Ten Words from The New York Times - May 29, 2013

Consumer spending has also been strikingly resilient so far this year, given the tax hikes.

The positive impact of rising home values and the appreciating stock market is expected to offset at least a third of the fiscal tightening, according to Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomic Advisors.

The positive impact of rising home values and the appreciating stock market is expected to offset at least a third of the fiscal tightening, according to Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomic Advisors.

The double-digit housing price increase is being driven by a confluence of factors.

Mr. Jalili, known as Iran’s unyielding nuclear negotiator and a protégé of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is emerging as the presumed front-runner in Iran’s presidential election on June 14, an unsettling prospect for future relations with the West.

“Welcome, living martyr, Jalili,” the audience shouted in unison, most of them too young to have witnessed the bloody conflict themselves but deeply immersed in the national veneration of its veterans.

He did not directly mention the Western sanctions that were imposed over the country’s nuclear program — which Iran insists is for peaceful purposes but the West says is a cover for developing nuclear weapons — or the possibility that they will be tightened in response to Tehran’s intransigence.

But few dispute that the exclusivity of the ceremony has mostly disappeared.

Purists also say the ceremony has been debased by overuse, and they lament the growing encroachment of team sponsors and paying customers on the playing field.

The responsibility of receiving the pitch often falls to backup catchers, and Anthony Recker, who joined the Mets in the off-season, has plunged headlong into his duties.