The Media Equation: In Omaha Manhole Fire Photo, Logging Off in Search of Some Clues

Stephanie Sands

This image, which was taken after an underground fire cut power in half of downtown Omaha, captivated the Web last month.

When photographs of spontaneous events miraculously appear on the Web, it generally prompts two responses: wonder and skepticism.

Matt Miller/Omaha World-Herald

Matthew Hansen, a columnist at The Omaha World-Herald, showed how to follow a trail. 

So it was with an image of exploding manhole covers in Omaha that took over the Web last month. On Sunday, Jan. 27, an underground fire cut power in half of downtown. A vivid photograph of unknown provenance, showing fire shooting out of manholes on a city street, began popping up on Reddit, where it had 1.5 million views, and Gawker.

The photo — an indifferently composed shot of an event that looks very far away — would not win any Pulitzers, but something incredible seems to be under way at the precise moment it was taken. You can almost hear the sequential explosions emanating below the street: boom, boom, boom as flames appear to shoot up from hell itself.

In this age of Photoshop, it wasn’t long before the debates cropped up, on the Web and in Omaha, about the picture’s authenticity.

Matthew Hansen, a columnist at The Omaha World-Herald, wondered the same thing, and one night found himself in a bar engaged in the real-versus-fake debate. Like many photos on the Web, this one came from everywhere — forwarded, tweeted and blogged — and nowhere — there was no name on the image nor any text to indicate its origin.

Mr. Hansen, intrepid journalist that he is, solved the mystery and wrote a column about it. The photo was real, it turned out, but not in the way people thought. (More on that later.) So, did Mr. Hansen use deep photo analytics or examine metadata to peel back the truth?

Nope. There was a notebook involved, a lawyer, some phone calls, a cursory digital investigation and some street reporting, which included an interview with a man with no pants.

Shoe leather never looked or smelled so good.

Mr. Hansen’s first step in solving what he called the “Great Omaha Manhole Fire Photo of 2013” was to determine from the angle of the photo that it could have been taken from only one apartment building — called the Kensington Tower. He then used an architectural detail to conclude that it was shot from the top floor, on the west side.

He managed to gain entry to the building — that is, he sneaked in — and made his way to the top floor, where he began knocking on doors.

Mr. Hansen found a man named Kenneth who would not let Mr. Hansen in because he was indisposed — he became “Pantsless Kenneth” in the column — but said that he knew the photo in question and thought his neighbor had taken it.

But the neighbor wasn’t home, so Mr. Hansen stuck his business card in the door jamb and left.

When he returned to the office, Mr. Hansen jumped onto Reddit, found the person who had originally posted the photo there and through him found the person, Gwendolyn Olney, who had posted the photo on her Facebook page, the source for the Reddit posting.

Ms. Olney happened to be the associate counsel for The World-Herald. “Omaha is indeed a small town,” Mr. Hansen wrote in his column. He began to follow the pixilated bread crumbs.

“Gwen didn’t take the photo,” he added. “She got it from Rebecca, who didn’t take the photo. She got it from Brandon, who didn’t take the photo. They led me to Gwen’s friend Andrea, who didn’t take the photo, who led me to ... well, she couldn’t remember who she had gotten the photo from.”

Reading the column, you could almost hear his sigh when he wrote, “Dead end.”

Then his phone rang. “I took that photo,” the voice said.

The caller was Stephanie Sands, a graduate student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She said that the day after she took the photo, which she had no idea had become a sensation, she learned from her friends that a reporter was asking about it.

“I was impressed that he had sneaked upstairs and put a card in my door, so I called him,” she said in an interview by phone.

Ms. Sands agreed to meet Mr. Hansen and told him that she had heard the explosion and took two photos with her phone. She sent one to friends and thought nothing more of it.

“I was actually disappointed in how it turned out,” she told me. “Because I was shooting at a distance with an iPhone, it didn’t really capture the severity of what I saw and heard.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 17, 2013

An earlier version of this column misquoted Matthew Hansen, a columnist at The Omaha World-Herald, about the author of a profile on Edna Buchanan, a crime writer. Mr. Hansen said the writer of the profile was Calvin Trillin, not Gay Talese. 

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Protests at Egypt Port Close Offices, but Not Suez Canal

CAIRO — Thousands of demonstrators shut down the administrative buildings of the Suez Canal terminal in the city of Port Said on Sunday, as part of a general strike protesting the death sentences handed down three weeks ago to 21 local soccer fans for their roles in a deadly riot last year.

The protests marked the closest that the chaos in Egypt over the last two years has come to threatening the operations of the Suez Canal, an artery of shipping critical to both international commerce and the battered Egyptian economy.

The administrative facilities were emptied as the protesters approached, residents said, but a military guard protected the port from disruption. President Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, had deployed the military to protect the city when the protests there started three weeks ago.

The success of the strike, as life had begun to return to the streets, was a vivid reminder that the government in Cairo has not yet restored full control over Port Said, a major city at the Mediterranean head of the Suez Canal with a population of about 600,000. The government essentially backed down from its attempt to impose a curfew, and nothing has diminished the underlying anger behind the riots, first over the initial death sentences and then over the deaths of dozens of protesters in clashes with the police.

The possibility of a threat to the flow of traffic through the canal remains remote, but the Sunday protest raised the specter of such disruption at a critical time. Political turbulence has cut deeply into tourism and economic growth in the two years since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. And now the political instability keeps delaying a proposed $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, whose seal of approval is essential to obtaining the further billions in loans needed to close the country’s deficit.

The Egyptian pound is falling sharply against the dollar. Unemployment is high and prices are rising. The Suez Canal is one of Egypt’s main sources of hard currency, along with tourism, foreign aid, and remittances from Egyptians abroad.

The protest was also a rare example of major civil disobedience in Egypt since the revolution that overthrew Mr. Mubarak in early 2011. It was the first day of the work week here, and Egyptian state media and residents of Port Said said that demonstrators had gathered outside the provincial headquarters at 7 a.m., blocking access to the building.

The protesters urged employees of the provincial government, the court house, the telephone and natural gas utilities, customs offices and other government institutions to quit work and join their strike. Many did, the Web site of the state newspaper Al Ahram reported. Protesters blocked railways. Photographs that circulated on the Internet showed women sitting on desks they had dragged outside in a shutdown of a school, although residents said some schools and courts remained opened.

Al Ahram reported that the demonstrators were demanding legal action against police officers who had killed protesters during last month’s clashes. They also sought a review by a “neutral court” of the death sentences against the local soccer fans delivered in Cairo. The soccer brawl in the case took place at a match between bitter rivals, El Masry of Port Said and Al Ahly of Cairo, both of which have large followings of violent hard-core fans. Many residents of Port Said say they believe the sentencing judge succumbed to pressure from violent Cairo soccer fans who demanded retribution.

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Cuomo Bucks Tide With Bill to Lift Abortion Limits

ALBANY — Bucking a trend in which states have been seeking to restrict abortion, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is putting the finishing touches on legislation that would guarantee women in New York the right to late-term abortions when their health is in danger or the fetus is not viable.

Mr. Cuomo, seeking to deliver on a promise he made in his recent State of the State address, would rewrite a law that currently allows abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy only if the pregnant woman’s life is at risk. The law is not enforced, because it is superseded by federal court rulings that allow late-term abortions to protect a woman’s health, even if her life is not in jeopardy. But abortion rights advocates say the existence of the more restrictive state law has a chilling effect on some doctors and prompts some women to leave the state for late-term abortions.

Mr. Cuomo’s proposal, which has not yet been made public, would also clarify that licensed health care practitioners, and not only physicians, can perform abortions. It would remove abortion from the state’s penal law and regulate it through the state’s public health law.

Abortion rights advocates have welcomed Mr. Cuomo’s plan, which he outlined in general terms as part of a broader package of women’s rights initiatives in his State of the State address in January. But the Roman Catholic Church and anti-abortion groups are dismayed; opponents have labeled the legislation the Abortion Expansion Act.

The prospects for Mr. Cuomo’s effort are uncertain. The State Assembly is controlled by Democrats who support abortion rights; the Senate is more difficult to predict because this year it is controlled by a coalition of Republicans who have tended to oppose new abortion rights laws and breakaway Democrats who support abortion rights.

New York legalized abortion in 1970, three years before it was legalized nationally by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Mr. Cuomo’s proposal would update the state law so that it could stand alone if the broader federal standard set by Roe were to be undone.

“Why are we doing this? The Supreme Court could change,” said a senior Cuomo administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the governor had not formally introduced his proposal.

But opponents of abortion rights, already upset at the high rate of abortions in New York State, worry that rewriting the abortion law would encourage an even greater number of abortions. For example, they suggest that the provision to allow abortions late in a woman’s pregnancy for health reasons could be used as a loophole to allow unchecked late-term abortions.

“I am hard pressed to think of a piece of legislation that is less needed or more harmful than this one,” the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, wrote in a letter to Mr. Cuomo last month. Referring to Albany lawmakers in a subsequent column, he added, “It’s as though, in their minds, our state motto, ‘Excelsior’ (‘Ever Upward’), applies to the abortion rate.”

National abortion rights groups have sought for years to persuade state legislatures to adopt laws guaranteeing abortion rights as a backup to Roe. But they have had limited success: Only seven states have such measures in place, including California, Connecticut and Maryland; the most recent state to adopt such a law is Hawaii, which did so in 2006.

“Pretty much all of the energy, all of the momentum, has been to restrict abortion, which makes what could potentially happen in New York so interesting,” said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. “There’s no other state that’s even contemplating this right now.”

In most statehouses, the push by lawmakers has been in the opposite direction. The past two years has seen more provisions adopted at the state level to restrict abortion rights than in any two-year period in decades, according to the Guttmacher Institute; last year, 19 states adopted 43 new provisions restricting abortion access, while not a single significant measure was adopted to expand access to abortion or to comprehensive sex education.

“It’s an extraordinary moment in terms of the degree to which there is government interference in a woman’s ability to make these basic health care decisions,” said Andrea Miller, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice New York. “For New York to be able to send a signal, a hopeful sign, a sense of the turning of the tide, we think is really important.”

Abortion rights advocates say that even though the Roe decision supersedes state law, some doctors are hesitant to perform late-term abortions when a woman’s health is at risk because the criminal statutes remain on the books.

“Doctors and hospitals shouldn’t be reading criminal laws to determine what types of health services they can offer and provide to their patients,” said M. Tracey Brooks, the president of Family Planning Advocates of New York State.

For Mr. Cuomo, the debate over passing a new abortion law presents an opportunity to appeal to women as well as to liberals, who have sought action in Albany without success since Eliot Spitzer made a similar proposal when he was governor. But it also poses a challenge to the coalition of Republicans and a few Democrats that controls the State Senate, the chamber that has in the past stood as the primary obstacle to passing abortion legislation in the capital.

The governor has said that his Reproductive Health Act would be one plank of a 10-part Women’s Equality Act that also would include equal pay and anti-discrimination provisions. Conservative groups, still stinging from the willingness of Republican lawmakers to go along with Mr. Cuomo’s push to legalize same-sex marriage in 2011, are mobilizing against the proposal. Seven thousand New Yorkers who oppose the measure have sent messages to Mr. Cuomo and legislators via the Web site of the New York State Catholic Conference.

A number of anti-abortion groups have also formed a coalition called New Yorkers for Life, which is seeking to rally opposition to the governor’s proposal using social media.

“If you ask anyone on the street, ‘Is there enough abortion in New York?’ no one in their right mind would say we need more abortion,” said the Rev. Jason J. McGuire, the executive director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, which is part of the coalition.

Members of both parties say that the issue of reproductive rights was a significant one in November’s legislative elections. Democrats, who were bolstered by an independent expenditure campaign by NARAL, credit their victories in several key Senate races in part to their pledge to fight for legislation similar to what Mr. Cuomo is planning to propose.

Republicans, who make up most of the coalition that controls the Senate, have generally opposed new abortion rights measures. Speaking with reporters recently, the leader of the Republicans, Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, strenuously objected to rewriting the state’s abortion laws, especially in a manner similar to what the governor is seeking.

“You could have an abortion up until the day the child would be born, and I think that’s just wrong,” Mr. Skelos said. He suggested that the entire debate was unnecessary, noting that abortion is legal in New York State and saying that is “not going to be changed.”

The Senate Democratic leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Yonkers, who is the sponsor of a bill that is similar to the legislation the governor is drafting, said she was optimistic that an abortion measure would reach the Senate floor this year.

“New York State’s abortion laws were passed in 1970 in a bipartisan fashion,” she said. “It would be a sad commentary that over 40 years later we could not manage to do the same thing.”

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Treasury Auctions Set for This Week

The stock and bond markets will be closed on Monday in observance of Washington’s Birthday. The Treasury’s schedule of financing this week includes the regular weekly auction on Tuesday of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills on Wednesday.

At the close of the New York cash market on Friday, the rate on the outstanding three-month bill was 0.10 percent. The rate on the six-month issue was 0.13 percent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.09 percent.

The following tax-exempt fixed-income issues are scheduled for pricing this week:

TUESDAY

Cambridge, Mass., $65.3 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive.

Harford County, Md., $76.9 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive.

King County, Wash., $73.9 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive.

WEDNESDAY

Santa Clara County, $490 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive.

THURSDAY

Eastern Carver, Minn., $68 million of debt securities. Competitive.

Minnesota, $57.5 million of colleges and universities revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEK

California, $590.3 million of cash reserve program debt securities. Piper Jaffray.

Colorado, $198 million of university system enterprise revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stanley.

Delaware, $115 million of general obligation refinancing bonds. Bank of America.

Georgia Housing and Finance Authority, $149.5 million of single-family mortgage bonds. Bank of America.

Grand Blanc, Mich., Community Schools, $62.6 million of refinancing bonds. Stifel, Nicolaus.

Illinois Finance Authority, $101.3 million of revenue bonds. BB&T Capital Markets.

Indianapolis Local Public Improvement Bond Bank, $61.1 million of taxable bond bank refinancing bonds. Morgan Stanley.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, $521 million of power system revenue bonds. Bank of America.

Manatee County, Fla., $81.9 million of revenue refinancing bonds. Wells Fargo Securities.

New York City Housing Development Corporation, $100 million of debt securities. Morgan Stanley.

New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority, $435 million of water and sewer general resolution revenue bonds. Barclays Capital.

St. Lucie County, Fla., School Board, $71.5 million of certificates of participation. Wells Fargo Securities.

Tarrant County, Tex., Cultural Education Facilities Finance Corporation, $177.6 million of health care revenue bonds. Goldman Sachs.

Utah, $307 million of power supply revenue bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities.

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IHT Rendezvous: Should Common Plastics Be Labeled Toxic?

THE HAGUE — Hoping to reduce one of the most ubiquitous forms of waste, a global group of scientists is proposing that certain types of plastic be labeled hazardous.

The group, lead by two California scientists, wrote in this week’s issue of the scientific journal Nature:

We believe that if countries classified the most harmful plastics as hazardous, their environmental agencies would have the power to restore affected habitats and prevent more dangerous debris from accumulating.

While 280 million tons of plastic were produced globally last year, less than half of that plastic has ended up in landfills or was recycled, according to the scientists’ data. Some of the unaccounted for 150 million tons of plastic is still in use, but much of it litters roadsides, cities, forests, deserts, beaches and oceans. (Just think of the great floating garbage patches at sea).

Unlike other forms of solid waste, such as uneaten food, scrap metal or last year’s clothes, plastics take an especially long time to break down. And when they finally do, they create hazardous, even toxic particles that can harm wildlife, ecosystems and humans.

For now, the group — led by Chelsea M. Rochman of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, and Mark Anthony Browne at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California — is calling for the reclassification of plastics that are particularly difficult to recycle and that are most toxic when degrading: PVC, polystyrene, polyurethane and polycarbonate.

The scientists say these types of plastics — used in construction, food containers, electronics and furniture — make up an estimated 30 percent of all plastics produced.

Join our sustainability conversation. Does it make sense to re-classify common plastics as hazardous, or are there better ways to reduce the amount of plastics we throw out?

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Pistorius' family strongly denies murder charge

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Oscar Pistorius is "numb with shock as well as grief" after the shooting death of his model girlfriend at his home in South Africa, the runner's uncle said Saturday, as his family strongly denied prosecutors' claims that he murdered her.

Arnold Pistorius spoke with The Associated Press and two other South African journalists about his nephew's arrest in the killing of Reeva Steenkamp, who was shot four times on the morning of Valentine's Day. Arnold Pistorius spoke to reporters from the garden of his three-story home in the eastern suburbs of South Africa's capital, Pretoria.

The statement, the first on camera and directly made in person by Pistorius' family, also came out strongly against prosecutors seeking to upgrade the charge against Pistorius to one of premeditated murder, which carries a sentence of life in prison.

"After consulting with legal representatives, we deeply regret the allegation of premeditated murder," Arnold Pistorius said. "We have no doubt there is no substance to the allegation and that the state's own case, including its own forensic evidence, strongly refutes any possibility of a premeditated murder or murder as such."

He said the family was "battling to come to terms with Oscar being charged with murder."

The track star's arrest in the killing of 29-year-old Steenkamp shocked South Africa, where Pistorius was a national hero and icon dubbed the Blade Runner for his high-tech carbon fiber running blades and revered for overcoming his disability to compete at the London Olympics. She was discovered in a pool of blood before dawn Thursday by police called to Pistorius' upscale home in a gated community. Authorities said she had been shot four times, and a 9 mm pistol was recovered at the home.

Pistorius remains held at a police station pending a bail hearing Tuesday. Police have already said they'll oppose Pistorius being released before trial. A premeditated murder charge also makes it more difficult for his defense team to get bail.

On Saturday afternoon, Pistorius' lawyers visited the Brooklyn police station in Pretoria, where the athlete is being held. His younger sister Aimee, who stood alongside Arnold Pistorius when he made his statement, also was at the police station later.

There will be a variety of hearings before Pistorius, 26, could go on trial. In South Africa, there are no juries, so a judge ultimately would decide Pistorius' guilt or innocence, sometimes with the help of two advisers. At an initial hearing Friday, Pistorius sobbed and held his head in his hands at times. He has yet to enter a plea in the case.

The family denial that Pistorius committed murder doesn't necessarily mean that they say he didn't shoot her, as murder is a legal term. Initial speculation immediately after the shooting Thursday suggested that it could have been accidental, though police say they are not currently considering that.

Arnold Pistorius did not discuss the circumstances of the shooting, but said that his nephew and Steenkamp had become very close since they started dating in November.

"They had plans together and Oscar was happier in his private life than he had been for a long time," the uncle said.

As Arnold Pistorius read his statement, Pistorius' sister Aimee stood nearby and broke down in tears at one point. Her uncle stopped reading for a moment to put his right arm around her. Pistorius remains very close with his uncle, a man he once lived with as a teenager.

"Words cannot adequately describe our feelings," his uncle said. "The lives of our entire family have been turned upside down forever by this unimaginable human tragedy and Reeva's family have suffered a terrible loss. As a family we are trying to be strong and supportive to Oscar as any close family would be in these dreadful circumstances."

The entire family was "devastated," Pistorius' uncle said, and was "grieving for Reeva, her family and her friends."

Since news of the killing, shock waves have rippled across South Africa, a nation of 50 million where nearly 50 people are killed each day, one of the world's highest murder rates. U.N. statistics say the nation has the second highest rate of shooting deaths in the world, behind only Colombia. Others have focused their attention on Pistorius and his fascination with fast cars, cage fighting and firearms.

Steenkamp, who graduated from law school, is known in South Africa for appearing in commercials and as a bikini-clad model in men's magazines. On Saturday, South Africa's state broadcaster SABC planned to air a reality TV show featuring the model. Another portion of the show released earlier Saturday included a clip of her swimming with two dolphins, which tap her on the cheek with their snouts.

"I think the way that you go out, not just your journey in life, but the way that you go out and the way you make your exit is so important," the blonde-haired Steenkamp says in the video. "You either made an impact in a positive or a negative way, but just maintain integrity and maintain class and just remain true to yourself.

"I'm going to miss you all so much and I love you very, very much."

___

Jon Gambrell reported from Johannesburg.

___

Gerald Imray can be reached at www.twitter.com/geraldimrayAP . Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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Livestrong Tattoos as Reminder of Personal Connections, Not Tarnished Brand

As Jax Mariash went under the tattoo needle to have “Livestrong” emblazoned on her wrist in bold black letters, she did not think about Lance Armstrong or doping allegations, but rather the 10 people affected by cancer she wanted to commemorate in ink. It was Jan. 22, 2010, exactly a year since the disease had taken the life of her stepfather. After years of wearing yellow Livestrong wristbands, she wanted something permanent.

A lifelong runner, Mariash got the tattoo to mark her 10-10-10 goal to run the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10, 2010, and fund-raising efforts for Livestrong. Less than three years later, antidoping officials laid out their case against Armstrong — a lengthy account of his practice of doping and bullying. He did not contest the charges and was barred for life from competing in Olympic sports.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Mariash, of Wilson, Wyo., said of the antidoping officials’ report, released in October, and Armstrong’s subsequent confession to Oprah Winfrey. “When I look at the tattoo now, I just think of living strong, and it’s more connected to the cancer fight and optimal health than Lance.”

Mariash is among those dealing with the fallout from Armstrong’s descent. She is not alone in having Livestrong permanently emblazoned on her skin.

Now the tattoos are a complicated, internationally recognized symbol of both an epic crusade against cancer and a cyclist who stood defiant in the face of accusations for years but ultimately admitted to lying.

The Internet abounds with epidermal reminders of the power of the Armstrong and Livestrong brands: the iconic yellow bracelet permanently wrapped around a wrist; block letters stretching along a rib cage; a heart on a foot bearing the word Livestrong; a mural on a back depicting Armstrong with the years of his now-stripped seven Tour de France victories and the phrase “ride with pride.”

While history has provided numerous examples of ill-fated tattoos to commemorate lovers, sports teams, gang membership and bands that break up, the Livestrong image is a complex one, said Michael Atkinson, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who has studied tattoos.

“People often regret the pop culture tattoos, the mass commodified tattoos,” said Atkinson, who has a Guns N’ Roses tattoo as a marker of his younger days. “A lot of people can’t divorce the movement from Lance Armstrong, and the Livestrong movement is a social movement. It’s very real and visceral and embodied in narrative survivorship. But we’re still not at a place where we look at a tattoo on the body and say that it’s a meaningful thing to someone.”

Geoff Livingston, a 40-year-old marketing professional in Washington, D.C., said that since Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey, he has received taunts on Twitter and inquiries at the gym regarding the yellow Livestrong armband tattoo that curls around his right bicep.

“People see it and go, ‘Wow,’ ” he said, “But I’m not going to get rid of it, and I’m not going to stop wearing short sleeves because of it. It’s about my family, not Lance Armstrong.”

Livingston got the tattoo in 2010 to commemorate his brother-in-law, who was told he had cancer and embarked on a fund-raising campaign for the charity. If he could raise $5,000, he agreed to get a tattoo. Within four days, the goal was exceeded, and Livingston went to a tattoo parlor to get his seventh tattoo.

“It’s actually grown in emotional significance for me,” Livingston said of the tattoo. “It brought me closer to my sister. It was a big statement of support.”

For Eddie Bonds, co-owner of Rabbit Bicycle in Hill City, S.D., getting a Livestrong tattoo was also a reflection of the growth of the sport of cycling. His wife, Joey, operates a tattoo parlor in front of their store, and in 2006 she designed a yellow Livestrong band that wraps around his right calf, topped off with a series of small cyclists.

“He kept breaking the Livestrong bands,” Joey Bonds said. “So it made more sense to tattoo it on him.”

“It’s about the cancer, not Lance,” Eddie Bonds said.

That was also the case for Jeremy Nienhouse, a 37-year old in Denver, Colo., who used a Livestrong tattoo to commemorate his own triumph over testicular cancer.

Given the diagnosis in 2004, Nienhouse had three rounds of chemotherapy, which ended on March 15, 2005, the date he had tattooed on his left arm the day after his five-year anniversary of being cancer free in 2010. It reads: “3-15-05” and “LIVESTRONG” on the image of a yellow band.

Nienhouse said he had heard about Livestrong and Armstrong’s own battle with the cancer around the time he learned he had cancer, which alerted him to the fact that even though he was young and healthy, he, too, could have cancer.

“On a personal level,” Nienhouse said, “he sounds like kind of a jerk. But if he hadn’t been in the public eye, I don’t know if I would have been diagnosed when I had been.”

Nienhouse said he had no plans to have the tattoo removed.

As for Mariash, she said she read every page of the antidoping officials’ report. She soon donated her Livestrong shirts, shorts and running gear. She watched Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey and wondered if his apology was an effort to reduce his ban from the sport or a genuine appeal to those who showed their support to him and now wear a visible sign of it.

“People called me ‘Miss Livestrong,’ ” Mariash said. “It was part of my identity.”

She also said she did not plan to have her tattoo removed.

“I wanted to show it’s forever,” she said. “Cancer isn’t something that just goes away from people. I wanted to show this is permanent and keep people remembering the fight.”

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The Boss: Bert Quintana of Sitel, on Making Career Choices

I WAS born in Cuba, and I was 2 when my parents brought me to the United States in 1962 with my baby brother, Jorge.

Bert Quintana is the president and C.E.O. of Sitel, a call center and telemarketing company based in Nashville.

AGE 52

NAME OF HIS BOAT Sea Gem

FAVORITE SPORT Golf

SPORTS HERO Don Shula, former Miami Dolphins coach

We passed through the Freedom Tower, an assistance center in Miami for Cuban refugees, and a year later a religious group, the Damas Catolicas, moved us to Dallas and helped my mom find work as a nurse. My dad, who had a fifth-grade education, was a mechanic. My mother would work the evening shift at a hospital, often followed by the night shift, and my dad would work from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. so that one of them could be home with us.

We couldn’t afford laundry detergent, so my mom used gasoline to clean our clothes. One day she was using a space heater at the same time. We knew nothing about the danger. The gas caught fire, and my mom and brother were burned. They still have a few scars.

My parents eventually bought a house, but they divorced when I was 9 and my mother moved back to Miami with Jorge and me. In high school I worked in a hospital lab after classes as part of a research program. I won a community science award and several science fair awards as a result of what I learned. On the weekends, I apprenticed as a machinist in my uncle’s production shop, which sparked my interest in engineering. I was high school valedictorian and attended the University of Miami for a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, graduating in 1983.

In 1984, I started at Florida Power and Light in an entry-level engineering position. One of my responsibilities was to put into practice the business process improvement techniques of W. Edwards Deming. My training for that led to my moving to the company’s call centers, and within six years I was managing the largest one.

In 1994, I moved to MCI Telecommunications. By the time I left, two years later, I’d risen to regional director of the customer service support division.

I was a vice president for the customer care call centers at ADT in 1997, the year it was acquired by Tyco, and the next year I served as president for another home security company.

A headhunter called about a position at Dell as director of its consumer sales operation. Because it was an international company, the job would mean that I could leverage my bilingual skills and learn more about the global marketplace. I accepted, and by 2003 was promoted to vice president of the international services division.

I had been planning to take a sabbatical for quite a while, or perhaps start my own business, and the planets aligned when there was a reorganization at Dell. I left the company in 2006 and my wife, Alicia, and I sailed around the Bahamas and explored the islands on our 43-foot sailboat. We also started fixing and selling homes in Key Largo, where we now live part of the time.

In 2009, another headhunter called about the position of chief operating officer at Sitel. When I was considering whether to take the job, I asked one of the company’s major investors what winning looked like to him. He described it as having someone help him build a company he could be proud of. That response persuaded me to take the job. In 2010, I was appointed president and, in 2011, C.E.O.

While on sabbatical, I mentored former colleagues who asked for advice. My wife said my eyes would light up whenever I talked to them — a sign to both of us that I wanted to get back in the game. People talk about passion, focus, balance and making a difference as the definition of success. I feel as if the planets are aligned for me again.

As told to Patricia R. Olsen.

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The Lede: Spectacular Videos of Meteor Over Siberia

Video posted on YouTube on Friday appeared to catch an explosion caused by a meteor streaking over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.

Last Updated, 5:40 p.m. As our colleagues Ellen Barry and Andrew Kramer report, Russians recorded video of bright objects, apparently debris from a meteor, “streaking through the sky in western Siberia early on Friday, accompanied by a boom that damaged buildings across a vast area of territory.” Hundreds of injuries were reported, mainly from breaking glass.

The video clips, many recorded from cars on the dashboard cameras that are popular in Russia, quickly spread from social networks to Russian news sites. While it was not possible to confirm the authenticity of all of the clips posted online, several tracked closely with witness accounts and each other. (Russian speakers should be aware that many of the videos contain strong language.)

Video recorded from the dashboard camera of a car in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Friday.

Video said to have been recorded on Friday in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk as a meteor passed low overhead. An explosion can be heard clearly at the seven-minute mark of the video.

Dashboard-camera footage appeared to record a meteor plunging to Earth on Friday in Russia.

Video uploaded to YouTube on Friday was said to have been recorded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk (although the camera’s time stamp displays an earlier date).

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported, “The Russian fireball is the largest reported since 1908, when a fireball hit Tunguska, Siberia.”

The fireball entered the atmosphere at about 40,000 mph (18 kilometers per second). The impact time was 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15), and the energy released by the impact was in the hundreds of kilotons.

Based on the duration of the event, it was a very shallow entry. It was larger than the fireball over Indonesia on Oct. 8, 2009. Measurements are still coming in, and a more precise measure of the energy may be available later. The size of the object before hitting the atmosphere was about 49 feet (15 meters) and had a mass of about 7,000 tons.

Later in the day, NASA released more information about the meteor.

#RussianMeteor grazed across the atmosphere, where the meteor trail was visible for ~30 secs. The meteor was also brighter than the Sun

— NASA (@NASA) 15 Feb 13

Our colleague Henry Fountain reminds us of the vastly greater impact of what’s known as The Tunguska Event on 1908.

Several clips showed a flaming object streaking through the sky and a burst of blinding light followed by a smoke trail. One, shot by a driver named Alexander Mezentsev, showed a bright light over a city street in Chelyabinsk, a city of 1 million about 900 miles east of Moscow.

One clip, recorded on a street in Chelyabinsk, appeared to capture the chaotic aftermath of the event, as glass shattered after the shock wave and people shouted and tried to make sense of what was happening.

Video said to have been recorded in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Friday after a meteor passed overhead.

A very loud explosion could be heard about 25 seconds into another video, apparently recorded on a phone in the same city by a blogger named Sergey Hametov.

Video said to have been recorded on Friday in Chelyabinsk appeared to capture a loud explosion.

“There was panic. People had no idea what was happening,” Mr. Hametov told The Associated Press. “We saw a big burst of light, then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud, thundering sound.”

The blast, and breaking glass, was also captured about 70 seconds into another clip, which showed very clear images of the smoke trail after the meteor passed by.

Video posted on YouTube on Friday showed a smoke trail and a loud explosion after a meteor passed over Siberia.

Another video, shot from the window of a building, seemed to capture the long trail of smoke after the object passed through the sky.

Video posted on YouTube Friday appeared to show the trail of a meteor fragment in the sky.

Several clips also showed what bloggers said was the damage caused by the sonic boom.

Damage to a school in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia, said to have been caused by the sonic boom from a meteor.

Video of what was described as damage caused by the sonic boom after a meteor passed over Russia on Friday.

As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports, a blinding flash of light was captured by traffic cameras on top of buildings in Nizhny Tagil, around 220 miles north of Chelyabinsk.

A blinding flash of light was captured by Web cameras in Nizhny Tagil, north of Chelyabinsk

Another view of the meteor streaking across the sky in Nizhniy Tagil was captured on a driver’s dashboard camera.

Video of a meteor from a dashboard camera in the Russian town of Nizhniy Tagil.

Our colleague William Broad from The Times Science desk will be explaining what likely caused today’s spectacular event and answering questions on The Lede later today.

Send us your questions on the meteor strike. We’re hosting a Q&A with science writer @WilliamJBroad. Include #NYTScience

— NYT Science (@nytimesscience) 15 Feb 13

Almost immediately after the spectacular images appeared online, Russian bloggers started making comic alterations, adding aliens and President Vladimir V. Putin to the pictures.

Some of the numerous videos that quickly emerged of the incident highlighted a distinctly Russian phenomenon: the viral dashboard-cam clip. As the blogger Marina Galperina explained last year, they are commonplace in Russia partly because of the dangerous driving conditions that lead to so many accidents, and with an unreliable police force such cameras can provide valuable evidence after a crash.

The conditions of Russian roads are perilous, with insane gridlock in cities and gigantic ditches, endless swamps and severe wintry emptiness on the back roads and highways. Then there are large, lawless areas you don’t just ride into, the police with a penchant for extortion and deeply frustrated drivers who want to smash your face.

Psychopaths are abundant on Russian roads. You best not cut anyone off or undertake some other type of maneuver that might inconvenience the 200-pound, six-foot-five brawling children you see on YouTube hopping out of their SUVs with their dukes up. They will go ballistic in a snap, drive in front of you, brake suddenly, block you off, jump out and run towards your vehicle. Next thing you start getting punches in your face because your didn’t roll up your windows, or getting pulled out of the car and beaten because you didn’t lock the doors.

These fights happen all the time and you can’t really press charges. Point to your broken nose or smashed windows all you want. The Russian courts don’t like verbal claims. They do, however, like to send people to jail for battery and property destruction if there’s definite video proof.

One popular video posted on YouTube last year appeared to show just such a fight being prevented by a man facing down another driver clutching a baseball bat by pointing out that any attack on him would be recorded on his dashboard-cam.

Video of a confrontation between two Russian drivers recorded last year on a dashboard-cam.

Just last month, video recorded by a Russian driver on a dashboard-cam showed a tank suddenly cutting across a highway.

Last month, a Russian driver recorded video of a tank cutting across a highway.

The meteor that streaked across the Russian skies came from almost the opposite direction as 2012 DA14, the larger asteroid that missed Earth on Friday. That both showed up on the same day was just cosmic coincidence.

“There is no relation there,” said Paul Chodas, a scientist at NASA’s Near-Earth Object program office.

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