Cheap and Cheerful for the Holidays

Abstract: MADISON AVENUE is dancing the limbo for the holiday shopping season as advertisers ask each other, “How low can you go?” With only a month left before Christmas, it seems clear that consumers, worried about the economy and unemployment, will need considerable incentives — in the form of big sales and deals — to buy anything. As a result, campaigns are celebrating price cuts, discounts and bargains in a manner that the British call “cheap and cheerful.” It is a far cry from the holidays of not so long ago, when commercials suggested giving luxury cars as gifts by topping them with red bows — and never mentioned the sticker shock. “We recognize people are cutting back this season,” said Caralene Robinson, marketing director at Boost Mobile in Irvine, Calif. To acknowledge that, a holiday commercial for Boost by the Los Angeles office of 180 — an agency owned by the Omnicom Group — suggests even Santa Claus is scrimping, by replacing his reindeer with donkeys. “We could placate the audience with tried-and-true messages we’ve all seen before,” said William Gelner, executive creative director at 180 Los Angeles, “or we do something in line with what consumers are feeling today.” Likewise, the headlines on circulars for Target stores proclaim sentiments like “Festively frugal” and “Hot deals are served.” The Walgreen Company is sending e-mail messages to customers of its Walgreens drug stores that promote a “one-day toy sale” on Thanksgiving Day with prices 50 percent off. A campaign for cosmetics and fragrances being sold by Wal-Mart Stores urges women to “create your beautiful for less” with gifts like a scent named after the singer Faith Hill, priced at $16. “They definitely won’t say, ‘You shouldn’t have,’ ” the headline of an ad says reassuringly. The cover of a Toys “R” Us catalog, which calls itself “Our biggest Big Book ever!” promises “up to $5,500 in savings!” — presumably, if a shopper bought everything advertised therein. The Aéropostale clothing chain gives shoppers a cut-rate choice: “50 percent off everything” from Tuesday through Sunday, or “$10 off every time you spend $50 or more” from Monday, Nov. 30 through Dec. 24. Ads in a campaign for J. C. Penney, which carries the theme “Joy of giving,” point out sale prices for clothing, home furnishings and other merchandise. “Every day, but especially now,” the text reads on a page in a Penney Christmas catalog, “we show our gratitude by offering you the style you want, the quality you expect and the price you love!”  Some retailers are pushing up the opening of stores for sales the Friday after Thanksgiving to 4 a.m., from 5 a.m. — or even, as Old Navy is, an eye-crossing 3 a.m. The mood is also reflected in the December issues of national magazines. A line on the cover of Real Simple directs readers inside to an article about “50 gifts under $50,” while Better Homes and Gardens fills its readers in on “35 stylish gifts under $35.” Country Living magazine goes with “75 gifts under $25” and Glamour presents gift ideas so “genius” that “no one will know they’re under $25.” Woman’s Day magazine may have won the limbo contest with its cover line of “23 stocking stuffers $5 and under, plus great gifts $20 and under.” The gift guide in the December 2008 issue of Better Homes and Gardens, owned by the Meredith Corporation, offered ideas priced at “$50 and under,” recalled Gayle Butler, editor in chief of the magazine, who is based in Des Moines. “This year, when we started researching, we thought, ‘You know, maybe that organic cotton throw pillow might feel like a frill,’ ” she said, referring to a more expensive item last year. As a result, she added, “the $35 price point felt really, really good” for 2009. “People want to celebrate, they want to have a joyful holiday,” Ms. Butler said. “A gift doesn’t have to cost a lot, but it needs to feel it’s chosen with care, so we’re featuring thoughtful gifts you feel good about giving.”  Some value-focused holiday ads are adding humor to the mix to brighten the mood. The cover of a catalog for the Sam’s Club unit of Wal-Mart Stores promises “More joy for your jingle.” That approach is also taken in a promotional campaign from Kraft Foods, which carries the theme “Keep the jingle in your holidays.” Visitors to a Web site ( nabiscocrackers.com ) are invited to “get jingled” by decorating photographs with festive touches like holly and ornaments, then sharing them on Facebook. The campaign, for brands like Planters, Ritz, Triscuit and Wheat Thins, also offers consumers discount coupons on Kraft products, a $10 rebate on selected purchases — and even $5 coupons good for the Clue board game sold by Hasbro. “We spend a lot of time talking to consumers,” said Michael Tilley, manager for consumer and customer engagement in East Hanover, N.J., for the Nabisco cracker brands sold by Kraft, and they are “recession-fatigued; money is tight and they are looking for value.” “They’re also looking for affordable fun,” he added, “for ways to make it an enjoyable holiday season.”

Recession and Depression
Advertising and Marketing
Christmas
Luxury Goods
Shopping and Retail
Holidays and Special Occasions


Ford Studying Ways to Charge Electric Vehicles

Abstract: DEARBORN, Mich. — Well before its electric vehicles hit the road, the Ford Motor Company is focusing on how consumers will charge their car batteries. Ford said Tuesday that it is testing new technology that allows drivers to communicate with the nation’s electric-power grid and makes charging the batteries of vehicles as cheap and convenient as possible. The communications system is part of a larger effort by Ford and several utilities to gauge the electricity needs of battery-powered vehicles and to prepare an infrastructure to accommodate them. “This has to be easy for the consumer,” Bill Ford Jr., the company’s executive chairman, said Tuesday. “This can’t be an interesting science experiment.” Ford has been quieter about its electric-vehicle plans than its rival, General Motors. Last week, G.M. claimed that the Chevrolet Volt, a battery-powered car assisted by a gasoline engine, would get 230 miles per gallon. The Japanese automaker Nissan countered with a claim that its all-electric car would get more than 360 miles per gallon. Mr. Ford said those claims were hardly relevant now, given that the soonest any of the companies would have electric cars for sale is likely to be 2011. “I certainly won’t dispute their numbers, but I’m not sure it’s totally relevant until we have a federal standard that everybody understands,” he said. Ford plans to introduce a battery-powered commercial van next year and an electric Focus compact car in 2011. The company also has a so-called plug-in hybrid vehicle coming in 2012 that runs primarily on battery power. The company is testing plug-in hybrids in California to assess how drivers can best recharge the batteries from an electrical outlet in their home. The main consideration is the time of day. The optimal time is late in the evening or early morning, the off-peak hours for electricity use. Ford is adapting its existing in-car communications system, known as SYNC, to alert drivers on when to recharge. The system also communicates directly with electric grids to prepare the home for the charging process. Ford’s utility partners are studying which parts of the country will have the most electric cars the soonest. Those areas include cities where hybrid cars are most popular and energy conservation appears to be a high priority.

Ford Motor Co
Electric Vehicles
Automobiles


Coffers Empty, California Pays With I.O.U.’s

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — An ever-widening budget gap joined with intractable political paralysis to deliver California its biggest fiscal blow in decades on Thursday, when the state’s controller began printing i.o.u.’s in lieu of cash to pay taxpayers, vendors and local governments. It was only the second time the state had adopted the emergency payment method since the Great Depression . The National Conference of State Legislatures had no record of any other state’s ever using them. It was unclear whether the i.o.u.’s, known as warrants, would be accepted by all of the banks in California, which were caught off guard by the move and seemed hesitant to entrust the state to repay the them — at an interest rate of 3.75 percent — in October, as promised. The controller, John Chiang, issued 28,742 warrants totaling $53.3 million. If state lawmakers fail to reach a budget agreement by the end of August, the amount would grow to $4.8 billion. While the emergency move resulted from California’s combination of outsized budget gaps, unusual budget rules and a morass of financial obligations approved at the polls, the action was seen as a warning flag to other states that have failed to close their budgets this fiscal year because of the economic downturn. “In the past, there haven’t been many opportunities for states to have to issue them,” Brian Sigritz, a staff associate at the National Association of State Budget Officers, said of the i.o.u.’s. “But now some other states may have to look at it.” So far, other states with lingering budget holes have tried different methods: Connecticut, for instance, has a temporary budget under executive order, and Pennsylvania is considering partial payments to employees. In California’s misery, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has found some opportunity in standing his ground. Mr. Schwarzenegger has not only refused to sign off on stopgap measures like those proposed this week by Democratic lawmakers, but has also demanded that lawmakers adopt substantive changes in policy as part of any budget deal. Democrats indicated Thursday that they were beginning to submit to Mr. Schwarzenegger’s demands, taking proposed tax increases that he opposes off the table as they worked to close a budget gap estimated to have grown to $27 billion. H. D. Palmer, spokesman for the California Finance Department, said Mr. Schwarzenegger had called the i.o.u.’s “the short-term consequence of not getting a long-term solution.” Mr. Schwarzenegger, weighing the discomfort and embarrassment of the i.o.u.’s against a short-term budget deal, apparently reached the conclusion that the i.o.u.’s were a price worth paying to force policy changes he pushed as early as 2005, even if it meant the budget crisis dragged on. Among the changes Mr. Schwarzenegger insists be included in a budget agreement are the fingerprinting of recipients of certain state services for the poor and infirm, tighter checks on the job status of those who receive welfare benefits and changes to the state pension program. “The governor is playing brinksmanship in the middle of the most serious economic crisis since the ’30s with possible consequences for the nation’s recovery as a whole,” said Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers repeatedly failed to agree on how to close the budget hole by the start of the fiscal year on Wednesday. So California is now just like a family that spends more than it takes in and holds off on the cable bill while paying the mortgage: its expenses are greater than its revenues. The state, which previously used i.o.u.’s in 1992 and 1933, will issue them rather than checks to those it can get away with not immediately paying. Most warrants will go to Californians waiting for tax refunds, vendors doing business with the state and local governments, especially in social service areas. Federal and state laws prohibit i.o.u.’s from being issued to state employees, schools or Medicaid recipients. While it is against federal law for a state to declare bankruptcy, California’s move Thursday will not go unnoticed by Wall Street or escape consequences. The state’s credit rating is already shaky, and any further downgrades from rating agencies could send interest rates on its bonds soaring, forcing deeper service cuts. Furthermore, if California comes up short on cash this fall, other creditors will have to wait behind the warrant holders, who would most likely end up in superior credit positions. In a news conference here Thursday, Mr. Schwarzenegger did not apologize for the state of California’s fiscal affairs and instead stood defiantly against the people he had alternatively battled and wooed for the better part of six years — chiefly Democratic lawmakers, public employee unions and so-called special interests. “At the end of the day, they haven’t accomplished anything,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said, speaking of an effort by the Legislature to stave off the i.o.u.’s with stopgap measures to cut education financing. “So I sent the budget back, doing it forcefully and without any hesitation.” Lawmakers, who plan to work over the weekend and into next week to resolve the budget, were beyond peeved by Mr. Schwarzenegger’s stance but said they would try to resolve the problems without tax increases and would consider his policy reform measures. “We did everything in our power to avert the i.o.u.’s,” Darrell Steinberg, the president pro tempore of the State Senate, said in a news conference in Sacramento. “This was a strategic move by the governor and the Senate Republicans.” Mr. Steinberg called Mr. Schwarzenegger’s comments in Los Angeles “stale rhetoric.” On Thursday, a few banks — including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Bank of the West — indicated they would accept the i.o.u.’s but only through the middle of the month. The California Bankers Association offered less-than-overwhelming optimism that more banks would step up, citing the technical difficulties in managing the warrants coupled with fear of getting paid in early October, when the warrants are to mature. If California’s fiscal situation significantly improved before then, however, the state could repay the warrants earlier at a lower rate. “In evaluating potential registered warrant acceptance, banks have been advised by regulatory authorities to consider such issues as credit quality, capital requirements and concentration limits,” the bankers’ association president, Rod Brown, said in a statement. “Given the poor credit rating of California, the worst in the nation, banks may be hesitant to extend credit to the state.” At the White House, which has seemed flummoxed by California’s woes, President Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said Thursday, “We’re going to continue to watch the situation in California and in other states throughout the country.”

California
Budgets and Budgeting
Economic Conditions and Trends


Joseph Bruno Asks Federal Appeals Court to Prevent a New Trial

Abstract: A year and a half after he was convicted of corruption charges, Joseph L. Bruno , once one of the most powerful men in Albany, was in a courtroom in Manhattan on Friday fighting to avoid a new trial. “Just like to go on with my life,” he said, looking drawn, at 82, but still working what little crowd there was at the federal appeals court. The case against Mr. Bruno, the former Republican majority leader in the State Senate, has had a tangled history. He was convicted in 2009 in Federal District Court in Albany of two counts of fraud for failing to disclose payments he had received from businessmen seeking help in the Legislature. But a ruling in another case last year by the United States Supreme Court undercut the government’s legal claims against Mr. Bruno. Though sentenced to two years in prison, he has remained free during the appeal. During the investigation in 2008, Mr. Bruno resigned his position as one of the “three men in a room” who made many of the decisions in Albany — that is, Mr. Bruno, in addition to the governor and the speaker of the Assembly. The issue before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was whether, as Mr. Bruno’s lawyers claim, the case against him must be declared at an end, or whether, as the prosecutors argue, they can retry him by conforming their charges to the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling. That decision narrowed the interpretation of a law prosecutors used widely, including against Mr. Bruno, that makes it a crime to deprive people of “honest services.” From their spacious appeals bench in the Foley Square courthouse, the three judges on Friday sent contradictory messages about their views of the case. “I think a jury could conclude that there was bribery here,” said Edward R. Korman , a federal judge in Brooklyn sitting by designation. But Judge Barrington D. Parker Jr. seemed to hesitate as he questioned a prosecutor: “Isn’t it monstrously unfair to Mr. Bruno that he would have to go through another trial?” A decision from the panel is not expected for some time. In its 2010 ruling, in the case of the former Enron chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling, the Supreme Court said the federal honest-services law could not be used to prosecute defendants for hiding conflicts of interest. But the court left open the possibility of prosecution based on kickbacks and bribery. The prosecutors in the Bruno case conceded on Friday that their case had been based on the claim that by taking more than $200,000 from an Albany-area businessman who was seeking his help, Mr. Bruno hid conflicts of interest from the public. They acknowledged that the conviction should be overturned because of the Supreme Court ruling. But the prosecutors contended that the “core” of their case against Mr. Bruno had included improper payments. The court, they said, should permit them to indict and try Mr. Bruno again under the argument that the payments he received amounted to bribery. “I don’t think it’s unfair to Senator Bruno,” because he clearly knew what the case was about, said Elizabeth C. Coombe, an assistant United States attorney in Albany. But Mr. Bruno’s lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell , argued that there was no evidence of bribery under the law and that there were numerous reasons that Mr. Bruno should not be subjected to another trial, including the constitutional protection against double jeopardy. “It’s enough,” Mr. Lowell said to a small group of television crews outside the court. The prosecutors have always presented the case as something of a referendum on lax ethics in Albany, where legislators’ official duties and private business have often overlapped. Mr. Bruno cast the case as revealing nothing more than the realities of a part-time legislature where members often have other responsibilities. In the courtroom on Friday, Mr. Bruno sat with family members and nodded vigorously, even when the judges’ questions seemed to be going against him. But he did not inject himself into the proceedings, as he occasionally did during his trial. Mr. Bruno sometimes seemed amused Friday, as when he smiled as Judge Denny Chin posed a question to prosecutors Mr. Bruno appeared to enjoy greatly: “The question is: Why should the government get a second chance?” In the hallway outside the courtroom later, Mr. Bruno did offer his commentary, as he used to in Albany, about how he thought it had gone. “Couldn’t be better, I don’t believe,” he asserted. “I think it’s just very, very clear that I committed no crime.”

Corruption in Government
Decisions and Verdicts
Bribery and Kickbacks
Bruno Joseph L
Lowell Abbe D
Parker Barrington D Jr
Korman Edward R


Game Maker Cutting Price of New Release by 20%

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 21 - In a sign of the video game industry's continuing struggles, Electronic Arts said on Tuesday that it planned to sell its much-awaited Godfather video game next month for $39.95, which is 20 percent less than it typically prices new games. The discount strategy is the latest disappointment for Electronic Arts surrounding the game, which is based on the Godfather movie and book, and which the company spent $10 million to $20 million to develop in hopes of creating a blockbuster. The game was supposed to be in stores for the holiday selling season, but Electronic Arts said its developers needed more time. The game goes on sale March 21, the company said. The company said a side effect of the delay is that consumers may be less eager to buy the game, because, the company said, the game industry is in a transition to a new generation of gaming consoles and customers may be delaying purchases of games until they buy an Xbox 360 or a Playstation III, which is due in stores later this year. "There's pricing pressure as you go from one console transition to the next," and $39.95 "is the right price given the transition dynamics," said Tammy Schachter, a spokeswoman for Electronic Arts. But some industry analysts have wondered whether Electronic Arts has failed to create a compelling game and is using the transition as an excuse to drop its price. Recently, some Wall Street analysts have questioned whether the company has lost its creative touch and has been thriving by selling sequels of sports franchises, like its Madden football game, rather than creating enticing new concepts. The Godfather has been seen as a test of Electronic Arts' creative vision. "We're going to wait and see where the game reviews come in, but we believe it's a great game," Ms. Schachter said. "We're delivering a better game for having moved" the introduction date. Jeetil Patel, an analyst with Deutsche Bank Securities, who has a hold rating on Electronic Arts' shares, said it was too soon to tell whether the drop in price was because of the transition, a quality problem or a response to missing the holiday season. He said what is clear is that the company, and other industry players, are realizing that the transition to a new generation of consoles is "much deeper than they envisioned facing." Mr. Patel said that whether the price drop will affect Electronic Arts' bottom line depends on whether it can sell enough games to make up for the price drop. "The real question comes down to whether they can see a 20 percent bump in volume," he said.

ELECTRONIC ARTS
COMPUTER AND VIDEO GAMES


Hungary Passes Central Bank Rules Despite Risk to Bailout

Abstract: BUDAPEST — Hungary’s chances of obtaining a financial bailout receded Friday after lawmakers approved new central bank regulations that had prompted the International Monetary Fund and the European Union to break off talks this month. The Parliament stripped the central bank president, Andras Simor, of his right to name deputies, expanded the rate-setting Monetary Council and created a position for a third vice president. A separate law also approved Friday makes it possible to demote the central bank president if the institution is eventually combined with the financial regulator. In the past few weeks, Hungary has had its sovereign credit rating downgraded to below investment grade by Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service. The forint has fallen 15 percent against the euro since June 30, making it the world’s worst-performing currency in the period. “The approval of the central bank law shows the government isn’t serious about obtaining an I.M.F. loan,” said Gabor Orban at Aegon Fund Management in Budapest. “The government is floating the possibility of an I.M.F. deal, but in reality it’s playing for time, hoping the global economy will improve and make a bailout unnecessary.” The government had asked the I.M.F. for aid last month, as its financial situation worsened, to ensure financing for 2012. On Thursday, Hungary raised less than half as much as planned at a debt auction as its borrowing costs surged to the highest levels in more than a year. The state rejected all bids for three-year notes. The yield on a bond due in 2022 was 9.7 percent. In a statement Friday, the central bank said the new regulations would “seriously harm” the country’s national interest, allow for political intervention in monetary policy and threaten economic stability. It also blamed the laws for the “indefinite postponement” of talks on a financial aid package. But during an interview with MR1 radio, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that although an agreement with the I.M.F. and the European Union on an assistance package would raise investor confidence, the cabinet could do without it. “If we have an I.M.F. safety net, then we face the coming period with greater self-confidence and greater security,” Mr. Orban said. “If we don’t reach an agreement, we’ll still stand on our own feet.” According to a forecast by the European Commission on Nov. 10, Hungary will have the highest debt level and slowest economic growth among the E.U.’s eastern members next year. Tamas Fellegi, the Hungarian minister in charge of negotiations on the bailout, will travel to Washington in the first half of January to hold “informal” talks with I.M.F. officials, including the managing director, Christine Lagarde, the news agency MTI reported. Mr. Orban had shunned I.M.F. aid after taking office last year to protect what he called “unorthodox” measures from oversight. Those steps included the effective nationalization of $13 billion of private pension-fund assets and extraordinary industry taxes to control the soaring budget deficit. Hungary also required banks to take losses on foreign-currency mortgages, repayment of which has become increasingly expensive as the forint has weakened. S.&P. warned in December that the measures could hinder economic growth and were “likely to depress investment and job creation in the short term.” The I.M.F. and the Union have yet to make a decision on resuming talks with Hungary. The European Commission president Jose Barroso plans to be “constructive and avoid any escalation of the situation,” a commission spokesman, Joe Hennon, said after the vote. Mr. Barroso had sent a letter to Orban outlining the commission’s views, and the commission will continue its “in-depth” examination of the central bank law, Mr. Hennon said. During his radio interview, Mr. Orban said the government is ready to contest the European Commission in the courts over differences on the new central bank regulation. He added that although Hungary had agreed to most of the changes demanded by the Union, differences remained on two points. The government stuck to expanding the number of rate-setting council members to as many as nine from seven, and to increasing the number of vice presidents to three from two. Mr. Orban has been reducing the power of independent institutions and asserting his influence since winning elections last year, bucking objections from the United States and the United Nations. Lawmakers from his party have ousted the chief justice of the Supreme Court, narrowed the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court, written a new Constitution, replaced an independent Fiscal Council with one dominated by the prime minister’s allies, created a media regulator led by ruling-party appointees and chose a party member to lead the State Audit Office. In another change, a single judge, Tunde Hando, the wife of a ruling party member, will be responsible for naming all new judges, including replacements for dozens who will be forced into retirement at the end of this year. “We have significant and well-founded concerns,” the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, wrote in a letter dated Dec. 23 to Mr. Orban, according to the Nepszabadsag newspaper, which published the letter in Hungarian on Friday. Mrs. Clinton called on Mr. Orban to protect individual liberties and institutional checks and balances, Nepszabadsag said.

Hungary
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
International Monetary Fund
Banking and Financial Institutions


Pitchers’ Swings, and Their Throws, Keep Cubs Rolling Past Giants

Abstract: CHICAGO — Baseball is the sport where it is all supposed to even out, where those blistering liners and broken-bat bloopers balance out in the ledger of the long run. Perhaps this explains how the Chicago Cubs, on a 108-year run of hard luck and heartbreak, have beaten the San Francisco Giants in the first two games of their National League division series — through a proper accounting of things. How else to explain the Cubs’ good fortune on Friday night when Javier Baez’s fly ball fought through the teeth of a wind to land in the basket that sits atop the ivy-covered outfield walls at Wrigley Field, depriving Angel Pagan from catching the home run that won the opener? Or how else to elucidate the Cubs’ 5-2 victory on Saturday, the difference delivered not by the arms of their pitchers Kyle Hendricks and Travis Wood, but by their bats? Hendricks produced a two-run single that built the lead, and Wood, who was in the game only because Hendricks was knocked out by a Pagan line drive, delivered the crowning blow — a home run deep into the left-field bleachers. Those hits proved to be enough as five Cubs relievers held the Giants to just two hits over the final five and one-third innings, with closer Aroldis Chapman finishing them off in the ninth inning and sending the series to San Francisco with the Cubs needing just one victory to advance. If there is some comfort for the Giants as they return home facing elimination, it is that they have Madison Bumgarner, their indomitable playoff ace, ready to go on Monday night. They also have a history to lean on, having won nine consecutive elimination games dating to 2012. “You’re hoping at least a split here, and that didn’t happen, so now we have our work cut out,” Giants Manager Bruce Bochy said. “But the fact that we have been in this position before, we’re going home and hopefully we can get things rolling.” This series has turned on the smallest margins. Earlier in the day, Pagan considered how Baez’s home run, the difference in Friday’s 1-0 game, landed in the basket that was put in place years ago to catch cups of beer that would otherwise fall — accidentally or not — onto opposing outfielders. “An inch less, I would have caught that ball,” said Pagan, who spent his first two major league seasons with the Cubs. “But hey, that’s the way it is. He got lucky.” On Saturday, even the Cubs’ misfortune did not result in a turn of their luck. When Hendricks, whose 2.13 E.R.A. was the best in the majors, was caught flush in the right forearm by Pagan’s line drive with two out in the fourth, it inflicted little damage. Though Hendricks was forced from the game, X-rays proved negative and revealed only a bruise. Wood, the longest-tenured Cub, was summoned from the bullpen and struck out Conor Gillaspie to keep the Cubs lead at 4-2. He then grabbed a helmet, put on his batting glove and ripped the first pitch he saw from reliever George Kontos into the bleachers. As with Baez the night before, Wood was rewarded with a curtain call. “It was amazing,” said Willson Contreras, who had barely returned to the dugout after making the first out of the inning. “Nobody expected a pitcher to come from the bench and hit a homer.” It continued a season of the absurd for Wood, who earlier this year made a game-saving catch while crashing into the ivy in left field. Saturday’s home run was the 10th of his career, and he was also credited with the victory. Asked if he would like to take a swing against Bumgarner, Wood said, “If they want me to get an at-bat, I’ll take one anywhere I can.” There was no such hubris from Hendricks, the baby-faced Ivy League pitcher who was considered the worst hitter on his high school team and has improved only marginally since. He has 14 hits in three seasons in the majors. But no matter: When Hendricks arrived at the plate in the second inning with the bases loaded, none out and the Cubs ahead by 1-0, he looped the first pitch into center field for a two-run single. The second run was made possible by an aggressive read from Baez, who correctly figured that the ball would drop in front of center fielder Denard Span. “I was looking down for the signs thinking maybe a bunt,” Hendricks said. “Flared one out there, happened to fall in. Pretty lucky, but we’ll take it.” While Hendricks’s departure was painful, Giants starter Jeff Samardjiza was knocked out in more conventional fashion. The number of hits Samardjiza allowed — six — was the same as the number of outs he recorded, and he was lifted for a pinch-hitter after two innings. Samardzija was drafted by the Cubs and played a role in their rebuilding when he was sent to Oakland two years ago in a deal that brought back Addison Russell, who emerged as the Cubs’ All-Star shortstop this season. Samardzija’s familiarity with pitching at Wrigley Field was a factor in Manager Bruce Bochy’s choosing him to start Saturday over the left-hander Matt Moore, who will pitch in Game 4 if there is one. Samardzija was asked Friday if there was anything he had gleaned from pitching seven seasons at Wrigley Field. “Look at the flags?” Samardzija said. “It’s really the only thing that matters. I think they’ve redone the surface since I was here, so it looks like the infield is playing a little truer than it was. But yeah, you look at those flags and you kind of go from there.” Insider knowledge, however, has not helped Samardzija, who has a 9.75 E.R.A. in three starts as a visitor at Wrigley Field. Perhaps a return home to their own raucous fans will inspire the Giants to be a little sharper, to swing the bats better and to make the plays that the Cubs have mostly made in the first two games of the series. At the moment, the Giants can only hope that this series lasts long enough for those things to even out.

Baseball
Chicago Cubs
San Francisco Giants
Playoffs


N.H.L. Rejects Union’s Latest Proposal

Abstract: The N.H.L. on Wednesday rejected the latest players union proposal despite significant concessions from the union 67 days into the lockout. “We’re still far apart, but hopefully there’s some momentum so we can bring this to a conclusion,” Commissioner Gary Bettman said. “There was some movement in our direction, and it was appreciated.” Donald Fehr , the union’s executive director, said the league responded to the offer with “nothing on significant economic issues” and “no reciprocity” in the talks at the N.H.L. office in Manhattan. “The players have done an awful lot here,” Fehr said. “Still, it doesn’t appear to be enough.” Winnipeg defenseman Ron Hainsey, who has been present at nearly every negotiating session, described the league as being less categorical in its rejection of the union’s proposal than it has been in past sessions, particularly on Oct. 18, when Bettman took 15 minutes to turn down three union offers. “I would not say it was a blanket no,” Hainsey said. “They responded to our proposal, but there was no meaningful move in our direction in anything that we would consider a major issue.” No further talks were scheduled, but Bettman said he hoped to hear from the union on Friday. With no deal imminent, the first half of the December schedule is expected to be canceled as early as Friday. Thus far, the league has canceled 327 games. The next cancellation is also expected to include the Jan. 27 All-Star Game, scheduled for Jan. 27 in Columbus, Ohio. The financially ailing Blue Jackets had been counting on the All-Star weekend to fill their coffers, but those hopes may soon be dashed. The union offered to accept 50 percent of revenue in the first year of a new deal rather than a guaranteed amount. It was the first time the union agreed to take a percentage of revenue. The union also agreed to a league demand to curb front-loaded contracts. Fehr characterized the union offer as leaving the sides just $182 million apart over five years. But the league rejected that notion, as it has previous union assertions that the two sides were close. “Today isn’t the first time the union has come out of a session and talked about how wonderful their offer is or how close we were, when in fact the reality was they were misleading you,” Bettman said. He also criticized the union for using “spin,” “gamesmanship” and “stalling” during the negotiations. Bettman estimated the lockout was costing the league and its players $18 million to $20 million a day in lost revenue. “We made what was our best offer in order to save an 82-game season,” Bettman said, referring to a league proposal earlier this month. “That offer was summarily rejected. But to expect our best economic proposal as damage continues to increase isn’t particularly realistic. “We’ve given what we have to give,” Bettman added. “It was our best offer.”

National Hockey League Players' Assn
National Hockey League
Fehr Donald
Lockouts
Hockey Ice


Vultures Are Circling. Must Be a Foreclosure.

Abstract: WITH so much bad news around — collapsing investment banks, a stock market that makes the Tilt-a-Whirl seem smooth, and what looks an awful lot like a recession — there’s got to be a silver lining, right? There is. You, my friend, may have a bright future in: Vulturing. There’s a fat shelf of books dedicated to the proposition that you can make a fortune off the misfortune of others. Comedians say comedy equals tragedy plus time. But now the rules have changed: profit equals tragedy . . . plus greed! The trick, the books say, is to buy houses from people at that sweet-spot moment between their defaulting on the mortgage payment and foreclosure by the bank. The seller is, well, motivated. And you can pick up a bargain. Score! Does that sound a little creepy, though? Not at all, the authors contend. Just take a look at one of the popular books on the topic, “The Foreclosures.com Guide to Making Huge Profits Investing in Pre-Foreclosures Without Selling Your Soul,” by Alexis McGee. See? She mentions selling your soul right up front, so you know it’s not an issue. Ms. McGee makes a case that you can do well by doing good — in fact, you can even be a “white-knight investor.” As she puts it, “Success in the foreclosure business is not about stealing homeowners’ properties, turning financially down-and-out folks out on the street, or hiding your intentions behind convoluted contracts with property owners in trouble.” Instead, she writes, the hero investor “helps homeowners in distress figure out the best way to resolve their financial troubles.” She isn’t the only one arguing that the foreclosure closers are actually the good guys. Denise Evans, the author of “How to Make Money on Foreclosures,” says that you can be “a hero, a champion, a doer of good deeds, and make money.” To Ms. Evans, it’s just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Somebody is in over his head, and is going to lose his home. “Someone else is going to buy it at a bargain price,” she writes. “It might as well be you.” She suggests calling yourself a “workout specialist” — which sounds more like somebody who works at the gym, not in the valley of the shadow of penury. And, she says: “I’ll let you in on a secret — most people fail at buying and selling foreclosures because they feel guilty about it. Done properly, you should be proud — not ashamed.” Sometimes, of course, the gloves do have to come off. In a new book by Ms. McGee, “The Foreclosures.com Guide to Advanced Investing Techniques You Won’t Learn Anywhere Else,” she explains the ins and outs of making deals after foreclosure has taken place, which she says is “H-O-T with profits if you know where to look.” This is the avenue, she says, “if you’re not a people person and find the one-on-one nature of pre-foreclosure investing excruciating,” including that icky eviction stuff. Not to worry, Ms. McGee advises us. “No one wants to force someone out of their home, especially someone who has nowhere else to go,” she writes. But the buyer knew the score on the way in, she says. “Don’t be too tough on yourself if you must evict someone from a property after foreclosure,” she continues. “Eviction is not a surprise ending.” It’s clear that somebody is buying this advice. Ms. McGee’s latest book, for example, is outselling the best-selling version of the Bible on Amazon.com, and is more popular than “Ethics for the New Millennium,” by the Dalai Lama. I have no doubt that there are people out there who feel they are helping others avoid foreclosure, bankruptcy, anguish and shame. I also have no doubt that there are plenty of true vultures out there as well. But let’s be honest — aren’t vultures just eagles with bad P.R.? Armed with my new knowledge and a positive outlook, I cased my neighborhood for opportunities to help people. One homeowner up the street seemed perfect. He and his family live in a big old house, a Dutch colonial across the street from an elementary school. I’ve always loved it, maybe even coveted it. But there’s a problem. Unlike most of the troubled homeowners in my neighborhood, he didn’t buy at the top of an overheated market. In fact, he does not appear to be in financial distress at all. But you never know who’s crying on the inside. Besides, he has a child getting ready to head off to college and another right behind him. That’s a pretty good definition of financial woes right there. So I called, and with all of the diplomacy for which I am known, inquired. “You wouldn’t happen to be in financial trouble, would you?” I asked. “I’m feeling pretty good, financially, these days,” he replied. Kid No. 1, in fact, just got into one of those Ivy League institutions that actually offer a lot of help in financial aid. I cursed my luck, and explained that I was calling about my interest in pre-foreclosure investing. He rolled with it. “Any chance of default?” I asked. “It’s not on the agenda for this month,” he said. Dang! Well, I asked, if he did run into the shoals of monetary woe anytime soon, would he at least consider me his vulture of choice? Sorry, he said: “The first vulture I see is the first vulture I’ll take.” I was hurt. “So our friendship means nothing?” I could make a ton of money, I explained, if he would just sell his home to me in a panic. Finally, he saw the light. “Why wait for me to be in foreclosure?” he asked. “Let’s do it now!” We were finally getting somewhere. But I had to make a confession. “I’m broke,” I acknowledged. “Could you lend me some money to get started?” A clever and helpful guy, he had the answer. He could take out a loan, put his house up as collateral. In one deft move, he would raise cash for me and put himself in financial distress. “You could use my house to buy my house!” he said. He was clearly pleased with himself. “That’s got to be a win-win-win all around,” he said. The subprime companies could have used this subtle mind. I thanked him, telling him I’d think it over. I DIDN’T know if I could handle the ugly part of the business, though, with such a good guy. Evicting sounded like serious business. The sort of thing you’d want to practice. I decided to start small. I told the cat to get out of my chair. “Ping Pong Ball,” I said (our daughter named him when she was 2), “I’m sorry it has come to this.” I explained that he knew his obligations — something about mice — and hadn’t been meeting them. I looked him in the eye, firmly but with compassion and my soul intact, and said, “This is not a surprise ending.” He looked at me with scorn. Then he bit me. Cats are so stupid. They don’t know beans about investing.

Foreclosures
Finances
Banks and Banking
United States Economy


Blackhawks’ Praise for Jonathan Quick: If He Sees It, He’ll Stop It

Abstract: CHICAGO — Sweat still dripped from the Chicago Blackhawks’ playoff beards after their Game 7 overtime win over the Detroit Red Wings on Wednesday as they described the thrill of overcoming a three-games-to-one deficit. But while the victory was exhilarating, the Blackhawks soon turned their attention to their next daunting challenge: a Western Conference finals matchup against the defending champion Los Angeles Kings, led by goaltender Jonathan Quick, last season’s Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the most valuable player of the playoffs. During the Kings’ run to the Stanley Cup in 2012, Quick allowed 1.41 goals per game and posted a .946 save percentage. This postseason, he has been just as good and maybe better, with a 1.50 goals against average, a .948 save percentage and 3 shutouts. Quick is the fulcrum of a defense that has allowed more than two goals only twice in 13 playoff games and never more than three. In Game 7 of Los Angeles’s second-round series against San Jose, Quick stopped 25 shots to preserve a 2-1 win, including a remarkable sprawling glove save against Joe Pavelski late in the third period on what looked to be a sure goal. “That’s what he does,” Blackhawks wing Viktor Stalberg said. “Sometimes guys think they have an empty net, and somehow he finds his way back there.” After practicing Friday, the Blackhawks were full of praise for Quick. Marian Hossa spoke of Quick’s aggressiveness in coming out of his crease to cut down shooting angles. Patrick Kane noted his low positioning, allowing him to see through tangles of bodies in front of the net. Coach Joel Quenneville called Quick a special player. “We have our work cut out,” Kane said. The Blackhawks’ attempt to disrupt Quick will begin Saturday at United Center. The key to almost every tactic, they said, is sending bodies to the front of the net. “You say it against every goalie, but you want to get traffic,” Kane said. Quenneville added, “A lot of our talk looking at the series and tomorrow’s game is we have to find a way to make sure he doesn’t see pucks.” Hossa suggested that one-timers could be effective in getting Quick to move from side to side in his crease. Kane said that elevating the puck could be an answer to Quick’s crouch. The Sharks made a concerted effort to get physical with Quick. They bumped, poked and jostled him frequently. The contact appeared to frustrate Quick during Games 3 and 4, both Sharks wins in San Jose. Chicago had similar success against Detroit’s Jimmy Howard. “The way he played, you see that if you don’t get bodies, if you don’t get traffic going towards the goalie, he’s going to make saves,” Stalberg said of Howard. “Same deal with Quick.” Chicago averaged 3.1 goals per game in the regular season, leading the Western Conference. The Blackhawks were 2-1 against the Kings, scoring five, four and three goals. But no one in Chicago’s locker room wanted to put much stock in those results. Los Angeles is a different team, and so is Chicago, the Blackhawks said. “A lot of people still want to talk about our accomplishments during the regular season,” the captain Jonathan Toews said. “But teams that we’re up against would love to knock us out of the playoffs and show us it really doesn’t matter.” Despite film study sessions and meticulous preparation, many players acknowledged that to score consistently on Quick, they would also need a bit of luck: a bounce off a skate or a deflection off a stick would be just as important as any X’s and O’s. “I don’t think many pucks are going to beat him cleanly,” Stalberg said. “We got to have guts to fight through that traffic in front of the net. But if we want to win the series, we have to commit to it.”

Ice hockey
Jonathan Quick
Chicago Blackhawks
Los Angeles Kings


Online Dispute Becomes Internet-Snarling Attack

Abstract: A squabble between a group fighting spam and a Dutch company that hosts Web sites said to be sending spam has escalated into one of the largest computer attacks on the Internet, causing widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure around the world. Millions of ordinary Internet users have experienced delays in services or could not reach a particular Web site for a short time. However, for the Internet engineers who run the global network the problem is more worrisome. The attacks are becoming increasingly powerful, and computer security experts worry that if they continue to escalate people may not be able to reach basic Internet services, like e-mail and online banking. The dispute started when the spam-fighting group, called Spamhaus, added the Dutch company Cyberbunker to its blacklist, which is used by e-mail providers to weed out spam. Cyberbunker, named for its headquarters, a five-story former NATO bunker, offers hosting services to any Web site “except child porn and anything related to terrorism,” according to its Web site. A spokesman for Spamhaus, which is based in Europe, said the attacks began on March 19, but had not stopped the group from distributing its blacklist. Patrick Gilmore, chief architect at Akamai Technologies, a digital content provider, said Spamhaus’s role was to generate a list of Internet spammers. Of Cyberbunker, he added: “These guys are just mad. To be frank, they got caught. They think they should be allowed to spam.” Mr. Gilmore said that the attacks, which are generated by swarms of computers called botnets, concentrate data streams that are larger than the Internet connections of entire countries. He likened the technique, which uses a long-known flaw in the Internet’s basic plumbing, to using a machine gun to spray an entire crowd when the intent is to kill one person. The attacks were first mentioned publicly last week by CloudFlare, an Internet security firm in Silicon Valley that was trying to defend against the attacks and as a result became a target. “These things are essentially like nuclear bombs,” said Matthew Prince, chief executive of CloudFlare. “It’s so easy to cause so much damage.” The so-called distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks have reached previously unknown magnitudes, growing to a data stream of 300 billion bits per second. “It is a real number,” Mr. Gilmore said. “It is the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet.” Spamhaus, one of the most prominent groups tracking spammers on the Internet, uses volunteers to identify spammers and has been described as an online vigilante group. In the past, blacklisted sites have retaliated against Spamhaus with denial-of-service attacks, in which they flood Spamhaus with traffic requests from personal computers until its servers become unreachable. But in recent weeks, the attackers hit back with a far more powerful strike that exploited the Internet’s core infrastructure, called the Domain Name System, or DNS. That system functions like a telephone switchboard for the Internet. It translates the names of Web sites like Facebook.com or Google.com into a string of numbers that the Internet’s underlying technology can understand. Millions of computer servers around the world perform the actual translation. In the latest incident, attackers sent messages, masquerading as ones coming from Spamhaus, to those machines, which were then amplified drastically by the servers, causing torrents of data to be aimed back at the Spamhaus computers. When Spamhaus requested aid from CloudFlare, the attackers began to focus their digital ire on the companies that provide data connections for both Spamhaus and CloudFlare. Questioned about the attacks, Sven Olaf Kamphuis, an Internet activist who said he was a spokesman for the attackers, said in an online message that, “We are aware that this is one of the largest DDoS attacks the world had publicly seen.” Mr. Kamphuis said Cyberbunker was retaliating against Spamhaus for “abusing their influence.” “Nobody ever deputized Spamhaus to determine what goes and does not go on the Internet,” Mr. Kamphuis said. “They worked themselves into that position by pretending to fight spam.” A typical denial-of-service attack tends to affect only a small number of networks. But in the case of a Domain Name System flood attack, data packets are aimed at the victim from servers all over the world. Such attacks cannot easily be stopped, experts say, because those servers cannot be shut off without halting the Internet. “The No. 1 rule of the Internet is that it has to work,” said Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who years ago pointed out the inherent vulnerabilities of the Domain Name System. “You can’t stop a DNS flood by shutting down those servers because those machines have to be open and public by default. The only way to deal with this problem is to find the people doing it and arrest them.” The heart of the problem, according to several Internet engineers, is that many large Internet service providers have not set up their networks to make sure that traffic leaving their networks is actually coming from their own users. The potential security flaw has long been known by Internet security specialists, but it has only recently been exploited in a way that threatens the Internet infrastructure. An engineer at one of the largest Internet communications firms said the attacks in recent days have been as many as five times larger than what was seen recently in attacks against major American banks. He said the attacks were not large enough to saturate the company’s largest routers, but they had overwhelmed important equipment. Cyberbunker brags on its Web site that it has been a frequent target of law enforcement because of its “many controversial customers.” The company claims that at one point it fended off a Dutch SWAT team. “Dutch authorities and the police have made several attempts to enter the bunker by force,” the site said. “None of these attempts were successful.”

Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Email spam
Computer security
Europe
Hacker (computer security)
Cyberbunker
Spamhaus


Knicks Would Like to Have Laker Woes

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — A steady, seven-day downpour soaked Southern California, sparked fears of mudslides and, to the great alarm of the locals, intruded on the sanctity of the Los Angeles Lakers . Rainwater dripped from the rafters at the Staples Center on Sunday, causing a 12-minute delay in the Lakers’ eventual 98-95 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The storm clouds had been hovering for some time already — the Lakers are 2-4 since losing Andrew Bynum, their wunderkind center, to a knee injury. But the waterlogged, Bynum-less Lakers still have Kobe Bryant , perhaps the N.B.A.’s most valuable player this season, which means the Knicks can only hope for a rainout Tuesday night. Bryant had 39 points, 11 rebounds and 8 assists in the Lakers’ 95-90 victory over the Knicks last month. The game was effectively a rout before a late Knicks surge made the final score appear respectable. “The main focus is Kobe,” Knicks Coach Isiah Thomas said Monday, “and we’ll still double-team him and try different guys on him and try to keep him away from the basket.” The task of corralling Bryant seemingly becomes more simple without Bynum commanding attention in the lane. The 20-year-old Bynum was having a breakout season — averaging 13.1 points, 10.2 rebounds and 2.1 blocks — before injuring his knee Jan. 13. The Lakers (27-15) have lost three games in a row. Bryant just lost a nationally televised, head-to-head battle with LeBron James. After Tuesday, the Lakers leave Los Angeles for nine games, the longest continuous trip since the franchise moved here in 1960. The Knicks (14-29) are likely to see a desperate team and a highly motivated Bryant, which is always an ominous sign. “The way they lost to Cleveland, they’ll come out and really try to play well before they go out on the road,” Thomas said. The Knicks would surely welcome the Lakers’ burdens. Despite their league-high payroll and Thomas’s endless roster shuffling, the Knicks lack a true franchise player like Bryant or a seemingly sure-fire star of the future like Bynum. Thomas practically conceded as much — and immediately regretted it — as he reflected on the Knicks’ struggles before Monday’s practice at U.C.L.A. “Our guys are still trying to carve out their turf in the league; they haven’t got to the point where they’re superstars,” Thomas said, a rare admission that he clearly wanted to take back. “I hate that I said that, because your headline writers will write ‘Knicks have no superstars, Isiah’s crazy.’ ” It could be seen as a refreshing bit of candor from Thomas, who mostly sticks to inoffensive platitudes. That the Knicks lack a true franchise player, or even a sure-fire All-Star, is not exactly a revelation. Thomas has acquired a number of players with elite talent like Stephon Marbury, Jamal Crawford, Eddy Curry and Zach Randolph, but none have blossomed into elite players. In the wake of Sunday night’s loss to Golden State, Thomas seemed discouraged that his best players seem happy only when they are scoring in bunches. Randolph, often regarded as a ball hog, had five assists in the first half Sunday, matching his season high. But he had only one assist in the second half. Curry played 18 minutes and scored 17 points, but he complained afterward that he was not getting enough scoring chances. “Eddy and Zach get double-teamed and sometimes they get a little frustrated, because they think they’re not involved,” Thomas said. “But they’re creating so many opportunities for Jamal or for Nate,” he said, referring to Crawford and Nate Robinson. Thomas said that Randolph could have had a triple-double “if he would have just stayed satisfied with the game that he was having.” Curry and Randolph rarely thrive simultaneously, and Thomas often removes Curry to match opponents’ smaller lineups. Crawford and Robinson have dominated the offense in recent weeks, and the Knicks have won five of eight games. “They still open up everything inside,” Crawford said of the big men. “They’re still having an effect on the game.”

New York Knicks
Basketball
Los Angeles Lakers
Bryant Kobe
Thomas Isiah


Contrite White House Spurns Health Law’s Critics

Abstract: BOSTON — The White House on Wednesday blended expressions of contrition for the troubled rollout of its health care law with an aggressive rejection of Republican criticism of it, as the administration sought a political strategy to blunt the fallout from weeks of technical failures and negative coverage. While Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, apologized profusely during a politically charged hearing on Capitol Hill, President Obama traveled to Massachusetts to argue forcefully that the Affordable Care Act will eventually be just as successful as the similar plan pioneered by Mitt Romney, his onetime rival and a former governor of the state. Speaking in the historic Faneuil Hall, where Mr. Romney signed the Massachusetts plan into law, the president also took “full responsibility” for the malfunctioning health care website and promised to fix it. But he pledged to “grind it out” over the weeks and months ahead to ensure the law’s success and prove its Republican critics wrong. “We are going to see this through,” Mr. Obama vowed, pounding his fist on the podium as the audience roared with approval. Image Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, spoke to a House committee for more than three hours Wednesday. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times The dual messages from Mr. Obama and Ms. Sebelius over the course of the day reflect a recognition by officials inside the White House that while apologies are in order, the administration cannot let Republicans expand concerns about the HealthCare.gov website into a broader indictment of the law. Senior advisers to the president said they understood that the bungled rollout of the insurance marketplace has given Republicans another opportunity to litigate the political case against the health care law. But they said they viewed the weeks ahead as a period of inevitable improvement that will vindicate their position. “The weight of that momentum will have a positive impact,” one senior administration official said, requesting anonymity to talk about White House strategy planning. “Really it’s about blocking and tackling and getting that work done.” With Republicans showing no sign of backing off, the challenge for Mr. Obama and Democrats in the months to come will be to deflect political attacks that unfairly demonize the health care law while acknowledging its shortcomings. Achieving that nuance could prove tricky for an administration whose top health official, Ms. Sebelius, on Wednesday called the rollout of the online insurance marketplace a “debacle.” Image President Obama boarded Air Force One before departing for Boston on Wednesday. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Ms. Sebelius told lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee that she was as surprised as anyone when the website collapsed on Oct. 1 under pressure from millions of users and was crippled by technical problems in subsequent days. While she was aware of the risks in a big information technology project, she said, “no one indicated that this could possibly go this wrong.” Ms. Sebelius told the committee: “Hold me accountable for the debacle. I’m responsible.” The shift in strategy from the White House comes as new challenges emerge for the law. The problem-plagued website crashed again just before Ms. Sebelius began testifying in front of a skeptical congressional panel. And officials acknowledged that the federal insurance marketplace for small businesses, which had already been delayed a month from Oct. 1, would not open until the end of November. In three and a half grueling hours of testimony, Ms. Sebelius gamely defended the troubled rollout of the law and apologized for what had gone wrong. But nothing she said could overcome the stark message displayed on a large video screen showing a page from HealthCare.gov: “The system is down at the moment. We are experiencing technical difficulties and hope to have them resolved soon. Please try again later.” Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, said the administration had not properly tested the security of the insurance website, which receives financial information on consumers seeking subsidies to help pay their premiums. Image Outside Faneuil Hall in Boston, where Mr. Obama spoke, a supporter of the health care law expressed her sentiments. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Mr. Rogers read from a government memo that said security controls for the federal exchange had not been fully tested as of Sept. 27. This creates a potentially “high risk” for the exchange, said the memo, from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The memo said that security controls would be “completely tested within the next six months.” Republicans continued to accuse Mr. Obama of lying to the American people when he said repeatedly over the past four years that people who had a health insurance plan they liked could keep it, regardless of the changes brought on by the Affordable Care Act. Lawmakers grilled Ms. Sebelius on why insurance companies are canceling policies for thousands of people across the country. Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the committee, said: “There are millions of Americans coast to coast who no doubt believed the president’s repeated promise that if they liked their plan, they’d be able to keep it. They are now receiving termination notices.” Ms. Sebelius tried, with little success, to allay concerns about those notices, which have been sent to hundreds of thousands of consumers stating that their individual insurance policies would soon be terminated because they did not comply with new standards under the Affordable Care Act. She said the cancellation of some policies was a justifiable byproduct of the 2010 health law. Video Highlights from the testimony before a House committee by Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, who called the first month of the HealthCare.gov site “flawed.” Credit Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times But in Massachusetts, Mr. Obama for the first time admitted that some people who have had what he called “substandard” insurance plans may have to choose another one now that the Affordable Care Act has gone into effect. He accused lawmakers in Washington of distorting that fact by failing to mention that the new plans they have will be more comprehensive and often come with cheaper premiums. “If you leave that stuff out, you are being grossly misleading, to say the least,” Mr. Obama said. Mr. Obama made comparisons between the rollout of the national health care law and the problems experienced in the days after the Medicare prescription drug program went into effect in 2006. In his remarks, the president said that when those problems occurred, “Democrats worked with Republicans to make it work.” The president also repeatedly invoked Mr. Romney’s name as evidence of the bipartisan spirit that led to the passage and implementation of the health care law in Massachusetts. He said Mr. Romney “did the right thing on health care” in the state. But Mr. Romney did not return the favor, issuing a statement hours before the president’s speech that repeated his longstanding criticism of the national law. “Nothing has changed my view that a plan crafted to fit the unique circumstances of a single state should not be grafted onto the entire country,” Mr. Romney said. “Health reform is best crafted by states with bipartisan support and input from its employers, as we did, without raising taxes, and by carefully phasing it in to avoid the type of disruptions we are seeing nationally.” White House aides said they did not ask Mr. Romney to attend the speech.

HealthCare.gov
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Barack Obama
Kathleen Sebelius
House Committee on Energy and Commerce
Health and Human Services
Health Insurance


Senate Rejects Republican Effort to Thwart Carbon Limits

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday defeated a Republican-led effort to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from curbing greenhouse gases as lawmakers road-tested arguments for a future fight over climate change legislation. The Senate voted 53-47 to reject an attempt by Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, to block the E.P.A. from imposing new limits on carbon emissions based on its 2009 finding that such gases from industry, vehicles and other sources represent a threat to human health and the environment. Ms. Murkowski and others, including six Democrats, contended that the E.P.A. was engaging in a bureaucratic power grab and usurping Congressional authority with regulations that would stifle the economy and kill jobs. “The sweeping powers being pursued by the E.P.A. are the worst possible option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” said Ms. Murkowski, who tried to thwart the agency’s action using a rarely employed procedure called a resolution of disapproval. The resolution of disapproval, created in a 1996 law, is a vehicle to allow Congress to overturn an executive branch action and is not subject to filibuster in the Senate. It is seldom used, however, due to the likelihood of a veto. Democratic opponents of the Murkowski proposal said its backers were protecting oil companies and other industrial interests at the expense of public welfare and were ignoring science that substantiated the hazards of greenhouse gas emissions. They said Ms. Murkowski and her allies wanted to prevent the E.P.A. from taking action while simultaneously stalling Congressional action, essentially protecting the status quo. “This is about delay in changes in our energy policy,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, who said many of Ms. Murkowski’s allies “want nothing to do with comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. What they want is the E.P.A. to go away.” The fight was mainly symbolic because the prospects for the resolution were bleak even had the Senate passed it. It would have then required a majority vote in the House and the approval of President Obama, who has already threatened to veto it. But it provided a showcase for a Senate fight over global warming as well as an indicator of where lawmakers could be expected to come down on legislation aimed at carbon emissions. The near-even division among lawmakers showed that a 60-vote supermajority on climate change legislation remains elusive. Senate leaders and the White House are continuing to explore whether to push energy legislation on the Senate floor before the midterm elections this November. Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, was meeting Thursday afternoon with the chairmen of the committees with jurisdiction over energy issues to plot strategy. Leading Democrats see the threat of E.P.A. action as an effective way to keep pressure on Congress to consider energy legislation and as a ready alternative if the House and Senate are not able to come to terms on an energy measure. Supporters of the plan to block the E.P.A. said they were trying to stop a backdoor attempt by the Obama administration to regulate carbon emissions without waiting for Congress to weigh in. They said the E.P.A. approach would produce little environmental reward while putting the United States at a severe disadvantage to nations that were not imposing such controls on their own industries. “It would be stupid for us to do this now when the rest of the world is not coming along at all,” said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma. “Even if it is the right thing to do, now is not the time to do it.” Though Mr. Coburn said the case for global warming is not settled science, several other Republicans said they accepted the scientific assessment that climate change is occurring. They said their main reason for trying to rein in the E.P.A. was concern over handing such far-reaching regulatory power on emissions to an executive agency. Given that several backers of Ms. Murkowski’s plan said they believed climate change was a reality, senators advocating a broad energy approach that would try to address global warming said defeat of the plan to strip the E.P.A. of regulatory authority over greenhouse gases should provide momentum to their legislative efforts. “Climate change is happening,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who is a sponsoring a main climate change bill with Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. “The science is convincing and the current pattern of energy consumption is just making a bad problem worse.”

Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Senate
Environmental Protection Agency
Environment


French Railway, S.N.C.F., Apologizes to Holocaust Victims

Abstract: PARIS — The head of France ’s national railway company, known as the S.N.C.F., on Tuesday made the company’s first formal public apology directly to Holocaust victims. The regrets came just a few months after American lawmakers, survivors and their descendants moved to block the company from winning contracts in the United States if it did not acknowledge its role in the shipping of thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps and make amends. “In the name of the S.N.C.F., I bow down before the victims, the survivors, the children of those deported, and before the suffering that still lives,” said Guillaume Pepy, the company’s chairman, during a ceremony at a railway station in Bobigny, a Paris suburb. The company is handing the station to local authorities to create a memorial to the 20,000 Jews shipped from there to Nazi camps, mostly in 1943 and ’44. Mr. Pepy spoke before an audience of officials and Jewish dignitaries, including Simone Veil, a French survivor of the Holocaust Mr. Pepy was responding to years of litigation brought by lawmakers, survivors, their descendants and some American Jewish organizations. They say the company never formally apologized for shipping 76,000 European Jews to the Franco-German border in 76 cattle cars between 1941 and 1944. (German trains later took the deportees to Nazi death camps.) They tried to bar the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français, or S.N.C.F., which produces the TGV, one of the fastest and most advanced trains in the world, from two major projects: high-speed railways connecting Orlando to Tampa, Fla., and San Francisco to Los Angeles. The company has never been awarded construction business in the United States. The two projects would be among the largest in the company’s history. The immediate reaction was cautious praise. “We are pleased that S.N.C.F. has taken the first step,” said Harriet Tamen, a lawyer for more than 600 Holocaust victims and survivors who filed a class-action lawsuit against S.N.C.F. in 2006. “Now they should take the next step and pay reparations to the victims,” Ms. Tamen said. In September, Ron Klein, then a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Florida, introduced a bill seeking to require all companies competing for American high-speed rail contracts to disclose any participation in deporting Jews and others to Nazi death camps during the Second World War. “No company whose trains carried innocent victims to death camps should have the right to lay the first inch of track in this country,” Mr. Klein said in a statement. He lost re-election in November. On Tuesday, Mr. Pepy made no statement about the legal pressure his company had been subjected to in the United States. “For a long time we have often been asked questions here, elsewhere, even in the United States,” he said. He denied that his comments were prompted by the company’s American ambitions. Mr. Pepy also said official apologies by the S.N.C.F. were part of the company’s longtime effort to examine its past. Fifteen years ago, it opened an archive center in Le Mans and commissioned an independent 900-page report, which resulted in a conference at the National Assembly in 2000. In December, the company signed a partnership with the Holocaust memorial based in Paris to develop joint school programs about World War II. Mr. Pepy himself issued a statement in November to express the company’s “regrets” and “sorrow” for its involvement during the Holocaust. But some French historians and Holocaust experts have called the legal pressure and campaign against the S.N.C.F. in the United States uninformed and unfair. They contend that the S.N.C.F. has taken on more than its fair share of guilt, given the Nazi occupation of France and the Germans’ use of French national institutions as their own. Arno Klarsfeld, a lawyer and state councilor, and the son of the Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld, recently called the American criticisms historically inaccurate. “This American pressure on the S.N.C.F. has tarnished the memory of 1,647 train drivers who were executed or deported and never came back,” Mr. Klarsfeld said. “It discards the role of German authorities and the French Vichy state and lessens the responsibility of those who took charge of deporting the Jews who lived in France.” Others argued that official excuses from the S.N.C.F. could tarnish the image of a company that has long been portrayed as a bastion of the French resistance movement. Many rail workers, they note, were members of the Communist Party at the time and considered anti-Nazi. The C.G.T. union, still strong among rail workers, recently criticized Mr. Pepy’s attempt in November to recognize his company’s responsibility in the Holocaust. Rail workers “brought a spirit of solidarity and fight” and “paid a heavy price during the war,” the union said in a statement.

France
Holocaust and the Nazi Era
Railroads
Concentration Camps


‘Jane Doe’ Testifies as Trial of Polygamist Leader Begins

Abstract: ST. GEORGE, Utah, Sept. 13 — The prosecution’s star witness in the trial of the fundamentalist Mormon polygamist leader Warren S. Jeffs testified on Thursday that she was taught to either obey church leaders without question or face dire consequences. “We would forfeit our chance at the afterlife” by disobeying religious leaders, testified the woman, who in 2001 at age 14 married her 19-year-old first cousin in a religious ceremony performed by Mr. Jeffs. The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, told the jury that the fundamentalist Mormon religious leaders were considered by followers to be “gods on earth.” How much control Mr. Jeffs had over the girl is crucial to the outcome of the case, which has drawn international attention to the fundamentalist Mormon polygamist community based in the adjacent towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., about 50 miles east of St. George. Mr. Jeffs, 51, is charged with rape as an accomplice. The prosecution asserts that he coerced the girl to unwillingly consummate a “spiritual marriage,” while the defense argues that she was not raped and that Mr. Jeffs never encouraged her to submit to unwanted sexual relations. Mr. Jeffs is the self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon Church with about 10,000 followers across the West. The sect practices polygamy in defiance of state and federal laws, and its adherents believe a man must have three wives to reach heaven’s highest realms. The mainstream Mormon Church disavowed polygamy in 1890 in a political compromise that allowed Utah to obtain statehood. Mr. Jeffs was flown by helicopter to the courthouse from the Purgatory Correctional Facility, where he had been held since his arrest by the Nevada Highway Patrol near Las Vegas in August 2006. He had been a fugitive for nearly two years and was on the F.B.I. ’s Most Wanted List when he was arrested. Opening arguments began on Thursday after 7 women and 5 men were selected from a pool of about 230 prospective jurors. Four of the jurors will serve as alternates and eight will decide the case against Mr. Jeffs, who could face life in prison if convicted in the trial, which is expected to last two weeks. Mr. Jeffs appeared alert and attentive as the trial opened, in contrast to court appearances last winter when he frequently seemed disoriented. Brock Belnap, the Washington County attorney, said to the jury that Mr. Jeffs told the girl after she asked not to be married that “her heart was in the wrong place and it was her duty to go forward” with the marriage. Soon after, the girl and her cousin were driven from Hildale to Caliente, Nev., where the marriage ceremony was performed. Mr. Belnap said Mr. Jeffs commanded the couple “to multiply and replenish the earth.” He said the couple returned to Hildale, but did not immediately engage in sexual relations because the girl resisted. Mr. Belnap also said Jane Doe again asked Mr. Jeffs to be released from the marriage, but was ordered by Mr. Jeffs to return to her husband. “He told her to repent,” Mr. Belnap said. “Go home. Give yourself mind, body and soul to your husband.” A defense lawyer, Tara L. Isaacson, told jurors that the state had failed to prove that Jane Doe had been raped by her husband. Ms. Isaacson also said there was no evidence that Mr. Jeffs had anything to do with the couple’s sexual conduct. Warren Jeffs and Jane Doe “never explicitly discussed sexual intercourse,” Ms. Isaacson said. She also told the jury that the victim never told friends or family that she had been raped, and that her cousin would testify that he never raped her. The cousin has not been charged. Ms. Isaacson also said that Jane Doe, who is to continue her testimony on Friday, would testify that at times she willingly engaged in sexual relations. And she told the jury that the girl first went to a civil lawyer before going to the police and that she filed a civil lawsuit against Mr. Jeffs and his sect before the criminal charges were filed against Mr. Jeffs.

Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)


Foreign Correspondents in Israel Complain of Intimidation

Abstract: As the death toll mounts and passions spike, the Foreign Press Association in Israel condemned on Wednesday what it called “deliberate official and unofficial incitement against journalists” who are reporting on the fighting in Gaza. That includes “forcible attempts to prevent journalists and TV crews from carrying out their news assignments,” the association said. The FPA strongly condemns deliberate official and unofficial incitement against journalists working to cover the current warfare. — Foreign Press Assoc. (@FPAIsPal) July 23, 2014 The statement was released as some Israelis, apparently incensed by what they see as reporting on the Israeli offensive in Gaza that is overly sympathetic to Palestinians, have started to take their frustration out directly on foreign correspondents. One example cited by the press association was an assault Tuesday on a reporter for BBC Arabic, Firas Khatib, who was shoved during a live report from the city of Ashkelon , a frequent target of rockets fired from Gaza. The irate Israeli man who burst into the live shot called Mr. Khatib a “son of a whore” during the assault. A BBC spokesman said in an email, “Firas was unharmed and will continue reporting as normal.” Last week, as Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza, the CNN correspondent Diana Magnay reported live from a hilltop in Sderot where residents have gathered day after day to cheer Israeli strikes on their Palestinian neighbors. Later, she reported on Twitter that some of the spectators on the hill had threatened to destroy her crew’s car “if I say a word wrong.” In her subsequently deleted update to Twitter, Ms. Magnay called those who had tried to intimidate her “Scum.” Ms. Magnay was pulled from her post after the incident and reassigned to Moscow. The press association also complained on Wednesday about an Israeli military attack the day before on the offices of Al Jazeera “on the 11th floor of a known commercial center” in Gaza City. Although the Israel Defense Forces apologized and promised to investigate the attack, it took place just one day after Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Liberman, called the network “the mainstay of the Hamas propaganda system” that “has abandoned even the semblance of a reliable media outlet, and broadcasts, to Gaza and the world, anti-Israeli incitement, lies, provocations and encouragement to terrorists.” Mr. Liberman said Israel was re-evaluating the status of Al Jazeera, “with the intention of preventing it from operating in Israel.” “Just as Great Britain would not permit Der Stürmer to establish a television channel to broadcast from London, and the United States would not permit an Al Qaeda channel to broadcast from New York,” the foreign minister said, “so must we act in order to prevent Al Jazeera from broadcasting from Israel.” The treatment of foreign correspondents in Gaza has been generally more positive, as citizens there hope that a clear picture of their suffering will force the outside world to come to their aid. As the bombardment continued this week, however, Jonathan Miller of Britain’s Channel 4 News reported that some residents of the destroyed Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya treated his crew with hostility. Also on Wednesday, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem , which monitors conditions in the Palestinian territories, said that the state radio network had refused to broadcast a public service announcement in which the names of Palestinian children killed in the Gaza offensive were read aloud. Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the group, said in an email that “Israeli media avoids reporting anything other than” the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza. To humanize the victims, she wrote, “we approached Israeli Radio in order to buy ads listing the names of these children. The radio refused us, claiming that these adverts were ‘politically controversial.’ But the refusal to give these dead children names is not a neutral act. It is a way of silencing public debate in Israeli society about the terrible civilian death toll in Gaza.” Blocked from the airwaves, B’Tselem posted one of the ads online and asked supporters to share the audio, in which the names of the dead were read out.


Marriott in Deal to Reduce Energy Use at Hotels

Abstract: Most hotel chains delayed significant energy conservation moves during the economic downturn, but now one, Marriott International , has signed a deal to reduce its hotels’ energy use, particularly during times of peak demand. Marriott will save on electric bills and also earn incentive payments from utilities as a reward for its efforts during peak periods, like heat waves, when utilities struggle to meet demand and often have to pay high prices for electricity. But the success or failure of the program, the first involving a hotel chain, will be in how well it can make the cuts without affecting — or, more important, annoying — its customers. “It’s a very thin line — you have to be careful not to alienate your customers” when introducing cost-saving programs, said David Loeb, a senior analyst and managing director at Robert W. Baird & Company. Marriott signed the agreement with Constellation Energy last month and plans to adopt the energy-saving program at 264 of its hotels in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states and in Texas and California. The cuts in electricity use will vary by hotel, depending on the size, climate, geographical location and other factors. In general, hotels may use less air-conditioning in the hallways, dim the lighting in certain common areas, shut water fountains, rearrange cooling cycles and even close certain elevator banks. Also, certain hotels will reduce energy use in individual rooms that have not been booked, with infrared sensors and motion detectors flagging the central system when rooms are vacant. “We might move the room temperature to 78 degrees in an unrented room” rather than 72 in a rented room, said Douglas Rath, energy director for Marriott International in the Americas. In the past, Marriott has manually reduced power at certain times, but now specific cuts will be made automatically. The VirtuWatt energy management system from Constellation will work with the hotel’s property management system to track power use and automatically activate the cuts when utilities are strained. In some cases, the program will alter energy use in advance of an expected heat wave. “They’d run the chillers overnight and make sure the common areas are cooled down to say 67 degrees when normally they’d keep it at 72,” said Gary Fromer, senior vice president for demand response at Constellation Energy. “Then they would allow the temperature to slowly rise to 72 or 73 degrees during the window of time where you want to control the usage.” Constellation will cover about half the cost of installing the automated technology, but Mr. Rath said most hotels would break even on the investment within two years and generate at least 25 percent returns — and as much as 100 percent returns — by the end of the five-year agreement through the cost savings and the incentive payments. “In effect, the hotels act like a generator in the market, and a reduction in consumption is roughly the same as the addition of a new generator to the system,” Mr. Fromer said. “And so we pay them roughly what we would have paid a generator to produce the same amount of energy.” Utilities are willing to pay for this since building plants to meet demand is a difficult alternative. “They can’t build more plants — they’re not popular,” Mr. Rath said. “Nobody wants a nuclear plant or coal plant in their backyard.” For Marriott, the pact expands its environmental efforts, which started in 2005 with a linen and bedding reuse program, where sheets and towels would no longer be replaced nightly during a guest’s stay unless requested. The company’s goal, set in 2007, is to decrease energy use at its hotels by 25 percent by 2017. Already, it has been trimmed by 20 percent, Mr. Rath said. But reductions in power use can be tricky and, when poorly calculated, can alienate customers not only from the hotel, but from the brand. The Travelocity site, for example, is filled with reviews from angry hotel patrons complaining that hotels failed to provide clean linens after they requested them under the linen reuse program. So similar complaints could ensue if the changes from the program are too radical. Mr. Loeb recalled one hotel, not a Marriott, that adjusted room temperatures when infrared sensors indicated the room was vacant. “It drove me crazy because you’d wake up in the middle of the night sweating because the air-conditioning had been turned off because you weren’t moving,” he said. “Then, when you move around, all of a sudden it drops five degrees in 10 minutes.” But Mr. Rath said guest room temperature adjustments would be made only to rooms that were not rented, not simply unoccupied. And he insisted that the cuts, in general, would not have a significant, or maybe even noticeable, effect on guests. “The last thing we want to do is impact an area, such as a guest room, a meeting room or a restaurant, where a guest is,” he said. “To me, that would be the height of stupidity — we’d be shooting ourselves in the foot.” Bjorn Hanson, divisional dean at New York University’s Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, warned that hotel managers would have to respond quickly if guests were upset and looked for alternatives. Rather than turning off a bank of lights, he said, the hotel might consider installing lower-energy lights. But Mr. Hanson was bullish on the program. “Corporate travel managers and convention planners recognize and respect these types of initiatives” and often use green policies as a factor when booking hotels, he says. But age often plays a role. Younger travelers are less likely to complain about inconveniences caused by conservation policies than older ones, who often prefer luxury over energy saving when booking expensive hotel rooms. “The younger generation doesn’t really think that way,” Mr. Loeb said. “Gen-Ys don’t leave their values at home when they travel.” The energy saving program is expected to generate about $9.9 million in revenue from lower energy costs and incentive payments over five years at the 264 Marriott hotels. Constellation will also cover about half the overall cost — $1.3 million — of installing the automated system. The hotel owners will split the revenue with Marriott International, which operates the hotels, through property management fees. While the dollar savings may not sound like much, given Marriott’s market value of $9.7 billion, analysts say it adds up. “The success in the hotel business in many cases revolves around doing the small things right over and over again — it’s finding the nickels and dimes to save,” Mr. Loeb said. “Plus, it’s green and it’s good P.R.”

Hotels and Motels
Energy Efficiency
Marriott International Inc


Iraqi Militants Stealing Blood for the Injured

Abstract: MOSUL, Iraq — Members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have been holding up blood banks and hospitals at gunpoint, stealing blood for their wounded fighters rather than risk having them arrested at medical facilities, according to Iraqi doctors, employees at health centers and the Sunni insurgents themselves. Iraqi health officials say the raids have been occurring for some time in provinces with large Sunni Arab populations and appear to signal an insurgency desperate to safeguard its core group of fighters. But the insurgents have a diminished ability to intimidate hospital staffs into caring for them directly and dwindling support among fellow Sunni Arabs, including doctors, the officials said. The Iraqi security force members that guard medical facilities have often stood idly by as the armed robberies take place, according to workers. This has reinforced doubts about Iraq’s ability to take on even a diminished insurgency as the United States continues to reduce its troops in the country. Hadad Hamad, a doctor in Anbar Province, said the raids occurred in western Iraq as early as 2005, when “Al Qaeda fighters burst into Al Qaim Hospital’s blood bank, seized large quantities of blood and took it” to a nearby village, apparently to treat their wounded. The hospital, near the Syrian border, continues to be the focus of Qaeda raids. This summer, the hospital was ordered closed for several days to protect workers after doctors and other staff members had received death threats for refusing to cooperate with Al Qaeda’s demands for blood and other aid. What is not clear, however, is whether the stolen blood would do an injured person any good. Imperfectly matched blood can prove fatal. “Even if you had the same blood type, you’d have to make a perfect match,” said Dr. Yaseen Ahmed Abbass, director of the Red Crescent Society in Iraq. “It is not an easy procedure.” But some Iraqi doctors working in Sunni areas believe that Al Qaeda has its own specialists who perform blood transfusions and treat shrapnel and bullet wounds — and carry out more gruesome procedures as well. “One patient in our hospital had been kidnapped by insurgents and then released,” said Abu Harith, a doctor in Mosul, a still violent city in the north. “Both of his hands and one of his ears had been amputated in a very precise and skilled way — with a skill that a newly trained doctor would not have had. “This is evidence to me that the insurgency is self-reliant in dealing with its wounded,” he said. Since the killing in April of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s top leaders, the American military has portrayed the insurgents as a group in disarray. “We think that they are involved in trying to figure out what’s the next step for them here in Iraq, so obviously we’re trying to exploit that,” Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of United States forces in Iraq, said this month. But the American military said it was not aware of hospitals and blood banks being held up by Qaeda fighters looking for blood. Officials in the Iraqi government’s Health, Defense and National Security Ministries also said they had not heard about the raids. Hospital employees say they have not reported the problem to the Iraqi security forces for fear of reprisal or because they believe the Iraqi police and the Iraqi Army have members sympathetic to the insurgency. They said the blood raids have taken place in Diyala, Salahuddin, Anbar and Nineveh Provinces, most frequently in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh Province. Dr. Ahmed al-Jubori, head of Mosul’s Health Department, said that the raids started around 2005, and that until a recent period of relative calm, Mosul’s hospitals “became a place of conflict between the insurgency and the U.S. and Iraqi police forces. “The security forces used to arrest any injured person that was in the hospital, so the insurgents started to take their injured people to private places and started to take blood from the blood bank without permission,” he said. Dr. Jubori said the problem had eased. Hospital workers in Mosul disagreed. Abu Hazim, an employee at Mosul General Hospital’s blood bank, said Iraqi police officers had come recently, seeking blood after a car bomb exploded at a nearby police station and piling the bags into a cardboard tomato box. Less than an hour later, he said, a group of armed Qaeda men came in, demanding blood for their own injured. “I swore to them that there was nothing left, that the police had taken everything,” he said. “They became angry and threatened to kill us and blow the place up if we did not cooperate. So I went and searched the emergency containers and gave them two bags. Before they left, they told me: ‘Let this be a warning. Next time we will kill you.’ ” A man who claims to be a Qaeda fighter, who identified himself with the nom de guerre of Abu Mustafa al-Mejmai, said insurgents has been compelled to steal blood due to military pressure from American and Iraqi forces. The insurgents, he said, had also established their own clinics staffed by doctors and nurses. “During the great jihad battles we were wounded severely,” he said. “Therefore we tried to be self-reliant to prevent the mujahedeen from falling into the hands of the invaders.” The American military has found the remnants of medical clinics in Qaeda strongholds in Diyala Province. On at least one occasion, insurgents and the police arrived at a Mosul hospital at the same time, said Abu Karam, who works at a blood bank in the city. “Two men came in and said they were from ‘the state’ and that they wanted a certain blood type,” he said. “I was very scared because four policemen who had brought in an injured colleague were standing nearby. I thought the police and the insurgents had probably been shot in the same incident. The police heard the conversation, yet they did not do anything.” He added: “I asked the men, ‘From which state are you from?’ They said: ‘We are from the Islamic State of Iraq. Give us the blood without delay.’ I requested the required medical form from them, but they said, ‘Are you new here?’ I answered, ‘Yes.’ So they said, ‘Go ask. Everybody knows us and everybody knows the fate of those who do not cooperate. Do you understand?’ Meanwhile, the police were listening and did not do anything. So I handed them the blood and they left. “I asked the police, ‘Didn’t you hear what they said?’ The policemen smiled and said, ‘We are not ready to confront them while we have our own injured men waiting for us.’”

Iraq War (2003- )
Hospitals
Blood
Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia
Transfusions