Why Is Oil So High? Pick a View

Abstract: People who have spent their careers tracking the ups and downs of the global oil markets say their compasses are spinning. Oil prices rise for reasons they cannot quite fathom, and where prices will be a year from now has become, literally, anybody’s guess. Those uncertainties have left regulators, oil companies and suppliers uncertain whether increases in supply or declines in demand will affect prices as they have in the past. Some wonder whether the market is broken in some way, creating a bubble of artificially expensive oil. “This whole industry has absolutely been turned on its head,” said Stephen Schork, who edits an energy newsletter. In a sign of rising concern about the impact of high prices, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has called an impromptu global energy summit in Jidda on Sunday. A major factor behind the steady price rise, virtually everyone agrees, is that energy consumption is surging in high-growth countries, and oil supplies are not growing fast enough to keep up. But what confounds many experts is that the price of oil seems to be changing much faster than the world is changing. For example, it took five years, from 2002 to 2007, for oil to go up by $60 a barrel. In just the last year, it galloped another $60 higher. For the first time since oil drilling began in the 1850s, the price has climbed for seven consecutive years. Old rules of thumb and assumptions that once helped traders foresee the direction of prices no longer seem to work. For example, since the oil shocks of the 1970s, a weak American economy used to mean lower prices. But during a period of sluggish growth in this country the price of oil has kept rising, to about $135 a barrel. Energy experts offer radically diverse predictions for the coming year, ranging from $60 oil to $200 oil. Beyond that, however, there is broad disagreement about the role of speculators in oil markets — particularly a new breed of financial investors, including pension funds and hedge funds, who view oil and other commodities as just another way to make money, like stocks, bonds and real estate. The evidence of their impact is mixed, but consumers and lawmakers nevertheless are furious, saying these new financial traders are driving up prices. The impact of speculation on oil prices will be at the top of the agenda in the Jidda summit, and pressure is mounting for domestic regulators to act. Congress has held at least eight hearings on energy prices this month alone, and four more are scheduled for next week . One proposal would ban institutional investors from taking any stake in commodities, a move historians said would be rare for any global market. One of the guideposts that no longer seems to provide much guidance is that the price of oil on any given day was usually higher than the price of oil delivered at some point in the future. But, with increasing frequency, the future price is higher than the spot price. That development usually signals concerns over future supplies, encouraging refiners to stockpile oil, which has not happened yet. It also typically signals that prices are likely to fall, and that has not happened, either. Of course, contradictory signals are an accepted part of the global oil market, which provides a third of the planet’s energy needs yet is largely governed by regional or local events — falling demand for gasoline in the United States contrasting with climbing demand for diesel fuel in China, for example. Also, no two countries — indeed, no two fields — produce the same kinds of crude oil, and refineries typically specialize in specific grades. As the lighter, more easily processed oil runs low, the world is slowly relying more on gooier, sulfur-rich varieties. That is straining the ability of refineries to produce more gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. In the face of torrid demand, Iran has struggled for over a month to sell about 25 million barrels despite the steepest price discounts on record. The oil, stored in tankers in the Persian Gulf, is the sulfur-heavy variety. According to news reports and industry estimates, Iran has offered to cut its price by as much as $13 a barrel but still has not found buyers. Many economists see a straightforward explanation for rising prices: Global oil supplies remain tight and there is a deep-seated fear that demand will outpace new production growth for years to come. In that climate, they say, the price will rise until it reduces global demand. But demand is still rising, even with oil at $134.62 a barrel. The high price “doesn’t mean we have a shortage today, but it means there is a serious worry about a shortage three to five years from now,” said Adam E. Sieminski, the chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank. That view — that market fundamentals are responsible for the price rally — is widely held among energy analysts. But it still does not fully explain why prices have risen as fast as they have. On June 6, for example, oil futures jumped by $10.75 a barrel, the biggest single-day increase in history. Even analysts who do not see an oil bubble still say predicting oil prices is becoming a hopeless task. “There are a lot of cross currents making it almost impossible to say where prices are going to go, or where they should be, based on demand and supply,” said Dan Rice, a portfolio manager at BlackRock, a large asset management firm. As analysts have looked for new explanations for recent oil price gains, one popular theory is that a falling dollar has driven investors to commodities as an inflation hedge. On Friday, for example, oil prices took a big jump as the dollar fell. But Eric S. Rosengren, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said there had been little correlation between the dollar and oil prices over the last 30 years. Another theory is that energy subsidies are distorting the market, by shielding a large swath of the world from the impact of high prices and thereby encouraging high consumption. Developing countries are beginning to address that problem. This week, China unexpectedly cut some of its subsidies, effectively raising the price of gasoline and diesel. But other subsidy cuts by India and Malaysia have been met with street protests. Some experts who see today’s oil market as a bubble point to the record-setting stake that institutional investors have taken in the commodity markets in the last several years, variously estimated at $140 billion to $250 billion. A growing portion of that stake reflects rising commodity prices, not new money flowing in. Michael W. Masters, a hedge fund manager who will testify at one of the Congressional hearings next week, argues that index-tracking investors, who enter the market only as buyers, are swamping the relatively small commodities markets. “Institutional investors are one of, if not the primary, factors affecting commodities prices today,” Mr. Masters told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last month . George Soros, the billionaire investor, echoed his views. But their opinion is disputed by other recent market studies. One, from Barclays Capital, noted that index investing represented no more than 2 percent of the worldwide energy market. And most of the new money flowing in this year went into various types of funds that were as likely to sell commodities as buy them. Another study released this month by three academic researchers cited a “paucity of hard evidence” that speculators were inflating commodity prices. The study’s authors also found that speculation levels over the last two years were well within historical norms. And Bernstein Research noted, in a new report, that oil prices had actually not kept up with the prices of iron ore and coal, “two markets that are entirely closed to speculation.” These arguments are carrying little weight with distributors and marketers selling retail gasoline and heating oil, who are adding their complaints to the consumer fury descending on Congress. Like Gerry Ramm, a senior executive at Inland Oil, a fuel retailer in Ephrata, Wash., these battered business executives say financial investors are to blame for recent price increases. Mr. Ramm said, “Prices are becoming completely disconnected from the real market.”

Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Futures and Options Trading
International Trade and World Market
United States Economy
Law and Legislation
Summit Conferences
Saudi Arabia
Economic Conditions and Trends
Third World and Developing Countries


Wall Street Veterans Bet on Low-Income Home Buyers

Abstract: As the head of Goldman Sachs’s mortgage department, Daniel Sparks helped make the bank more than a billion dollars betting against the market as housing prices began to crash in 2007. Today, he is betting on home buyers who no longer qualify for mortgages in the fallout of that housing crisis. Shelter Growth Capital Partners, an investment firm Mr. Sparks founded in 2014 with two other former Goldman Sachs executives, has been buying homes that were foreclosed on during the financial crisis and later resold to buyers under long-term installment contracts. The firm has bought just over 200 homes from Harbour Portfolio Advisors, a Dallas investment firm that has specialized in selling homes to lower-income buyers through what is known as a contract for deed. In these deals, a seller provides the buyer with a long-term, high-interest loan, with the promise of actually owning the home at the end of it. These contracts, a form of seller financing, have ballooned in recent years as low-income families unable to get traditional mortgages have turned to alternate ways to buy homes. The homes are often sold “as is,” in need of costly repairs and renovations, and many of the transactions end in eviction when buyers fall behind on payments. The market is growing in part because so many would-be home buyers with damaged credit histories cannot get loans. Banks are unwilling to write mortgages to riskier clients after being fined billions of dollars for pushing borrowers into unaffordable subprime mortgages before the crisis. Last year, the number of new mortgages worth $100,000 or less for homes in the largest metropolitan areas in the United States was at its lowest point in a decade, according to CoreLogic, a financial services research firm. “There’s a whole underbelly of real estate that’s not through traditional sale,” said Robert Doggett, general counsel for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and a critic of contracts for deeds. “It’s not a problem of yesteryear. It’s coming back.” Other Wall Street veterans have entered the scene nationally, too. Battery Point Financial, founded by Jeremy Healey in 2013, is focusing exclusively on buying homes in smaller cities to sell them to buyers through contracts for deeds. Mr. Healey, a former mortgage trader at Goldman Sachs, has $40 million in backing from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, the private equity giant. One reason the contract for deed market has become popular among investment firms is that under many contracts, buyers can be evicted if they default on their loans. That is very different from traditional mortgages, under which the foreclosure process can be lengthy and costly. Shelter Growth, based in Stamford, Conn., has about $500 million under management. The firm says on its website that it is “creating investments to capitalize on the next phase of the U.S. mortgage” market. Most of the homes Shelter Growth bought from Harbour appear to have been purchased in a bundled transaction in December by the firm’s SG Capital Partners L.L.C. affiliate, according to an analysis by the research firm RealtyTrac. But Shelter Growth has also bought a number of other homes from Harbour this year, with some purchases recorded as recently as last month. Shelter Growth paid an average of $22,000 for the homes it bought from Harbour, according to public filings and RealtyTrac. Harbour, for its part, bought most of the homes in its portfolio for an average of $8,000, through bulk sales by Fannie Mae. Image Senator Carl Levin, center, talking with Senators Tom Coburn and John McCain at a 2010 hearing where Daniel Sparks was asked about mortgage securities. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times The homes Harbour sold to Mr. Sparks’s firm are in two dozen states, but most are clustered in Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Missouri and Alabama, according to RealtyTrac. One such sale, for $25,500, was for a house in Elyria, Ohio. In April 2011, Harbour sold a contract for deed on the house for $36,300, according to public filings. Under the terms of that deal, the 24-year-old woman who now lives in the house is required to pay 10 percent interest or a monthly base payment of $314 — a sum that does not include property taxes, insurance or any outlays for repairs or renovations. Under a contract for deed, a buyer gets the legal title to the home either at the end of the contract, which can run anywhere from 20 to 40 years, or if the buyer is able to pay off the balance owed all in one go. After the financial crisis, Harbour emerged as one of the larger national players in the contract for deed market. The firm bought more than 6,700 single-family homes, most of them from Fannie Mae. But in recent months, Harbour has sold more than 600 homes to investment firms like Shelter Growth and individual investors, according to public filings. A review of some of the homes sold to SG Capital found that the contracts used by Harbour have drawn criticism from some housing lawyers because the documents do not provide buyers with a specified time period to remedy a default, give Harbour the right to immediately convert the agreement to a month-to-month tenancy upon a default, and include an arbitration clause for settling some disputes. Through his lawyer, Jacqueline Mallett, the founder of Harbour, Charles A. Vose III, declined to comment for this article. It is unclear whether Mr. Sparks’s firm plans to change the contracts or abide by the terms. Mr. Sparks declined to comment. Another buyer of Harbour homes with contracts for deeds in place is New York Mortgage Trust, a publicly traded mortgage real estate investment trust, or REIT. The firm has bought at least 130 homes from Harbour through one its asset managers, Headlands Asset Management, adding to the mortgage REIT’s relatively small portfolio of contracts for deeds. Steven Mumma, chairman and chief executive of New York Mortgage Trust, says the company, which has a portfolio of roughly $763 million worth of performing and reperforming mortgages, is not in the business of foreclosing on people. He says that the contracts acquired from Harbour were signed two or three years ago and that most of the buyers have kept up with their payments. “We look at it as a loan, not as an opportunity to repossess,” Mr. Mumma said, with respect to contracts for deeds and homes bought from Harbour. He says the company now uses its own loan-servicing firm to manage the homes and contracts it bought from Harbour, which has partnered with National Asset Advisors, a firm that operates out of a partly empty strip mall on the outskirts of Columbia, S.C. SG Capital, the affiliate of Shelter Growth that has bought homes from Harbour, is licensed as either a mortgage servicer or a lender in 21 states. The firm’s investments typically have focused on so-called jumbo mortgages, which cannot be sold to either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac because they are larger than the underwriting guidelines of the two government-backed mortgage finance companies. Mr. Sparks is much less in the spotlight now than he was six years ago, when he became a target for lawmakers angered over Wall Street’s role in the 2008 financial crisis. At a 2010 Senate hearing that focused on Goldman Sachs’s sale of securities backed mainly by subprime mortgages, Mr. Sparks was questioned by Carl Levin, then a Democratic senator from Michigan. During the proceedings, Mr. Levin pressed Mr. Sparks on why a Goldman colleague had used profanity in an email describing the quality of one such mortgage security that the firm was selling to institutional investors. A somewhat uncomfortable-looking Mr. Sparks responded at the time that he interpreted the email to mean that “my performance on that deal was not good.”

Real Estate
Housing
Debt
Shelter Growth Capital Partners
Mortgage loan
Daniel L Sparks
Harbour Portfolio Advisors
New York Mortgage Trust


Police Strive to Guard Dubai’s Image After Killing

Abstract: DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The people who killed a Hamas operative in an airport hotel here in January seem to have thought they could pass it off as a natural death, or perhaps just another of this region’s macabre mysteries. They injected him with a muscle relaxant , suffocated him and then smoothed away any signs of struggle, reattaching the hotel door chain as they left the room, investigators say. Instead, the Dubai police quickly unraveled the plot and identified 26 suspects , in a display of transparency that is almost unheard of in the Arab world. They released a 27-minute montage of video surveillance, exposing the techniques — including agents clumsily disguising themselves with wigs and fake beards — of what is now almost universally believed to be the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. The fallout from the killing of the operative, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, has created a diplomatic mess for Israel and raised troubling questions about identity theft, the spread of surveillance, and the colliding definitions of terrorism and crime. But above all it has underscored this beleaguered city-state’s determination to protect its tourist-friendly image — and its powerhouse economy — from any further damage. Dubai was hit hard by the global financial crisis, and it is keen not to let any more killers take advantage of its role as the region’s most open city. A troubling precedent came last year with the killing of a Chechen political figure . At each of the near-daily news conferences held in recent weeks by Dahi Khalfan al-Tamim, Dubai’s gruff, swaggering police chief, the subtext has been clear: do not settle your scores here. “By being so transparent about it, Dubai is trying to send a very clear message of deterrence,” said Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, a professor of political science at United Arab Emirates University. “This is probably the most diverse and open community in the Arab world, and to see these things happening not once, but two or three times — at a certain point you have to say ‘We will not tolerate this.’ ” For the moment, Dubai’s aggressive response has interrupted the steady stream of negative news coverage about the city’s continuing struggles with debt, and — perhaps not coincidentally — shifted attention to its crime-fighting prowess. That may partly reflect the priorities of Mr. Tamim, who has strong ties to the city’s ruler and enjoys greater latitude than almost any other public official here. Mr. Tamim has complained in the past about the foreign news media. He also has a reputation as an Arab nationalist, more ardently opposed to Israel than many in this relatively apolitical, businesslike city. (Mr. Tamim declined to be interviewed for this article.) Whatever his motivations, the Dubai videotape that he ordered up may have forced assassins across the globe to revise their methods. It appears to have exposed 26 agents whose photographs are now all over the Internet, including the Web site of Interpol. Although the killers succeeded in their mission, the botched getaway has stunned many across the Arab world, where the Mossad is widely credited with almost superhuman skill and secrecy. Some have suggested that the agents knew they were being filmed, but most analysts agree that they could not have expected that so much of the operation would be made public. It was fairly straightforward police work: once they saw the injection mark in the thigh of Mr. Mabhouh, Dubai investigators had only to start collating hotel records and reviewing security video with the help of face-recognition software, according to people familiar with the investigation. “The killers were unbelievably careless,” said Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. “Now 26 of their agents are burned and we have discovered their methods, which is already starting to reopen the books on some old cases.” The Mossad has a record of taking startling risks. Beginning in the 1970s, the agency carried out assassinations in Beirut, Lebanon; Rome; Athens and many other cities. They made some terrible mistakes, including the killing of an Algerian-born waiter in Norway in 1973, whom they mistook for a Palestinian militant. But never has an alleged Mossad operation been exposed in such detail as the January killing. It is impossible to say how successful Dubai’s deterrence efforts will be. Its police work has certainly created a headache for Israel. Most of the killers seem to have used passport information stolen from dual nationals living in Israel, and the relevant governments have made angry complaints and begun investigations. The Dubai police have released information about credit cards used by the killers that also suggests an Israeli military connection, and Mr. Tamim has said he is “99 percent, if not 100 percent sure” that the Mossad is behind the killing. Israel is maintaining its customary mask of silence about accusations related to its spy agency. In Israel, some columnists have expressed concern about the operation’s apparent sloppiness. But for the most part it has been treated as a joke. During the Purim holiday, when Jews traditionally dress up in costume, many wore tennis outfits and wigs, mimicking the disguises of the assassins. Even here, many people seem to feel that the diplomatic uproar will soon die down. Certainly, no one here seems too troubled by the Jan. 19 killing of Mr. Mabhouh, who had a role in the killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989 and the smuggling of arms to Gaza. Mr. Tamim said Monday that Dubai would begin training immigration officials to watch out for Israeli faces and accents, so as to prevent Israelis from entering on third-country passports. But many here and in Israel waved off those comments as chest-beating, noting that Israeli businesspeople come in and out of Dubai all the time. “These are very pragmatic people,” said an Israeli businessman who comes to Dubai regularly. “They have a strong interest in bringing major players from the diamond industry to Dubai, and that is not going to change because of a few fake passports.”

Assassinations and Attempted Assassinations


Supreme Court Takes Case on Adoption of Indian Child

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to consider cases concerning the adoption of American Indian children and whether federal judges may play a role in plea negotiations. The adoption case involves a South Carolina couple who were ordered to turn over a 27-month-old girl they had cared for since birth to her biological father, an Indian, whom the girl had never met. The South Carolina Supreme Court, saying it was doing so “with a heavy heart,” ruled for the father , even as it acknowledged that the adoptive couple, Matt and Melanie Capobianco, were “ideal parents who have exhibited the ability to provide a loving family environment.” Under South Carolina law, the majority said, the girl, Veronica, would have stayed with the Capobiancos. But federal law, under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 , calls for special procedures rooted in the sovereignty of Indian nations and a history of abusive child welfare practices involving Indian children. Lawyers for the Capobiancos said the law did not apply because Veronica’s biological father, Dusten Brown, had relinquished his parental rights in a text message. Lawyers for Mr. Brown and his tribe, the Cherokee Nation, said that “extraordinary defects in the adoption process,” including efforts to conceal Veronica’s Indian heritage, were to blame for a case that had been “painful and personally difficult for all of the parties.” The main question the justices have been asked to decide in the case, Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, No. 12-399, is whether the law applies when an unmarried mother who is not an Indian gives up her child for adoption. Some lower courts have said that the law kicks in only if the adoption breaks up an existing Indian family, others that it applies when an absent father is an Indian. The court also agreed to hear United States v. Davila, No. 12-167, which concerns a guilty plea filed by Anthony Davila in a tax conspiracy case after pressure from a federal magistrate judge. There is no dispute that the judge violated a federal rule of criminal procedure , which says of plea negotiations that “the court must not participate in these discussions.” The federal appeals court in Atlanta allowed Mr. Davila to withdraw his plea and face trial , saying there were good reasons for an “absolute ban on judicial participation.” Other appeals courts have required defendants seeking to withdraw guilty pleas to show they were hurt by the judge’s participation, relying on another part of the rule. The federal government urged the justices to resolve the conflict , saying that guilty pleas accounted for 97 percent of federal criminal convictions. Judges “cannot stay completely removed from all matters touching upon plea discussions,” the brief said, and so they will sometimes run afoul of the rule barring any participation.

Adoption
Native Americans
Children
Legislation
South Carolina
Supreme Court


Louisiana Voucher Program’s Financing Is Ruled Unconstitutional

Abstract: NEW ORLEANS — Last January, Gov. Bobby Jindal took the oath of office for his second term, declaring in his inauguration speech that anyone who stood in the way of his education reform efforts “must stand down.” On Friday, a judge in Baton Rouge said, in effect: not so fast. Judge Timothy Kelley of State District Court ruled that the way in which the state finances its new voucher program violates the state Constitution, as it relies on money intended in “plain and unambiguous” terms solely for public schools. In a statement, Governor Jindal called the decision “wrongheaded and a travesty for parents across Louisiana” and vowed to appeal. But it was not the crippling setback it could have been. “As court rulings go, there are some that create giant brick walls and there are some that create small fences,” said Michael Griffith, a school finance consultant for the Education Commission of the States , a policy organization. “This is a small fence.” What the court fight did show, Mr. Griffith added, is the evolving nature of the voucher debate, and the variety of problems state-run voucher programs have run into. “It’s a symptom of what we’re seeing nationally,” he said. “Groups that are opposing vouchers using every sort of tool that they can,” from broader challenges on the nature of public education to technical, state-specific arguments like the one that prevailed on Friday. Voucher opponents in some other states have successfully argued that vouchers violate constitutional bans on money going to religious schools, while others have contended that redirecting more to private schools would leave the public education system inadequately financed. The ruling on Friday was just about how a state pays for it. Even a lawyer for one of the teachers’ unions that brought the lawsuit acknowledged that this was not a death knell for vouchers in Louisiana. “I think they can do it right,” said Brian F. Blackwell, who represents the Louisiana Association of Educators . “The question is whether or not there’s a willingness to do it right.” It is certainly not as potentially problematic for the program as a decision that vouchers violate a standing court order on desegregation, as a federal judge ruled last week in regard to such an order in one Louisiana parish. But if it survives appeal, the state court’s decision would make things far messier for a governor who is widely believed to have aspirations for national office, and who made education reform a centerpiece of his second-term agenda. The law at the center of the debate, which was passed last March, includes more than just a voucher system: it also significantly broadens and streamlines the process of establishing charter schools and creates a program in which students can take courses from online providers with state money. That “course choice” program, which begins next year, would also be subject to the judge’s decision about funding, though the state board of education is going forward with plans this week to finalize a list of approved course providers. The voucher program, on the other hand, is already under way: about 5,000 of Louisiana’s 556,000 students are participating. John White , the state superintendent of education, said that the program was working very well, especially considering that it was put in place on such a large scale in a relatively brief period of time and against what he called “entrenched interests.” He also insisted that the program would continue whether or not the appeal succeeded. “I want to emphasize how unfortunate I think this decision is,” he said, but added, “Barring any outcome in the courts, we’re going to make sure our parents are served.” Under the law passed last March, the money for vouchers would take an increasing share of the “minimum foundation program formula,” which determines the state and local financial support for school systems. The state had argued that this formula was intended to finance “a public educational system,” of which parish and city schools are simply a part. But if the State Supreme Court were to agree with the district judge and find that arrangement unconstitutional, money for vouchers would have to be appropriated as a separate line item each year, with all of the political complications, year-to-year uncertainty and budget squabbling that would entail. What is certain is that there will be more arguments on the issue to come, in both the courts and the Legislature. “This is simply one battle in the war that will take place in Louisiana over vouchers,” said Mr. Griffith, the school finance expert.

Jindal Bobby
Vouchers
Private and Sectarian Schools
Louisiana
Decisions and Verdicts
Constitutions
Charter Schools
Reform and Reorganization
Education (K-12)


Top-Seeded Kentucky Takes Down Indiana

Abstract: ATLANTA — No. 1 Kentucky did not survive Friday night solely with their usual play above the rim or bursts of speed and shot-making. The Wildcats showcased their talent in as calm a place as can be found inside a Dome with 24,731 feverish fans: at the free-throw line. The Wildcats (35-2) paraded to the line throughout the second half and held off the charge of Indiana by making 35 of 37 free throws. Kentucky sank 16 of 16 free throws in the last 2 minutes 50 seconds to beat the Hoosiers, 102-90, in a South Region semifinal in the Georgia Dome. “Today in our pregame we all made our fouls shots, the whole starting five made our foul shots,” the sophomore guard Doron Lamb said. “I know today was going to be a great time making foul shots.” All the sideline willpower and fervor of Hoosiers Coach Tom Crean could not overcome the Wildcats when they took the ball from the referee and stripped the nets from 15 feet away. Crean stomped up and down the sidelines and pounded the hardwood with flat palms in front of the crowd — which was just as worked up as he was — but there was nothing Crean could do about Kentucky’s poise. The freshman Michael Kidd-Gilchrist made all 10 of his free throws and scored 24 points to lead Kentucky, which will play Baylor in the South Region final Sunday. The Bears (30-7) defeated Xavier (23-13), 75-70, in the other semifinal. The sophomore guard Doron Lamb scored 21 points and the senior guard Darius Miller scored 19 on 6 of 8 shooting from the field. Indiana got 27 points from forward Christian Watford, whose 3-point shot at the buzzer handed Kentucky one of its two regular-season losses, 73-72, on Dec. 10. Kentucky’s steadiness at the foul line made sure Indiana did not get close enough for more Watford heroics in the rematch. “Indiana played great, and we just happened to play a little bit better,” Kentucky Coach John Calipari said. In an up-and-down, fast-paced game, Indiana committed only eight turnovers and Kentucky six. “We got in foul trouble, a lot of guys did, we just weren’t disciplined enough,” Indiana guard Jordan Hulls said. “We didn’t box out as well as we needed to, and they got to the free-throw line a lot more.” In a loud, raucous atmosphere, fueled by two of the most supportive fan bases in college basketball, Indiana and Kentucky traded blows with their varied offenses of 3-point shooters, drivers, and dunkers. When Darius Miller ripped the nets for 3 points in the second half, Wildcats fans exploded. When Indiana’s Will Sheehey retaliated on a left-handed reverse layup, Hoosiers fans replied with their own roar. Each team pushed the pace, and the talent on both sides was not afraid to squeeze off quick shots. Whole sections of fans refused to sit down, even during timeouts in a game sprinkled with points and goosebumps. Kentucky led by 50-49 when it created some cushion with a short burst in the early part of the second half to take a 59-51 lead. The Wildcats led 70-62 with 12:44 to play, then 76-66 with 9:50 to play, and Indiana could not close the gap. It was 86-79 with 2:50 to play when Kidd-Gilchrist hit two free throws, and Kentucky did not give the nets a break from the foul line the rest of the way. Indiana was staying with Kentucky through the first six minutes of the game when it got a break with Davis’s second foul with 14:05 left in the half. Davis, the nation’s best shot blocker with almost five per game, picked up his second foul and went to the bench so not to risk too much too early. Davis had fouled out of just one of 36 games, but Calipari was taking no chances. Before Indiana could exploit Davis’s absence, its own big man, Cody Zeller, picked up two fouls within four seconds, and he went to the bench with 13:23 to play in the half. Without Davis blocking their path, the Hoosiers drove the lane and threw the ball inside. They scored 47 points in the first half against a Kentucky team that was giving up only 59 points per game. Kentucky scored right along with the Hoosiers and then went on an 11-3 run to lead by 29-20. The Wildcats looked undeterred without their superstar center. But Kentucky tried to put away the Hoosiers too quickly. The Wildcats rushed shots and played out of control the last 10 minutes of the first half and Indiana surged ahead, 43-39. The Wildcats play just six players, but that sixth man is the 6-foot-8 senior wing, Miller. He made 3 of 4 shots in the first half to help steady Kentucky while Davis sat on the bench.

University of Kentucky
Indiana University
NCAA Basketball Championships (Men)
Basketball (College)


49ers Beat Seahawks in Battle for First

Abstract: The San Francisco 49ers sit alone atop the N.F.C. West for now — hardly the kind of firm hold on the division they owned last October. Alex Smith threw a 12-yard touchdown pass to Delanie Walker late in the third quarter, and San Francisco held off the visiting Seattle Seahawks , 13-6, on Thursday night as the 49ers won their long-awaited division opener. Frank Gore ran for 131 yards, and the 49ers (5-2) made just enough plays to win this defense-first game, featuring two teams allowing fewer than 16 points per game. Walker’s score was San Francisco’s first touchdown in seven quarters after an embarrassing 26-3 loss to the Giants on Sunday in a lopsided rematch of the N.F.C. championship game. Walker, a tight end, broke his jaw in two places at Seattle last season on Dec. 24 and sat out until the title game. Smith completed 14 of 23 passes for 140 yards, but the defense hung tough down the stretch. The N.F.C. rushing leader, Marshawn Lynch, ran for 103 yards for Seattle (4-3) in a game that was close until the end. After Walker’s touchdown, Dashon Goldson intercepted a deep pass by Russell Wilson to thwart Seattle’s next drive. Smith gave the ball back with an interception of his own early in the fourth quarter. With the interception, his fifth of the season, he matched his total from last season. Wilson went 9 of 23 for 122 yards. OVERDOSE KILLED REID’S SON An accidental heroin overdose killed Garrett Reid, the son of Philadelphia Eagles Coach Andy Reid, a coroner said. Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek said a toxicology test confirmed the presence of heroin in Garrett Reid’s body. Investigators revealed they found a used syringe and spoon in his room, along with a gym bag filled with dozens of syringes and needles, many of them unopened. “We are confident today that Mr. Reid’s death was the result of a self-injected lethal dose of heroin,” District Attorney John Morganelli said at a news conference in Easton, Pa. Reid was found dead in his dorm room early on Aug. 5 at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., where he was assisting the team’s strength and conditioning coach during training camp. He was a recovering drug addict who had seemingly turned his life around. His father, Andy Reid, had indicated that his 29-year-old son may have had a relapse. UNION ACTION IN BOUNTY CASE The N.F.L. Players Association filed papers in federal court pointing out that the N.F.L. permitted a 1996 incentive program for big hits funded by then-Green Bay defensive lineman Reggie White. In papers filed in United States District Court, the union questioned why Commissioner Roger Goodell should now be able to suspend the former Saints linebacker Scott Fujita for offering then-New Orleans teammates rewards for big plays during the 2009 season. The filing cited media reports about White’s “smash-for-cash” program that paid $500 for big plays, including big hits. The reports, now nearly 16 years old, include players from other teams discussing similar pools climbing into the thousands of dollars. GARCON ‘LONG SHOT’ TO PLAY Redskins Coach Mike Shanahan said the injured receiver Pierre Garcon was a “long shot” to play against the Giants on Sunday. Garcon missed practice for a second day in a row, getting treatment for the painful swelling on the bottom of a right toe that has kept him out of three of Washington’s past five games. He will skip practice Friday, too. FLAK JACKET FOR RICHARDSON The Browns rookie running back Trent Richardson will wear a protective flak jacket in Sunday’s game against the Colts. Richardson sustained a rib cartilage injury in last Sunday’s win over Cincinnati. PANTHER MISSES PRACTICE Panthers linebacker Jon Beason missed his second straight day of practice, increasing the likelihood that the rookie Luke Kuechly will make his second start at middle linebacker against the Cowboys on Sunday.

Football
San Francisco 49ers
Seattle Seahawks


When Terry Met Jerry, Yahoo!

Abstract: WHEN Yahoo Inc. announced nearly five years ago that Terry S. Semel, then a former leader of the Warner Brothers motion picture studio, would become its chairman and chief executive, the reaction both outside and within Yahoo was not exactly one of wild encouragement. Despite a hugely successful career running companies that make movies, television shows and music, Mr. Semel was immediately labeled an "old media" guy. Worse, he was a Hollywood guy, and had barely touched a computer during the nearly two decades he oversaw Warner Brothers with Robert A. Daly. Even though he had been making private Internet investments since resigning from the studio two years earlier, when people associated "Semel" and "Yahoo," they were more likely to think of an Australian comic named Yahoo Serious who starred in the 1988 Warner Brothers flop "Young Einstein." Mr. Semel's former boss at Time Warner, Gerald M. Levin, who had just completed his merger with America Online, laughed incredulously when he heard the news of Mr. Semel's new gig in April 2001, according to an executive who was with Mr. Levin at the time. At Yahoo, where the collapse of the dot-com bubble and the evaporation of online advertising had just helped sink the company's market value from a peak of $127 billion to just $12.6 billion when he joined, the reception wasn't much warmer. Mr. Semel, then 58, had neither geek cred like that of Yahoo's co-founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo, nor Silicon Valley venture-capitalist swagger. Mr. Semel looked like a self-assured but unassuming guy who originally hailed from Queens, which he was. Word spread quickly in Yahoo's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., that -- horrors! -- he even wore a gold chain on his wrist. (This, too, was true, but the chain is not a fashion statement; it's a medical bracelet for a shellfish allergy.) The story line at Yahoo is much different today. Having lost $98 million on revenue of $717 million in the year when Mr. Semel joined it, Yahoo earned $1.2 billion last year on sales of $5.3 billion. With a market capitalization nudging $50 billion, it is worth roughly the same as the newly Pixar-ized Walt Disney Company or the combined value of the recently split Viacom and CBS. Dollars aside, Yahoo has the widest global reach of any Internet site. It counts more than 420 million registered users around the world, and it owns the most-used e-mail, instant-messaging and music Web sites on the planet. In the United States alone, Yahoo attracted 103 million unique visitors in December, making it the country's most-visited Web destination, according to Nielsen NetRatings. "It's a 21st-century media company," Mr. Semel said in a recent interview. "The difference between the more traditional media companies and companies like Yahoo is all about technology, and the two -- technology and media -- totally marry each other." Not all marriages go as planned, of course. It is highly symbolic that Mr. Semel was recently in the office of Time Warner's chief executive, Richard D. Parsons, proposing that Yahoo effectively take AOL off of Time Warner's hands, although Mr. Parsons was not interested. Depending on how it handles the rapid and daunting rise of Google's search-based juggernaut -- not to mention Microsoft's new determination to rule the Web -- Yahoo has a shot at being the digital media company to beat. IN the past two years, Mr. Semel has netted $403 million by exercising Yahoo options and selling shares. He still owns shares and options worth more than $230 million. The stock fell back last month amid concerns about whether Yahoo's revenue can continue to grow by 30 percent or more a year. The old-media guys, most of whom light up cigars if they can hit double-digit earnings growth, wish they had his problems. As he looks back over his five years running Yahoo, Mr. Semel makes no pretense of being a techno-guru, and he is often asked whether he really understands technology. "I'm never going to be a technologist, but I have to be conversant," he said, adding: "I was never an actor or a director or a singer -- I had to understand the process well enough to help make decisions." Although he has apartments in San Francisco and New York, home is still in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He commutes to Sunnyvale three or four days a week on the Gulfstream IV corporate jet that he and Mr. Daly bought from Warner Brothers when they resigned in 1999. "Terry's a thoughtful, intelligent man and he did not take his media imperialist roots to Sunnyvale," said Barry Diller, the former Hollywood mogul who is now chairman and chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp. "And that's what got him on the road to fluency, which he's mastered. That's some feat for an old-media dog, speaking as one who could be similarly described." To hear Mr. Semel describe it, the revival at Yahoo is attributable to the same methodical style and emphasis on team-building and consumer desires that allowed him and Mr. Daly to increase Warner Brothers' revenue to more than $11 billion from less than $1 billion over nearly two decades. But he concedes that there were unexpected contrasts between the old and the new that were not immediately apparent to him -- just as they seem to keep confounding many of his old-media colleagues. While all media rely on good content and distribution as underpinnings of their success, he said that the interactive world emphasizes qualities that the offline world doesn't, including truly global reach, personalization and community. All media companies recite these concepts, but are heavily invested in and dependent on preserving existing relationships based on controlling both their content and the way it moves to people. What is more, they have not grown up in a world where technology can be as much of a competitive edge as hiring Steven Spielberg to direct a picture. Perhaps the most glaring difference between Yahoo's vision of a media company and the visions of more conventional media groups is in the definition of content. In a world of high-speed connections to a growing web of material that audiences can consume or manipulate in endless ways, Yahoo strives to be a 24/7 global blockbuster of self-expression. "Terry has said he's been very clear about the fact that the habits and the desires of the consumer are the common theme between his last career and his current career," Mr. Yang said. By the time he was hired, Yahoo already had the foundation for success -- most notably its number of worldwide users, more than 200 million, who did everything from checking business news and sports scores to sending e-mail and instant messages, listening to music and shopping. But beyond the powerful brand and a company full of whizzes, there was no clear business strategy. The first thing Mr. Semel did was to streamline 44 business units into 4. That helped to set corporate priorities. "Terry's relentless focus on focus is probably the most important thing we as a team or as a company are doing," Mr. Yang said. Mr. Semel's first big decision -- and probably his shrewdest -- was to make advertising its mainstay business. At some of his earliest meetings at Yahoo, Mr. Semel recalled, some executives were advocating that the business instead pour its efforts into trying to extract monthly fees from its registered users. "He was very early on in thinking, 'if we can keep the users growing and we can keep growing usage, we will be able to monetize this and we will be able to create value,' " said Mary Meeker, the Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley. "It sounds like mom and apple pie, but that was something a lot of people did not get in 2001." Mr. Semel was also keen to develop other revenue streams, including music services, games and premium e-mail accounts. Its absence in the dial-up Internet access business, where AOL and Microsoft had pole positions, seemed, in those days, a glaring disadvantage. Mr. Semel addressed this with his second smart move: establishing a partnership with SBC, now AT&T, to sell Yahoo-brand high-speed connections over souped-up phone lines. Yahoo later added Verizon, British Telecom and Rogers Communications in Canada, and now has 9.6 million subscribers, according to Morgan Stanley estimates. Each subscription generates an average of $3 a month for Yahoo. Vital to its focus on advertising was Yahoo's decision, in 2003, to develop its own search business -- built on the rapid-fire acquisitions of Inktomi and Overture, which itself had just bought AltaVista -- to compete with Google. That freed Yahoo from having to license Google's search technology. "We hardly went to sleep after we started to understand their business," Mr. Semel said of Overture's service of placing sponsored links alongside relevant search results. (Overture has been rechristened as Yahoo Search Marketing.) Two years after introducing its own search engine, Yahoo trails only Google in that field. But it has also had to acknowledge that it is less effective than its rival at instantly matching relevant ads to search results. And Yahoo's share of the search market slipped to 30 percent in December from 32 percent in the same month a year earlier, while Google's share rose to 40 percent from 35 percent, according to ComScore Media Metrix. Improving the financial return on search advertising, Mr. Semel says, is in the works. Although search represents only 5 percent of activity on the Web, this is no small matter: the higher profit margins generated by Google's AdWords business are a big reason that Google's $128 billion market capitalization now dwarfs Yahoo's. (History will decide whether Google or, for that matter, Yahoo warrant their starry valuations in a market where the stocks of media companies with much higher revenues are being shunned by investors.) Still, Mr. Semel contends that Yahoo's ability to blend brand and search advertising will set it apart as the Web continues its swift evolution. Susan L. Decker, Yahoo's finance chief, notes that most search advertisers are already online one way or another and tend to be small or midsized companies. But, she said, many major corporations are still spending only a small percentage of their marketing budgets online. Without content that people want, of course, advertising is moot. Yahoo has gained attention in the past year for developing original programming, based out of a new Yahoo Media complex in Santa Monica, Calif. Columnists have been hired for its news sites, reporters are hatching multimedia presentations and the inevitable online reality show is in the works. Yahoo wants to be the largest online video hub, streaming everything from news clips and movie trailers to Howard Stern stunts and NASA missions. Last year, it streamed four billion music videos, enough to fill the schedules of a lot of MTV channels. Mr. Semel says he sees the company's original content efforts as small steps toward figuring out what works on the Internet. But he and his colleagues are clearly more enamored of the prospects for distributing so-called old-media content. "Yahoo wants to create an environment where people can find all the content they want," said Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo's chief operating officer. "That's why we're going to be a great partner to the media companies." PARTNER, sure, but rival, too. Consider the News Corporation's online moves, particularly its purchase of MySpace.com, a fast-growing social-networking Web site. The News Corporation intends for it to be the online equivalent of the early Fox network: an alternative that will draw young audiences from Yahoo and elsewhere. More directly, America Online repositioned itself as a free portal last year, thus becoming a direct rival of Yahoo. "I think they're going to be tough competitors going forward," said Mr. Parsons, Time Warner's chief executive. He added that he considered AOL's portal competitive to Yahoo's, but he acknowledged that Yahoo had a lead in several areas, including its reach overseas. Mr. Semel and his Yahoo colleagues are most eager to encourage their registered users, who represent roughly 40 percent of the one billion people now online globally, to create their own content. Yahoo executives say that social networks, blogs, message boards and sites where users from around the world share material -- like the recent Yahoo acquisitions Flickr, a photo-sharing business, and Del.icio.us, where people swap information on favorite Web sites and other things -- are the keys to a fast-emerging media market. Across Yahoo's overflowing campus of purple cubicles in Sunnyvale, Calif., teams are working on a range of products -- with names like Yahoo360, Y!Q, Yahoo Mindset, MyWeb 2.0 and Yahoo Answers -- that use Web-searching as a ribbon for tying together virtual communities. MyWeb 2.0, for example, bills itself as a "social search engine" that lets users tag search results they may want to come back to and to share those results with cyberfriends. At a media company like Warner Brothers, central factors for success include managing talent, financial acumen, guiding a "Batman" or a "Friends" to a debut and understanding how to market it. While many online efforts by media companies have focused on building direct and deeper connections with audiences, these have largely amounted to virtual fan clubs and stores for media brands and products. Lately, Yahoo and other Internet companies have been enamored of the notion of connecting communities of people who, say, are fans of Batman but also share an affinity for mountain biking or Indian food. Thanks to new services intended to extend Yahoo's network beyond computer screens to phones, TV's and other gadgets, these communities can stay in constant contact. Jeff Weiner, Yahoo's senior vice president for search and marketplace, came up with the acronym FUSE to sum up Yahoo's social networking ambitions: to "find, use, share and expand all human knowledge." This sounds awfully high-minded for a company whose logo ends in an exclamation point, but it underscores another difference between old and new in a cynical age: "People come to work trying to change things," Mr. Weiner said. They also come to work knowing that the Internet is a field of dreams without barriers to entry. If you don't build it, someone else will -- most likely Google. Technology is what allows Yahoo to start these services and to tie them together on a global scale. "Almost from the first day I came to Yahoo," Mr. Semel said, "I realized that every strategy we were considering had to be related to the quality of our technology." Farzad Nazem, a Yahoo veteran who is its chief technology officer, stressed that point. "Most of the old-media companies treat technology as an afterthought. It's part of the execution, but it's never part of the planning," he said. "In the new world, it's almost the reverse." AND it's probably no surprise that, faced with the rapid rise of Google and growing competition from AOL and Microsoft's MSN, Yahoo has been hiring engineers and opening research centers. Last year it added 220 people a month and now employs about 10,000. "We try to present a consumer-friendly and, as much as possible, a humanized version of the Internet," said Mr. Yang. "It's fair to say we don't go out and talk about ourselves as a tech company like Google or Microsoft. That is a very deliberate message we want to send out." It is a message that played to Mr. Semel's strengths. Mr. Daly, the former Warner Brothers executive, remembers telling nay-sayers that they were wrong to underestimate his old friend: "I told them, 'You don't understand Terry Semel. He knows what they need, and that is to bring a sense of not only leadership but marketing and how to put things together.' At Yahoo, he is the father."

YAHOO INC
YAHOO! INC
SEMEL TERRY
MUSIC
ELECTRONIC MAIL
COMPANY AND ORGANIZATION PROFILES
COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET


Creativity, Strikes and Power

Abstract: It was a good weekend for the labor that is organized around the creative arts. Yesterday, Local 1, which represents the striking stagehands of Broadway, was in the midst of intensive talks with theater owners that seem destined to get the “Grinch” and other Broadway productions back in time for the holidays. Meanwhile, the Writers Guild of America , which has been on strike since Nov. 5, agreed to go back to the bargaining table with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, although not until Nov. 26. On the surface, the writers would seem to have all the cards, and the stagehands few. Hollywood writers fuel a much larger enterprise owned by publicly traded companies, have creative expertise and they even had Ron Howard walking a picket in front of Viacom in New York last Thursday. (When you’re riding with Opie, your cause must be just.) But the stagehands, who began striking almost a week after the writers, are most likely the ones who will be heading back to work first. The writers still confront the stalemate over distribution of revenues from digital content. So how will 400 or so (mostly) beefy guys in Manhattan accomplish what currently seems beyond the reach of the 12,000 members of the writers’ guild? Begin with the fact that the stagehands have actual leverage — the ability to shut down moneymaking entertainment that occurs at a specific time and place. Writers are increasingly part of a digital economy, where entertainment comes from every direction, and shutting off the spigot is next to impossible. The issue was addressed with some unintended irony last week when one of the writers from “The Daily Show” put together a cute, well-written video about the greed and shortsightedness of media companies and studios. The video attacking The Man and championing writers’ rights appeared on The Huffington Post, a busy Web site built on this business plan: hundreds of bloggers who post there aren’t paid. Just how different are the strikes and the world they confront? In the studios, the writers have an opponent whose interests are not immediately threatened, or necessarily aligned. For example, CBS, now a separate division of Viacom, has no significant movie business. The News Corporation has a significant hedge because it has a huge hit in “American Idol,” a lucrative franchise that could be stretched to cover a multitude of shortfalls. Peter Chernin, the president of the News Corporation, said in a conference call about earnings last week that the walkout is “probably a positive” for the company. “We save more money in term deals, and story costs, and probably the lack of making pilots than we lose in potential advertising.” Although back-channel efforts by talent agents, politicians and media executives may push the writers’ talks back to the table, the pressure to settle is more intense on Broadway, where millions of dollars immediately started going by the wayside each night the lights were out. “With Broadway and the stagehands, the value chain begins and ends pretty much with the theaters themselves,” said Ronald L. Seeber, a professor of industrial relations at Cornell. “It’s much more akin to what the auto workers have been fighting about — the number of warm bodies, manning requirements and job duties.” “The writers want to participate in profits that come from the creative process,” he added. “It has a much longer tail. Right now, I am using a DVD of ‘Twelve Angry Men’ in my classes, a film that is 50 years old and demonstrates the power and longevity of what was created.” The writers have managed, by some reports, to shut down 50 television shows. Jorge Zamacona, a guild member and writer-producer who got his start on “St. Elsewhere” and most recently served as a writer-producer on “Wanted,” since canceled, said that by refusing to negotiate on the future revenues of digital outlets, the studios seemed to be trying to rub them out of the picture for good. “They are absolutely trying to break the union,” he said. “My daughter watches streamed versions of ‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ and they all include commercials. Why should writers not be paid a small part of that?” Having recently moved from Los Angeles back to New York, he has watched with interest as the stagehands have moved toward settlement. “They must be dealing with rational human beings who want to their business to continue to thrive.” With the joint announcement of talks, rationality seemed to be getting a turn after weeks of verbal grenades in the writers’ strike. “There could easily be a compromise in the writers’ strike right now,” said David Thomson, a film historian. “The studios clearly want to break the union up in order to be ready for what is coming down the road.” Judd Apatow, a writer-producer who had worked in television and more recently made “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up” and the forthcoming “Walk Hard,” suggested that the business model that is driving the studios’ hard line is a little backward. Digital or not, well-written content can be a lucrative business. “One of the problems is a lack of creativity,” he said. “The studios spend enormous amounts of money making these massive spectacles when they could be making much better written, lower cost movies. A few less of those and they could fund a settlement for years. There would be no reason for this strike.” The stagehands may have what writers want — a working settlement — but the outlook for unions remains grim, whether in pixels or plays. “Both unions are operating from a defensive position, whether they will admit it or not,” said Peter J. Rachleff, a professor of history at Macalester College. “We are living in a political economy that assumes workers are going to go backwards in almost every instance.”

Strikes
Writers Guild of America
Books and Literature
Theater


Afghan Court Reverses Convictions in Torture of Girl

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — A court has reversed the convictions of three Afghans jailed for torturing a young relative who had refused to become a prostitute, alarming activists who had celebrated the guilty verdicts as a warning to all those who would seek to reverse the strides made by women here in the past 12 years. A family had bought the young woman , Sahar Gul, from her stepbrother for $5,000 and had forced her to marry in 2011, when she was just 13 or 14. When she refused to consummate the marriage, her in-laws locked her in a basement, where they burned her with hot wires, pulled out her fingernails and twisted her skin with pliers for months. She was discovered in December 2011 curled up in a dank and dark corner of the cellar and badly malnourished. Sahar Gul now lives in a shelter in Kabul. Her case attracted widespread attention in Afghanistan and abroad. Three of her in-laws were convicted last year of attempted murder, and each was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The convictions were upheld on appeal, though her husband, who is in his 30s, remains at large. But last month, in a decision that received little publicity, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the appeals court, saying that the violence appeared to warrant convictions for assault, not attempted murder, according to lawyers for the defendants. The appeals court agreed, voiding the convictions and ordering that the defendants — Sahar Gul’s mother-in-law, sister-in-law and father-in-law — be set free. The two women were released this week after about a year in prison, the lawyers said. They were not sure whether the father-in-law was yet out of prison. Neither court officials nor prosecutors immediately responded to questions about the case. But officials at the women’s prison in Kabul, where the two female defendants were being held, confirmed that both had been released Monday. Officials at the main men’s prison did not respond to calls for comment. As word spread in Kabul on Wednesday, Western officials said they were still gathering details but would probably have a response in the coming days. Afghan women’s rights activists reacted with alarm, and said they would press to have the three defendants retried. “There’s smoke coming out of my hair. I am so angry,” said Manizha Naderi, the executive director of Women for Afghan Women. “This poor girl was in the basement for months. If she wasn’t rescued, she would be dead. She was starved and burned and had her fingernails pulled out. How is this not attempted murder?” If the case had once served as a warning, it will now encourage conservative politicians and mullahs to push harder against the rights of women, Ms. Naderi and other activists said. The courts’ decisions make “a statement that violence against women is not that important, that Afghanistan is becoming more conservative,” Ms. Naderi added. That increasingly looks to be the case. As the defendants were being released this week, President Hamid Karzai made five highly criticized appointments to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, a government-backed watchdog. The five included a mullah who served in the Taliban government and has opposed legislation protecting women’s rights. Another is tied to an Islamist political party dominated by warlords.

Afghanistan
Sahar Gul
Women and Girls
Human Rights
Women's rights,Feminism
Torture
Murders
Prostitution


Media Companies Sue to Force Opening of Zimmerman File

Abstract: Lawyers representing more than 20 media companies on Monday asked the Florida judge overseeing the trial of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch organizer who killed the teenager Trayvon Martin , to unseal the court file. The Seminole County judge who presided over Mr. Zimmerman’s brief court appearance on Thursday agreed to a request by Mark M. O’Mara, Mr. Zimmerman’s lawyer, to keep documents related to the case private. State Attorney Angela B. Corey did not object to Mr. O’Mara’s request during the hearing. In an eight-page motion , the lawyers for the media companies, which included The New York Times Company, argued that the records were improperly sealed because Mr. O’Mara did not submit evidence showing that closing them was necessary to prevent a “serious and imminent” threat to the administration of justice. George Freeman, assistant general counsel and vice president of the Times Company, said that the judge, Jessica J. Recksiedler, did not go through the procedural steps required before a file can be sealed. “Just because a case gets a lot of publicity does not mean that papers should be sealed,” Mr. Freeman said. Mr. O’Mara had no comment on the motion because he was still reviewing it, said Jimmy Woods, a spokesman. In an interview, Ms. Corey said that she was also reviewing the motion and the concerns outlined by the media companies. “We are doing our best to balance everyone’s rights,” she said. Holland & Knight, the Miami-based law firm representing the media companies, argued that it would be possible to empanel an impartial jury if the court records were made public. Other news media companies that joined in the brief included The Associated Press, CNN, Gannett and McClatchy, publisher of The Miami Herald. Mr. O’Mara filed his own request on Monday, asking that Judge Recksiedler withdraw from the case because of a potential conflict of interest that the judge revealed last week. The judge’s husband works with a lawyer named Mark NeJame, who was approached by the Zimmerman family about representing Mr. Zimmerman and referred them instead to Mr. O’Mara. Mr. NeJame has been hired by CNN to provide analysis for the case.

Zimmerman George
Media
Martin Trayvon
Florida
News and News Media
Murders and Attempted Murders
Sanford (Fla)


Shooting Stars, Extinguished — Leading Off

Abstract: In a random night in the middle of the basketball season, the game presented us with a few gems. They may not mean much in the overall scheme of things, but for a few hours Wednesday night, they sparkled on their own, before being washed out into the sea of everything else: Stephen Curry plays for the Golden State Warriors, which is why you never see him and might be mildly surprised he has his team in the thick of the Western Conference playoff picture. So, Curry reminded everyone of his existence by turning his cameo at Madison Square Garden into a night to remember : 54 points, including 11 of 13 3-pointers and enough magic to thrill Knicks fans even if they were nominally rooting for the other team. It confirmed Curry is a star, even though he has been stashed in Northern California’s N.B.A. desert. He is one of the best pure shooters in the game, Brian Windhorst writes on ESPN.com . It lifted Curry into an elite list of great scoring outbursts at the Garden — a list led by Wilt Chamberlain — and showed he can do everything but lift the Warriors all by himself, Frank Isola writes in The Daily News . The Knicks did win in the end, almost despite themselves, and relegated Curry to a bit of isolated wonder. But a sparkling bit it was. The college game did what it has done best this season: sending a high-ranked team to a mind-boggling defeat. The latest star in this parade was Michigan, which was enjoying the fanfare of its No. 4 ranking and how it evokes the Fab Five era and how cool that “Hail to the Victors” song sounds. It brought all that to State College, Pa., on Wednesday night and promptly face-planted . Previously 0-14 in the Big Ten, the Nittany Lions gave their fans a reason to storm the court in a good way, and left everyone else wondering what happened to the Wolverines . If you were into hockey — and staying up late — Wednesday night, the Kings and the Red Wings treated you to this lovely game-winning goal by Anze Kopitar , which was decidedly prettier than how Detroit scored its only goal: off goalie Jonathan Bernier’s head . The N.F.L. news that has been lingering awhile — the fate of the demoted San Francisco quarterback Alex Smith — ended with his being shipped to Kansas City. This is an ideal ending for Smith, writes Ashley Fox on ESPN.com , because he gets to start again and work with Andy Reid. The Chiefs instantly upgraded to having a serviceable quarterback, although, as Sam Mellinger writes in The Kansas City Star , fans should be wary, what with all the ghosts of Chiefs quarterback failures past still hanging around Arrowhead. Of course, that is a more appealing story than contemplating whether N.F.L. teams were trying to figure out which draft prospects are gay, a question the N.F.L. is now looking into . In Nascar, the driver Jeremy Clements has apparently said something truly awful, for which he has been suspended , but no one knows for sure exactly what it was, because it was in an interview no one has seen or read. Clements has apologized, but it is hard to make amends to people you have offended when they do not even know they have been offended. It is hoped that they were spending their time enjoying Stephen Curry’s performance instead. Follow Leading Off on Twitter: twitter.com/zinsernyt

Stephen Curry
Alex Smith
Golden State Warriors
Madison Square Garden


New Hampshire: Lawmaker Suggests Siberia for Disabled

Abstract: A 91-year-old freshman Republican state representative suggested that New Hampshire’s mentally disabled be shipped to Siberia and said he was unapologetic about the comment. The lawmaker, Martin Harty of Barrington, said he was kidding around with an unidentified woman who called in support of financing for the homeless when he raised the issue of eugenics and the world’s population growth. “It was a girl that wanted money for the crazy people, the people ... a good percentage of the homeless people are mentally disturbed,” he said. “I said maybe they can rent a spot in Siberia off of Russia. She called me an Adolf Hitler and hung up on me. I never mentioned Hitler.” The comment came to light during a hearing Thursday on the state budget. It is not clear when the conversation took place. House Speaker William O’Brien, a Republican, said that Mr. Harty had the right to say what he thought, but that he hoped he considered his comments more carefully.

Budgets and Budgeting
New Hampshire
Homeless Persons


Samsung Said to Be Preparing to Unveil Smart Watch

Abstract: Samsung Electronics plans to introduce a wristwatch in September that can make phone calls, play video games and send e-mails, potentially beating Apple to market with a piece of technology that moves mobile communications beyond the smartphone. The watch, called Samsung Galaxy Gear, would be shown off “around the time” of an electronics industry trade fair in Berlin that begins Sept. 6, a person briefed on the matter said Saturday. Samsung has scheduled a media event for Sept. 4 at which it is also expected to introduce the Note III, a new version of its “phablet,” a cross between a phone and a tablet. “The commercial launch will definitely be this year,” said the person with knowledge of the unveiling, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about the company’s plans. The Galaxy Gear would not be the first watch phone on the market. Sony recently introduced a second-generation version of its smart watch, a gadget that works in conjunction with a smartphone in the user’s pocket. Other smart devices like the Pebble Watch and the I’m Watch have also been sold for some time. Apple is said to be working on its own wrist-worn device. For Samsung, the idea is also not entirely new. The company introduced its first watch phone in 1999. Still, the category of smart watches remains underdeveloped, as none of the existing devices have captured the imagination of consumers. But analysts say that could change now that the two biggest smartphone makers, Samsung and Apple, are getting into the watch business. Canalys, a research firm, predicts that sales of smart watches will rise to five million in 2014, a tenfold increase from this year. “Smart watches will be the most important new product category in consumer electronics since the iPad defined the market for tablets,” Chris Jones, an analyst at Canalys, said in a statement. From a design standpoint, Galaxy Gear may be less innovative than some of the speculation around the device has suggested. The person with knowledge of the device said, for example, that it would not use a flexible screen, as some analysts had expected. News of the Galaxy Gear introduction was first reported by SamMobile, a Samsung fan site. Samsung declined to comment.

Samsung Electronics
Watches and Clocks
Wearable Computing


Maidan, in Kolkata, Offers an Escape From the City

Abstract: KOLKATA, India — It is not precisely clear when, how or by whom it was decided that goats could graze in the heart of the Old City here. One local historian traces the decision back nearly three centuries, to the early days of the British East India Company. A different explanation says the goats were liberated to graze when India was liberated from Britain in 1947. Not in dispute is the obvious fact: in the middle of this city of 15 million people, the goats are still grazing. Right beside the mules. Not far from the white dome of the memorial built to Queen Victoria during the Raj. Or from the Pakistani tank that stands as a trophy from the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971. Or from the statues of a British viceroy, a Hindu spiritualist, a Bengali social reformer and an Indian soccer star, among others. Yet perhaps the oddest feature in this quintessentially Kolkatan tableau is what unexpectedly dominates on many mornings in one of the world’s most clamorous cities: silence. There are only the occasional shouts in Hindi or Bengali of herders driving their goats. Or, on a recent morning, of Hindu devotional songs floating out of the open windows of a gold-colored sedan weaving down an empty street as a man in the driver’s seat stretched both arms out the window, blissfully, rhythmically waving, as if in a trance. “He comes every day,” said Mohamed Azad, a herder. Whoever he is, he is not alone. Few cities are more synonymous with the messy crush of humanity than Kolkata, which about a decade ago changed its name, if not its identity, from the old British assignation of Calcutta. And yet Kolkata, too, needs a place for people to breathe, to run and to stare at an open blue sky. So like the goats and the mules, they come to the grassy pasture in the heart of the city known as the Maidan. To the uninitiated eye, the Maidan is just a park. To Kolkata, it is the “lungs of the city,” a recharge zone for the soul. The problem, of course, is that there are a lot of souls in Kolkata and relatively few other open spaces for them to go. The Maidan, like the city around it, exists in a perpetual state of siege with humanity. The morning silence is quickly overwhelmed by the assault of daily life. On weekdays or weekends, thousands upon thousands of people play soccer or cricket or just walk. Or picnic or hold weddings or discussions. Yet the people also burn garbage or encroach on the Maidan by building illegal structures. Electioneering also presents a problem. Political season is just under way, with critical state elections coming, and rallies are known to draw anywhere from 100,000 people to as many as one million. Periodic efforts to ban rallies from the Maidan have brought mixed results. “Every big rally takes place there, every year,” said Faiyaz Ahmad Khan, who supervised the Maidan for the city government until 2009. “You can’t even see the grass. You can only see the black grass — the color of people’s hair.” Given the pressures on the Maidan, it might seem fitting that the park’s custodian is the Indian Army, whose Eastern Command now inhabits Fort William, the former British military garrison in the heart of the park. The British built Fort William in the 1750s, after a Mughal prince overran the city’s previous fortifications. A star-shaped structure erected on the banks of the Hooghly River, Fort William dominated the city; fearing another possible assault, the British cleared a swath of jungle so soldiers would have unimpeded sight lines on approaching attackers. Yet as the British became more confident of their position, the space was planted and public access was granted, if restricted. When India became independent, the British Army handed over the keys of Fort William, and the Maidan, to their Indian counterparts. Depending on one’s perspective, this was a mixed blessing for the Indian Army. “It is a state of mind,” Col. Debasish Mitra said. “If you feel it is a headache, it is a headache. If you feel it is a pleasure, it is a pleasure.” A few years ago, Colonel Mitra was stationed on the Pakistani border, one of the more sensitive military postings in India. Then he was transferred back to his hometown, Kolkata, and placed in charge of the Maidan. Asked which job was more difficult, he smiled. He spent a year learning the overlapping laws, regulations and court judgments related to the Maidan. He estimated that every day about 20 people show up with grievances, suggestions or requests to rent space for a wedding or some other event. Inside an Army administration building, Colonel Mitra unfurled a satellite photograph of the Maidan’s 1,400 acres. Much of the land, roughly 900 acres, is dedicated to Fort William and is off limits to the public. (In military parlance, this is the Green Zone.) Then there is a small area (the Yellow Zone) that houses the state’s High Court and legislative assembly building. Seventeen acres (the Red Zone) are the ground of the Victoria Memorial. Which leaves the Blue Zone, known to civilians as the grassy pasture of the Maidan. “The Blue Zone is open 24 hours a day,” Colonel Mitra said. “The Army is the custodian. We are here to facilitate access.” Without saying so directly, Colonel Mitra made it clear that his biggest headaches came from people more than animals. Herders pay the city police an annual fee for grazing rights and drive the animals through the streets to reach the pasture in the early mornings. (Mr. Khan, the former city official, equated the goats with lawn maintenance.) Asked if any linguistic problems arose with the animals in a city where residents speak Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, English and other languages, one herder seemed baffled by the question. “They are animals,” he said in Hindi. “If you speak to them in Hindi, they will understand Hindi. If you speak to them in Bengali, they understand Bengali.” The mules and horses, about 100 in number, mostly work pulling tourist buggies at the Victoria Memorial while grazing and living inside the pasture, some tethered, some not. Some are descendants of mules that worked around the Maidan during the Raj. Occasionally, a mule wanders into the maw of traffic, but most intuitively understand to remain inside, as if an unseen boundary surrounded the park. People have a harder time with boundaries. “There is always encroachment of the rules,” Colonel Mitra said. “So I act as a watchman. I have people spread all over the Maidan. I have some intelligence sources.” It is the ongoing battle of a crowded city where sometimes just an ordinary day can seem like a battle: the search for silence, for an open sky, for a day in the park.

Calcutta (India)
Kolkata (India)
Parks and Other Recreation Areas


Pilot Was Sole Victim of Plane Crash Off Queens Coast, Authorities Say

Abstract: The cause of a plane crash off the coast of the Rockaway Peninsula this week remained unclear, investigators said on Thursday, even as officials confirmed that only one person was killed. The man died when the small plane he was piloting crashed off the Breezy Point section of Queens on Wednesday evening, the authorities said. Heidi Moats, an air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board , said that only one person was aboard the plane and that his remains had been recovered. Teams continued to search for additional debris, which will help them figure out what caused the crash. The pilot was not identified. The plane, made by the German manufacturer Flight Design, is registered to James McGee of Rye, N.H. He had filed a flight plan taking him from Philadelphia to New Hampshire, according to flight records. Image The police returned to their search for more wreckage from the plane on Thursday. Credit John Taggart for The New York Times A call to Mr. McGee’s family was not immediately returned. Ms. Moats said recovery crews had found most of the plane, including wings and some of the fuselage. They are still scouring the shore area with all-terrain vehicles, pickup trucks, boats and a helicopter. She said they hoped to find the engine. “We’ll obviously find out more when we pull it out of the water,” she said. A witness called 911 around 8 p.m. on Wednesday and reported seeing the plane crash, the New York Fire Department said. Around 8:30 p.m., search crews found parts of a plane floating about one and a half miles from the coast, the police said. A man’s body was discovered in the water later in the night, the police said. Teams from the Police and Fire Departments resumed the search at dawn on Thursday, scanning the beach while a few search boats on the horizon cruised slowly through the water. “We had a number of plane crashes here over the years,” Arthur Meyers, 85, a Breezy Point resident for 25 years, said on Thursday. “Here we see a lot of planes flying low.”

Plane Crash
NTSB
Fatalities,casualties
Breezy Point Queens
Airlines,airplanes


Foes of Unions Try Their Luck in County Laws

Abstract: BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Conservative groups are opening a new front in their effort to reshape American law, arguing that local governments have the power to write their own rules on a key labor issue that has, up to now, been the prerogative of states. Beginning here in the hometown of Senator Rand Paul and the Chevy Corvette, groups including the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heritage Foundation and a newly formed nonprofit called Protect My Check are working together to influence local governments the same way they have influenced state legislatures, and anti-union ordinances are just the first step in the coordinated effort they envision. A carefully devised plan began to unfold last week, when the Warren County Fiscal Court met here and preliminarily approved, in a 6 to 1 vote, a “right to work” ordinance that would allow employees represented by a union to opt out of paying union fees. This week two more Kentucky counties, Fulton and Simpson, followed suit, and a dozen more are expected to do the same in the next six weeks. Supporters of the effort say that if they are successful in Kentucky, they will try to pass similar local laws in Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and other places that do not have a statewide right-to-work law. Protect My Check is promising to pay for the legal battles of any local government that tries it. “There are literally thousands of targets for the initiative,” said Brent Yessin, an anti-union consultant and lawyer who is on the board of advisers for Protect My Check, said at a recent meeting in Washington. “Doing this county by county, city by city is more time consuming, but it’s also more time consuming and draining for the unions to fight.” Mr. Yessin was speaking at a conference held by the exchange council, also known as ALEC, an influential organization whose supporters include the oil and pharmaceutical industries and the Koch brothers. The group has coordinated efforts to get Republican-controlled legislatures to enact a template of business-friendly legislation including privatizing education, water systems and roads and stopping the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. This year the group introduced a program, the American City County Exchange, to do the same for local governments. The session on local right-to-work ordinances was open to journalists; a session on combating local minimum wage increases was not. The panelists mapped out a strategy that included raising money from local businesses, persuading lawyers to work pro bono and convincing local politicians that supporting right-to-work ordinances would not be political suicide. Image Connie Warren said her union was surprised by the new law: “It was sprung on everybody.” Credit Bryan Lemon for The New York Times Bill Londrigan, the president of the Kentucky State A.F.L.-C.I.O., objected: “This is being promoted here in Kentucky by outside interests who have nothing else in mind but to damage unions, weaken unions and lower wages.” Under federal labor law, a union that bargains a contract for all employees can require employees who choose not be union members to pay fees to cover the cost of being represented, unless “prohibited by state or territorial law.” About half of the states have enacted such prohibitions, becoming right-to-work states. Kentucky provides a perfect laboratory, said Jason M. Nemes, a Louisville lawyer involved in the initiative, because it is the lone Southern state that does not have a right-to-work law, and its neighbor West Virginia, where Republicans captured control of the Legislature last month, may soon pass one. Other states where Republicans expanded their control in the midterms, like New Mexico and Wisconsin, are also considering statewide bills. A right-to-work law became a major issue in Kentucky’s midterm elections when Republicans, who control the State Senate, promised to pass one if they gained control of the House. They fell short of that goal, priming local officials like Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon, the elected head of Warren County, to act. “We’ve always been interested in promoting right to work, and as all of our states around us became right to work, it has become a competitive issue,” Mr. Buchanon said, asserting that many businesses would not even consider locating in areas without right-to-work laws. He added that he was put in touch with Protect My Check by Senator Paul or one of his aides and was promised that the county’s legal bills would be covered. Mr. Yessin, based in Tampa, Fla., said his group’s donors were not public but, other than his own contribution, all of the money raised so far had been from local businesses and employers in the targeted counties. Last week’s vote in Bowling Green took local union members by surprise. It was advertised in advance as “an ordinance relating to the promotion of economic development and commerce,” and there was little public comment, though there were presentations by the Chamber of Commerce and the Bluegrass Institute, a policy group with close ties to ALEC. “It was sprung on everybody,” said Connie Warren, the financial secretary of the United Automobile Workers Local 2164. “The other side had all their ducks in a row; we didn’t have even the opportunity to say how we felt about it.” Image Nearly 1,000 union members make Corvettes at a Chevrolet plant in Bowling Green, Ky. Credit Bryan Lemon for The New York Times Officials acknowledged that the county was doing relatively well without a right-to-work law. “The Warren County economy is very strong; it’s very diversified,” said Ron Bunch, the president of the local Chamber of Commerce. “We have the lowest unemployment rate in Kentucky.” But they said they lost out on many prospects, pointing to Beretta, the gun manufacturer, which chose Gallatin, Tenn., 45 miles south, over Bowling Green as its new home. “What we’re passing is putting an ‘Open for Business’ sign on our front door,” Mr. Buchanon said. It is difficult to measure the effects of right-to-work laws on wages and jobs, but experts say they do weaken unions, discouraging organizing efforts and creating “free riders,” employees who benefit from collective bargaining but decline to pay fees. Unions and some economists argue that if right-to-work laws succeed in attracting businesses, it is because they drive down worker pay. The ordinance will certainly be challenged in court. A recent paper by the Heritage Foundation argues that because cities and counties are not specifically prohibited from passing such laws, they can do so. Supporters say that despite earlier federal and state rulings that cities cannot pass right-to-work laws, counties are political subdivisions of the state and are thus imbued with its powers. The Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue, but conservatives are hoping to find a sympathetic ear on the federal bench. Lynn Rhinehart, a lawyer with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., asserted that federal law unambiguously pre-empted local ordinances and that trying to prove otherwise was a waste of taxpayer money. “Nice try — state means state,” she said. As for “territorial,” she added, “It’s fair to say it means Guam, and it doesn’t mean county.” Conservatives, though, point to a 2002 circuit court ruling allowing right-to-work laws on tribal lands as evidence that there is wiggle room. Mr. Buchanon said he believed that Kentuckians overwhelmingly favored the right to work and that union members had quietly told him that they did, too. Chad Poynor, a United Auto Workers committeeman at the Corvette plant, conceded as much, saying that concessions made by the union in recent years had angered rank-and-file members, even though the recession was largely to blame. “We haven’t had a raise in eight years, so those things are hard to swallow. You hear people all the time say, ‘If I were in a right-to-work state, I’d withdraw’ ” from the union, he said. “But you have to look at the big picture over the last 30 years, what we’ve kept. We went through a bankruptcy and kept our pension. A lot of people can’t say that.”

Labor Unions
Kentucky
Local government
Collective bargaining
US states
AFL-CIO
American Legislative Exchange Council
Bowling Green KY


Program Benefiting Some Immigrants Extends Visa Wait for Others

Abstract: Many thousands of Americans seeking green cards for foreign spouses or other immediate relatives have been separated from them for a year or more because of swelling bureaucratic delays at a federal immigration agency in recent months. The long waits came when the agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services , shifted attention and resources to a program President Obama started in 2012 to give deportation deferrals to young undocumented immigrants, according to administration officials and official data. The trouble that American citizens have faced gaining permanent resident visas for their families raises questions about the agency’s priorities and its readiness to handle what could become a far bigger task. After Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said on Thursday that the House was not likely to act on an immigration overhaul this year, immigrant advocates are turning up their pressure on Mr. Obama to expand the deferral program to include many more of the 11.7 million immigrants in the country illegally. Andrew Bachert is one citizen caught in the slowdown. After he moved back to this country in August for work, he thought he and his wife, who is Australian, would be settled by now in a new home in New York State, shoveling snow and adjusting to the winter chill. Instead his wife, Debra Bachert, is stranded, along with the couple’s two teenagers and two dogs, in a hastily rented house in Adelaide, where the temperature rose in January to 115 degrees. At loose ends, Mr. Bachert, 48, spent Halloween and Thanksgiving without his wife and children, and he opened his Christmas presents for them himself — on a Skype call so at least they could see what he had gotten for them. “I’m sitting over here on my own, and it’s unbearably hard,” Mr. Bachert said. At the current pace, Mrs. Bachert will probably not travel to the United States before August. Until recently, an American could obtain a green card for a spouse, child or parent — probably the easiest document in the immigration system — in five months or less. But over the past year, waits for approvals of those resident visas stretched to 15 months, and more than 500,000 applications became stuck in the pipeline, playing havoc with international moves and children’s schools and keeping families apart. Video Mr. Bachert’s wife, Debra, and their two children in a Skype session. She stayed in her native Australia to wait for a green card. “U.S. citizens petitioning for green cards for immediate relatives are a high, if not the highest, priority in the way Congress set up the immigration system,” said Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association , the national bar association. “This is a problem that needs to be fixed quickly.” Many Americans are awaiting visas for spouses they recently wed, including Mukul Varma, 31, a naturalized citizen who works as a software consultant near Chicago. On a trip to India to visit relatives, he fell in love with Neetika Gupta, 26, also a software engineer. They married in India in May. “To be honest with you,” Mr. Varma said, “because I was a U.S. citizen I thought it would not be an issue to get a visa for my wife. I didn’t put any thought into it.” In mid-January Mr. Varma flew back to India to see his bride for the first time in nine months. He applied for her green card soon after the wedding, and since then it has not advanced. Their plans to start their life together in this country are in disarray. “First it was surprise,” Mr. Varma said. “Then dismay. Then it just becomes very discouraging. You feel helpless. You feel as if you did things the right way and you are penalized for it.” Christopher S. Bentley, a Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman, said the agency had seen “a temporary increase in processing times” for the citizens’ green card applications because of the deferrals program and “the standard ebb and flow” of visas. Last year, officials said, the agency detected the problem and tried to speed up the green cards by spreading them out to three processing centers. In November, the agency reported it had reduced waits to 10 months, calling that a “significant step forward.” Officials said they hoped to reduce waits to five months, but not before this summer. Because there are no annual limits on green cards for citizens’ immediate relatives, there are no systemic backlogs. But initial approvals are centralized at the immigration agency in the United States. After that step, generally the longest, the visas must also pass through the State Department and foreign consulates. The law prohibits foreigners who want to become residents from entering as tourists while their documents are in process. After Mr. Obama announced the deferral program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals , in 2012, he gave Citizenship and Immigration Services only two months to get it running. Agency officials scrambled. As of last week, 521,815 youths had received deferrals, with the agency handling more than 2,000 applications a day. Image Mr. Bachert, an American citizen, returned to the United States in August for work. Credit Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times The agency drew rare praise from immigrants and advocates for the efficiency of the program, which is highly popular among Latinos. It has been widely regarded as a successful dress rehearsal for a larger legalization. But soon after the deferrals were underway, Americans with green card applications felt the impact. “You end up seeing a steep decline in approvals for people like me who followed the law,” said Forrest Nabors, 47, a political science professor at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, who filed in July for a green card for his wife, Zdenka, who is Czech. An immigration service center near Kansas City assigned to handle both the green card applications and many of the deferrals was rapidly overwhelmed, officials said. But although the agency is financed by fees and does not depend on congressional appropriations, no new employees were brought on at that center, because of “unanticipated hiring difficulties,” officials said, without elaborating. For some families, prolonged separations have been especially hard on children. Jessica Veltstra, 32, applied in March for a green card for her husband of eight years, Andre, 41, who is Dutch. But he is still in the Netherlands, and she is rooming with relatives in New Jersey, unable to make plans. Their older daughter, who is 4, refuses to speak to her father on the phone in Dutch, her first language, and bursts out crying when she sees a photo of him. “My husband has done nothing wrong,” Ms. Veltstra said. “But they can do whatever they want because they have your spouse basically hostage.” Mr. Bachert was so certain he would see his family soon when he left Australia last summer that his children, both American citizens, did not go to the airport to see him off. He had little doubt his wife would qualify: They have been married for 17 years, and she had a green card once before, when Mr. Bachert, who works with electric utilities, had an earlier job in the United States. But the document expired, and she could not renew it when they were living in Australia. Some lawyers urged Mrs. Bachert to come as a tourist to join her husband. After deliberating for two sleepless weeks, she said, she decided she would rather bide her time apart than lie to American customs officials about her intentions to remain in the United States. Mr. Bachert, who will eventually work in upstate New York but is camped out in a temporary apartment near his company’s headquarters in Hartford, said his lowest moment had been a frantic predawn phone call from his wife. Their son was in a hospital heading for emergency surgery after shattering his forearm and wrist in a bicycle fall. Two months later, Mr. Bachert shuddered to recall the episode, although his son’s bones have healed. “No parent,” he said, “should be separated from their family in periods such as that.”

Visas
Immigration
Citizenship
US Politics
US Citizenship and Immigration Services
State Department
Netherlands
US
Australia