DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

Police officers swept onto the ordinarily serene campus of Emory University in Atlanta after demonstrators erected tents on Thursday morning, leading to the latest clash in a pro-Palestinian protest movement that has cascaded across American campuses this week. As the demonstrators at Emory screamed, officers wrestled with protesters on the ground and escorted others away. From a few dozen yards away, onlookers stared and recorded the scene with their cellphones. The authorities did not immediately say how many people had been arrested in Atlanta, but across the country, more than 400 protesters have been taken into police custody since April 18, when the arrests of more than 100 protesters at Columbia University in New York set off a wave of student activism nationwide. University administrators and law enforcement officials have responded by arresting students, removing encampments and threatening academic consequences as some Jewish students have expressed concern for their safety, and some politicians have demanded a crackdown on the growing demonstrations.

Organizations: Emory University, Emory, Columbia University, University Locations: Atlanta, New York

covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.

Organizations: The Times

Seventy-five years ago this past week, Sam Snead won the Masters Tournament and became the first champion to receive one of Augusta National Golf Club’s green jackets. Since the start of the month, Lottie Woad has captured the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. More than 30 past Masters winners gathered for dinner to honor Jon Rahm, last year’s champion, and Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson hit tee shots to start this year’s tournament. On Sunday, someone — perhaps someone new, perhaps someone already admitted to the locker room reserved for past champions — will win the 88th Masters. But this past week, all of the possibilities seemed to be on greater display than usual.

Persons: Sam Snead, Lottie Woad, Jon Rahm, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tom Watson, —, peered skyward, Ben Crenshaw, Nick Faldo, Woods Organizations: Augusta, Augusta National Locations: Augusta, men’s

Rory McIlroy, the esteemed golfer who was among the most outspoken opponents of his sport’s swelling ties to Saudi Arabia, has resigned from the PGA Tour’s board. The tour confirmed his departure in a statement on Tuesday night. Mr. McIlroy, the men said, was “instrumental in helping shape the success of the tour, and his willingness to thoughtfully voice his opinions has been especially impactful.”Mr. McIlroy’s agent did not respond to a message seeking comment. The decision by Mr. McIlroy came about five months after the tour, following secret negotiations, struck an agreement with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to try to create a joint company that would end golf’s money-fueled war for supremacy. Most board members, including Mr. McIlroy, had no knowledge of the agreement or the talks that led to it until shortly before it was announced in June and upended the duel between the tour and LIV Golf, the league Saudi Arabia built with a blend of billions of dollars and marquee defections from the PGA Tour.

Persons: Rory McIlroy, “, Rory —, —, Jay Monahan, Edward D, Mr, McIlroy, ” Mr, LIV Golf Organizations: PGA, PGA Tour Locations: Saudi Arabia, Saudi

And all three universities formed task forces to address antisemitism on campus. “Let me reiterate what I and other Harvard leaders have said previously: Antisemitism has no place at Harvard,” Dr. In addition, many pro-Palestinian students point out that they have faced doxxing and harassment — and they are asking on social media for similar efforts against Islamophobia. The groups have been at the center of weeks of intense demonstrations that have sharply divided students and shaken Columbia’s Manhattan campus. The university’s decision will bar the group from holding events on campus or receiving university funding through the end of the fall semester.

Persons: ” Dr, Gay, Gerald Rosberg, ” Organizations: Harvard, Palestinian, Columbia, Justice, Jewish, Peace Locations: Gaza, Israel, Egypt, Palestine, Manhattan

Tens of thousands of demonstrators were expected to fill the streets of Washington and other cities across America on Saturday to protest the scope and scale of Israel’s retaliation in Gaza for last month’s terrorist assault by Hamas. Most Americans say that they sympathize with Israel, even as they dread the war’s fallout for their own country. But as Israel escalates attacks on Gaza and fatalities reported by Gazan authorities rise, U.S. support for Palestinian civilians has surged as well. Nonetheless, a 51 percent majority supported sending more military aid to Israel for their campaign against Hamas, and 71 percent supported humanitarian assistance for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Washington was expected to be a hub of protest.

Persons: Saturday’s, Washington Organizations: Quinnipiac University, Hamas, White, Museum of, Palestinian People, Freedom Locations: Washington, America, Gaza, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Orono , Maine, Israel, U.S, United States, Pennsylvania

☆ With a New Formula, U.S. News Rankings Boost Some State Universities
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-18 | by ( Alan Blinder | More About Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The reworked formula assigned greater emphasis to graduation rates for students who received need-based Pell grants and retention. It also introduced metrics tied to first-generation college students and to whether recent graduates were earning more than people who had completed only high school. Occupying the ranking’s middle rungs meant that shifts in methodology, like the removal of alumni giving as a criterion, could easily fuel dramatic rises and falls. Schools have said that the rankings have an outsize influence on students and parents, who use them as a proxy for prestige. 29, among liberal arts colleges.

Persons: Pell, Song Richardson, haven’t, ”, Richardson Organizations: . News, Schools, Colorado College

☆ Law and Medical Schools Quit U.S. News Rankings. Why Did Few Colleges Follow?
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-16 | by ( Alan Blinder | More About Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Yale Law School started the exodus last November: Dozens of law and medical schools, many among America’s most elite, vowed not to cooperate with the U.S. News & World Report rankings juggernaut. Critics of the rankings dared to hope that undergraduate programs at the same universities would defect, too. Yale, Harvard and dozens of other universities continued to submit data for U.S. News’s annual undergraduate rankings, the 2024 edition of which will be released on Monday. That the rebellion went only so far, for now, has underscored the psychic hold that the rankings have on American higher education, even for the country’s most renowned schools. The rankings remain a front door, an easy way to reach and enchant possible applicants.

Persons: “ It’s, ”, Eric J, Gertler Organizations: Yale Law School, U.S . News, Yale, Harvard

☆ Even as Golf Evolves, Trump Remains on the Outs
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-10 | by ( Alan Blinder | More About Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Walking toward a tee box in Virginia in May, former President Donald J. Trump offered an awfully accurate assessment of the way many golf executives viewed him. Even in an era of gaudy wealth and shifting alliances in golf, Trump remains, for now, a measure too much for many. The consequences have been conspicuous for a figure who had expected to host a men’s golf major tournament in 2022. Now, his ties to the sport’s elite ranks often appear limited to LIV events and periodic rounds with past and present professionals. Jack Nicklaus, the 18-time major champion, caused a stir in April when he publicly stopped short of again endorsing a Trump bid for the White House.

Persons: Donald J, Trump, ”, LIV, Jack Nicklaus Organizations: White Locations: Virginia, Saudi

Infuriated after being blindsided by the PGA Tour’s pact with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, a band of leading golfers has won a series of concessions from the beleaguered circuit’s commissioner — including the elevation of Tiger Woods to the tour’s board — in a star-driven rebuke of the tour. The tour announced the changes on Tuesday, one day after dozens of top players wrote to Jay Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, and insisted on significant overhauls. The demands detailed in the Monday letter amounted to a dramatic effort to reclaim power over a circuit that got its modern start after a player rebellion in the late 1960s. The addition of Woods to the board, one of several changes agreed to by Monahan with a signed acknowledgment, would allow the players to outnumber six to five the independent board members, who come from the worlds of business and law. In addition, the players want to change the board’s rules to avoid a repeat of the negotiations with the Saudis, in which a handful of independent board members acted without the backing of players on the board.

Persons: Tiger Woods, Jay Monahan, Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Rickie Fowler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler, Monahan Organizations: PGA Locations: Saudi

☆ Wales Has a Prince, But It Has Never Hosted a British Open
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-23 | by ( Alan Blinder | More About Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Still near enough to peek through, though, was the Welsh coast, a handful of long tee shots across the estuary. The British Open, scheduled to conclude on Sunday, may never come closer to Wales. First played when Queen Victoria was on the throne, the Open is a national rite that has encompassed only so much of the nation: Unlike England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, Wales has not hosted it. With sites through 2026 already selected and Wales still left out, the drought will last at least as long as the first 154 Opens. By then, Northern Ireland, which did not welcome a modern Open until 2019, will have had another.

Persons: Queen Victoria, ”, Ken Organizations: Royal Liverpool Golf, British, Wales, Welsh Parliament Locations: Welsh, Wales, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Britain

☆ Names Old and New Top British Open Leaderboard
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-20 | by ( Alan Blinder | More About Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It worked well enough for Stewart Cink on Thursday at the British Open. “When the gun goes off and you start in the tournament, you’ve got that adrenaline, and adrenaline does wonders for your jet lag,” Cink, 50, said. It also seemed to do plenty good for his scorecard, which reported a three-under-par 68 that positioned him high on the first-round leaderboard at northwest England’s Royal Liverpool Golf Club. There was Cink, who won the 2009 Open at Turnberry in Scotland by outlasting Tom Watson, then 59, in a playoff. But Christo Lamprecht, an amateur who plays for Georgia Tech, finished his five-under round with the lead.

Persons: Stewart Cink, you’ve, Cink, lurked, outlasting Tom Watson, Christo Lamprecht, Tommy Fleetwood, Emiliano Grillo, Lamprecht, Brian Harman, Adrián Otaegui, Antoine Rozner Organizations: Liverpool Golf, Royal Liverpool, Georgia Tech Locations: England’s, Royal, Turnberry, Scotland

Eight years later, before Rory McIlroy’s victory, a forecast for thunderstorms led to a two-tee start for the first time in Open history. And when Shin played there in 2012, poor weather led to the third and fourth rounds being condensed into a single day. “But it’s going to be wet or it’s going to be very wet. Its men’s Open champions later included Bobby Jones and Peter Thomson. The 151st Open, Shin predicted, “will be the beginning of another history.”No.

Persons: Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy’s, Shin, Hoylake, ”, ” Martin Slumbers, Harold Hilton, Bobby Jones, Peter Thomson, “ Organizations: Tiger, Royal Liverpool, 151st, Royal Locations: Royal North Devon, Royal

☆ There’s a British Open Winner Coaching High School Golf in Ohio
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( Alan Blinder | More About Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

This kind of understated Friday morning is very much how Curtis likes his life two decades after he made his major tournament debut at the British Open — and won. Championship and a Players Championship, a spot on a Ryder Cup-winning team, a few other PGA Tour victories — but never the major-winning magic. He last played a tour event in 2017, finishing with career earnings of more than $13.7 million. Today, he coaches his son’s golf team at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Kent, Ohio, and teaches at a golf academy that bears his name. On Thursday, the Open will begin at Royal Liverpool.

Persons: David Letterman, Ben Curtis, steeling, Curtis, George’s, Theodore Organizations: Royal St, Ryder, Theodore Roosevelt High School, Royal Liverpool Locations: Cleveland, South Carolina, London, Kent , Ohio, Royal

The PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, facing pressure from the Justice Department about their ambitions for a new company to shape global golf, have in recent days abandoned a crucial provision of their tentative deal: a promise not to recruit each other’s players. Three people familiar with the change, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential negotiations, signaled that the decision was an early casualty of an antitrust review by Justice Department regulators, who are expected to decide in the coming months whether to try to block the transaction. The tour moved to notify its board of the decision only on Thursday, after The New York Times asked the tour to comment on its reporting. The framework agreement between the tour and the wealth fund included few binding provisions. But one of them was a nonsolicitation clause, which said the tour and wealth fund-backed LIV Golf league would not “enter into any contract, agreement or understanding with” any “players who are members of the other’s tour or organization.”

Persons: LIV, ” Organizations: Tour, Saudi, Justice Department, The New York Times, LIV Golf

The PGA Tour sought the ouster of Greg Norman, the two-time British Open champion who became the commissioner of the insurgent LIV Golf league, as a condition of its alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, according to records that a Senate subcommittee released on Tuesday. The tour and the wealth fund did not ultimately agree to the proposal — crafted as a so-called side letter to a larger framework agreement — and, for now, Norman remains atop LIV. But the deliberations reflect an enmity forged over decades of hostilities between the tour and Norman, one of the most talented players in professional golf history who often chafed at the sport’s economic structure. And they underscore the tensions that could linger if the deal closes. The glimpse into the negotiations between the tour and the wealth fund came as the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations began its first hearing into the arrangement, which calls for the business ventures of the tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour to be brought into a new, for-profit company.

Persons: Greg Norman, LIV, Norman Organizations: LIV Golf, LIV, Investigations Locations: Saudi

Price and Dunne may also be asked about the weekend resignation of Randall Stephenson from the tour’s board after more than a decade. The sport’s leaders have often handled their business in Washington behind closed doors, relying on a fount of good will and gentility. The tour faced a significant threat in the 1990s, when the Federal Trade Commission examined antitrust issues in golf before its inquiry fizzled amid a pressure campaign from Capitol Hill. But baseball has drawn much of the attention from Congress, like when senators called a 1958 hearing on antitrust exemptions. (“Stengelese Is Baffling to Senators,” read a subsequent headline in The New York Times, which reported that Yankees Manager Casey Stengel had lawmakers “confused but laughing.”)

Persons: Price, Dunne, Randall Stephenson, Stephenson, Jamal Khashoggi, ”, Travis Tygart, Arnold Palmer, Dwight D, Eisenhower, Jack Nicklaus, Biden, Casey Stengel, “ Organizations: AT, Saudi, Washington Post, U.S, Doping Agency, Federal Trade Commission, Capitol, Lawmakers, football’s, ”, New York Times, Yankees Locations: Washington, Capitol Hill

☆ Minjee Lee Doesn’t Want Golf to Be Easy
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-04 | by ( Alan Blinder | More About Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Minjee Lee has spent these past few years feeling golf’s glories and agonies more than most. She won her first major tournament at the 2021 Evian Championship, a come-from-behind playoff victory, and followed it less than a year later with a record-setting win at the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open. Then came a tie for 43rd when she tried to defend her Evian title, worries about exhaustion and a pair of frustrating finishes in the first two majors of this year. 2 last summer, Lee, a 27-year-old Australian, will have to conquer Pebble Beach Golf Links — the renowned course on the California coast — if she is to defend her Open title. Harding Park in San Francisco, Lee discussed her masterful iron play, the hazards of Pebble Beach, the evolution of the women’s game and why winning a major once, never mind twice, is so difficult.

Persons: Minjee Lee, Lee, Harding, haven’t Organizations: Evian, Women’s, T.P.C Locations: U.S, California, San Francisco, Beach

Search resuls for: "More About Alan Blinder"

18 mentions found