet and the pianist Vicki Ray at Roulette on Monday evening. After about an hour of the quartet, which lasts well over 90 minutes, you get the urge to shout, ”Enough, already.”

Another wintry Sunday morning at 7. And in the bifurcated building of a century-old Catholic parish called St. Joseph’s, the faithful gather. On one side of the church wall, a few congregants beseech God as they join in the celebration of Mass. And on the other side, a few men beseech God as they join in games of basketball, their shouts of ”Jesus Christ!” and ”Goddammit!” rising above the wheezing of the close but unseen church organ. I am among these middle-aged blasphemers, showing no emotion if I win, but full-throated in my profane analysis if I lose. Bowed and gasping after each game, I feel the mysterious tug on my basketball jersey that tells me I belong in one of the hardwood pews a few dozen yards away, squirming once again inside the Catholic Church of today. But for now at least, I find more comfort standing here, on a hardwood basketball court in an old gym, breathing in the stale, familiar air of the Catholic Youth Organization past.

Called from his seat to speak, Richard Leakey rose and seemed to keep going up, until he towered above a crowd gathered Monday evening for a swanky fund-raiser at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. He stands about 6 feet 4 inches, atop metal legs that replaced the ones he lost two decades ago, when he made it his job to hound elephant poachers in Kenya and the plane he was flying crashed under murky circumstances. He is 67 now, and his face shows years under the African sun, as a boy who dug with his parents for the fossilized remnants of human ancestors, as a conservationist and as a political reformer and raconteur. He has fractured his skull falling from a horse, had a wooden expedition boat destroyed by crocodiles, been whipped by political opponents in Kenya, and lost his kidneys to disease and patches of skin to cancer. Discoveries by his parents, and later by him and his associates, of skeletons and skulls that had rested in the ground for millions of years, have shaped the modern understanding of human evolution.

CORRECTION APPENDED GREENSBORO, N.C. — Like flags on an Army base, the microwave dishes on the news trucks that ring the federal courthouse here rise around 6 a.m. And then the waiting begins.

9:35 p.m. Updated A partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the blue-chip Silicon Valley venture capital firm that was an early investor in Google and Amazon, is suing the firm, claiming that she faced sexual harassment and discrimination there over a six-year period. In the suit, filed May 10 in California Superior Court in San Francisco, the partner, Ellen Pao, contends that beginning in 2006 she was sexually harassed by Ajit Nazre, an investment partner who left the firm last year. When she complained to senior partners and others at the firm, the suit says, they retaliated against her, limiting her career advancement and income.