China Restricts Banks’ Use of Bitcoin

Abstract: HONG KONG — China moved on Thursday to restrict its banks from using Bitcoin as currency, citing concerns about money laundering and a threat to financial stability. The action comes as monetary authorities around the world have begun to confront the issue of Bitcoin, a virtual currency whose value has soared in recent months as interest in it has spread. Part of its rise has been driven by intense demand for the virtual currency in China. The notice curtailing financial institutions’ involvement with Bitcoin was issued by the People’s Bank of China and four other ministries and agencies, and the directive said the step was needed to “protect the status of the renminbi as the statutory currency, prevent risks of money laundering and protect financial stability.” The notice said that Bitcoin was “not a currency in the real meaning of the word” but was rather a “virtual commodity that does not share the same legal status of a currency. Nor can, or should, it be circulated or used in the marketplace as a currency.” Image A sign in the window of a San Francisco restaurant that accepts Bitcoin. Chinese authorities have restricted the use of the currency. Credit Stephen Lam/Reuters Last month, in a sign of Bitcoin’s growing acceptance, American regulatory officials told a Senate hearing that financial networks like Bitcoin offered tangible benefits for the financial system. But they warned of the potential for money laundering and other criminal activity associated with such networks. The remarks by United States officials, along with wider acceptance of the virtual currency by merchants, had helped propel the value of the virtual currency beyond $1,100, leaving its total worldwide value at more than $11 billion. It dropped more than $100 on Thursday, according to the Mt.Gox exchange, which handles Bitcoin trading online, to $1,100 from $1,217. Bitcoin was established in 2009 by an anonymous programmer or collective known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Part of the value of the currency is attributable to its limited supply. A maximum of 21 million units can be created, leading investors to bid up the price as demand grows. But with the growing acceptance of the virtual currency has come increasing concerns about its potential use in illicit transactions. In October, the American authorities arrested Ross Ulbricht, the alleged founder of the online marketplace Silk Road, after claiming that the site was being used to buy and sell drugs, weapons and pornography. Bitcoin was the primary form of payment on Silk Road, where people could make purchases anonymously. The Chinese move came after officials in Beijing had expressed some support for the legitimacy of Bitcoin. Yi Gang, the deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China and the director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said in November that although the virtual currency might not find favor with China’s central bank, people should be free to participate in the Bitcoin market. Video While regulators debate the pros and cons of bitcoins, this volatile digital currency inspires the question: What makes money, money? That sentiment was echoed in the announcement Thursday. “Ordinary members of the public have the freedom to participate in Bitcoin transactions as a kind of commodity trading activity on the Internet, provided they assume the risks themselves,” the statement said. In China, Bitcoin was starting to gain favor even among merchants. In the Chaoyang district in Beijing, a restaurant started accepting Bitcoins for payment in defiance of earlier regulation stating that virtual currencies could not be used to purchase real-life goods or services. But in its statement Thursday, the Chinese central bank raised questions about whether Bitcoin could ever gain true legitimacy as legal tender: “In essence, Bitcoin is a kind of special virtual commodity, and does not have the same legal status as a currency.” “Currently, the public lacks sufficient understanding of Bitcoin, and some individuals have been caught up by faddishness or a speculative mentality in holding, using and trading in Bitcoins,” the statement said. The explanation said that Bitcoins possess “quite high speculative risks,” because of the relatively small market and 24-hour trading, with no curbs on market declines. It said: “The price can be easily controlled by speculators, creating severe turbulence and huge risks. Ordinary investors who blindly follow the crowd can easily suffer major losses.”

China
Economy
Bitcoin
Money laundering
People's Bank of China


Checking on Two of New York’s Genuinely Oldest

Abstract: Since Evelyn Kozak was born on the Lower East Side on Aug. 14, 1899, she has outlived two husbands and survived the Spanish flu and two strokes. She ran a boardinghouse in Miami until she was 90 and avidly played Scrabble until she was 95. In January, she moved in with a granddaughter — and eight great-grandchildren under 13 — in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, where she gets manicures, gives precise instructions on how to prepare her breakfast, and recently asked relatives to survey the planet for older eligible bachelors. “It was like she started to have a brand-new life at 110,” said the granddaughter, Brucha Weisberger, who eagerly took up the matchmaking challenge. Ms. Kozak turned 111 on Saturday, but she had been admitted to the hospital the day before with an infection. So the birthday party scheduled for Sunday was canceled, though 13 relatives trooped into Maimonides Medical Center with flowers and an ice-cream cake to celebrate instead. In a recent scandal in Japan, the authorities were unable to find scores of supposed centenarians , often discovering that their descendants had been improperly collecting benefits in their elders’ names. On Sunday, those revelations led to a check on a couple of New York residents who have lived well past 100. Not far from Ms. Kozak, Susie Mushatt Jones celebrated her 111th birthday last month in the Vandalia Avenue Houses near Starrett City, Brooklyn, where she is tended by a 24-hour home health aide, and visited by a steady stream of attentive nieces and generations of children she cared for while working as a nanny. Ms. Jones is blind, hard of hearing and dependent on a wheelchair, but Lois Judge, a 70-year-old niece, said she never stopped being “her feisty self.” Indeed, Ms. Jones answered the phone at her apartment on Sunday and quickly bristled at a reporter for not speaking up. Married once, very briefly, Ms. Jones never had children of her own, but she helped Ms. Judge, a retired social worker, pay for college. “She loves children,” Ms. Judge said, “especially males.” Ms. Jones cooked for herself until she was 100, and until fairly recently worked as a tenant patroller in her public-housing project. Though she cannot see, she still listens to the news and “Wheel of Fortune,” and likes gospel music. And she retains a good appetite. For her birthday last month, relatives prepared her favorites: barbecued ribs, fried chicken, potato salad, squash and tossed salad. “She reminds us every day,” Ms. Judge said. “She says, ‘Do you know how old I am?’ ” Ms. Kozak, a bookworm, now spends her days talking about her past — like how she used to carry armloads of books home from the library and read them in the attic at 2816 Farragut Road, where she grew up. She spends hours sitting on the balcony with great-grandchildren at her feet. (Ms. Weisberger’s sister, Sarah Polon, and her family live across the street and share in Ms. Kozak’s care.) She, too, loves to eat — and knows what she loves. For soft-boiled eggs, Ms. Kozak demands that Ms. Weisberger “boil the water, turn out the light and leave the egg for two minutes,” Ms. Weisberger said. “Then she tells me to crack it over toast.” But when Ms. Weisberger tracked down David Pur, a 115-year-old bachelor living in Israel, as a romantic prospect, Ms. Kozak demurred. “He’s too old for me,” Ms. Weinberger said Ms. Kozak concluded. “I don’t want to be alone in my old age.”

Longevity
Elderly
Birthdays
Jones Susie Mushatt
Kozak Evelyn
Brooklyn (NYC)


Florida A&M Hazing Death Charges Planned

Abstract: ATLANTA — Criminal charges will be filed on Wednesday against members of the Florida A&M University marching band who were involved in the hazing death of a fellow student last fall, the police said Tuesday. Capt. Angelo Nieves of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said charges against members of the school band would be announced at a news conference in Orlando. The charges come after a six-month investigation into the death of Robert Champion, 26, a drum major who died in November after being severely beaten during a hazing ritual aboard a bus after a football game. Also on Tuesday, a lawyer for two music professors at Florida A&M who were accused of participating in a separate hazing episode said they had been forced to resign. The professors, Anthony E. Simons III and Diron T. Holloway, were involved in an off-campus fraternity hazing event at Mr. Holloway’s house, according to a report by the Tallahassee Police Department released in March. After Mr. Champion’s death, many students and alumni at Florida A&M stepped forward to complain about a culture of violence within the university’s famed Marching 100 band. In December, three band members were charged with beating a female band member so severely that her thigh was broken and she had blood clots in her legs. And two days after Mr. Champion’s death, an unnamed student told the police that Mr. Simons and Mr. Holloway had hit and paddled him and other members of the band fraternity as an initiation ritual in 2010. Mutaqee Akbar, a lawyer for Mr. Simons, told The Tallahassee Democrat that the professors denied being involved in any hazing. He said they resigned after being told that they would be fired. The university has suspended the band indefinitely and placed the band director on administrative leave. In January, Mr. Champion’s parents sued the owner of the bus company, saying the driver had stood by while the hazing took place. The Champions said they believed that their son had been beaten so severely because he opposed hazing. They have also said that he was gay and that he was bullied about his sexuality. “Robert’s being gay may have been a reason for his hazing, but it wasn’t the main reason,” said Christopher M. Chestnut, the family’s lawyer, in an interview in January. “This was a hazing crime, not a hate crime.”

Champion Robert
Hazing
Florida A&M University
Tallahassee (Fla)
Colleges and Universities


A Shakeout Approaches Among Real Estate Investors

Abstract: Though it came as no surprise to investors, the collapse of General Growth Properties, the nation’s second-largest mall owner, has stirred new fears about a coming debacle in commercial real estate. The company, which owns 200 shopping centers encompassing 200 million square feet and 24,000 tenants, filed for bankruptcy protection last week. With the credit markets virtually shut down, General Growth said it was unable to refinance the $3.3 billion in debt that had already matured or would be due this year. These included loans totaling $900 million on two malls in Las Vegas — Fashion Show and the Shoppes at the Palazzo — that were due to be repaid in November. An additional $6.4 billion in debt matures next year. The global credit crisis , weakening retail demand and rising unemployment have taken a toll on commercial property around the world. At least $153 billion worth of property is already in distress, according to Real Capital Analytics, a New York research company. Of this, $87.1 billion represents defaulted mortgages, while the rest is outstanding debt from about 40 commercial-property and investment companies that have failed, most of them outside the United States. In Japan, Australia and Spain, more companies than properties have faltered, said Robert M. White Jr., the president of Real Capital. “Here in the U.S., the majority of the issues are more at the property level than the company level right now,” he said. General Growth has a good reputation as an operator of shopping malls, but it has been widely criticized for relying heavily on short-term mortgage debt, a practice that most public real estate companies frown on. Analysts said General Growth’s failure does not mean that other large real estate investment trusts, or REITs, are likely to follow it into bankruptcy court. On the contrary, the REIT industry is trying to reinvigorate itself. In recent months, 10 of the strongest REITs have issued $4.7 billion in equity, giving them capital for near-term debt maturities, said Keven S. Lindemann, the director of real estate for SNL Financial, a research company in Charlottesville, Va. These companies include the Simon Property Group, the nation’s largest mall owner; the Kimco Realty Corporation, an operator of strip malls; and the AMB Property Corporation and Pro- Logis, which specialize in distribution centers. On Tuesday, Vornado Realty Trust, which owns office buildings and shopping centers, joined the list. Other REITs are expected to follow suit, said Barry Vinocur, the editor of the trade publisher REIT Zone Publications. The infusion of new capital “removes the risk and the uncertainty,” Mr. Vinocur said, “and at some point in time, there are going to be opportunities, and these companies will be better positioned to take advantage of them.” Mike Kirby, a principal at Green Street Advisors, a research company in Newport Beach, Calif., said he expected as many as 20 of the weaker REITs to “either vanish, get acquired or become inactive.” Like General Growth, many highly leveraged private companies are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to refinance mortgages that were issued to them as real estate values were soaring. In the United States, about $537 billion in mortgages will mature before the end of next year, said Sam Chandan, the president of Real Estate Economics, a New York company that monitors the real estate debt markets. “There is growing evidence that even good-quality borrowers do not have access to refinancing,” Mr. Chandan said. In recent years, General Growth financed much of its rapid expansion with bonds made up of pooled commercial mortgages, which are then sliced into various categories of risk. Delinquencies of so-called commercial mortgage-backed securities represent only 1.4 percent of all outstanding loans, but they are increasing at an alarming rate. In February, the delinquent unpaid balance for these loans amounted to $11.99 billion, up from $3.48 billion in February 2008, according to Realpoint, a credit ratings agency in Horsham, Pa. Two-thirds of the delinquency, in dollar volume, comes from loans issued in 2005 to 2007, a period when competition among lenders led to overly optimistic projections about rent growth. Delinquencies are expected to rise as borrowers exhaust reserve funds they established to cover their debt service while they waited for rents to go up. General Growth’s problems have highlighted the difficulties for borrowers in modifying loans that have been securitized. In a filing with the bankruptcy court, Adam S. Metz, the chief executive of General Growth since John Bucksbaum, a member of the company’s founding family, stepped down in October, said the company faced “steep logistical challenges” in trying to negotiate extensions. Restrictions stemming from tax considerations make it extremely difficult to change the terms of a securitized loan, said Thomas A. Humphreys, a partner in New York at the law firm Morrison & Foerster. Another obstacle for borrowers is that investors in commercial mortgage-backed securities have divergent interests, depending on their level of risk. Investors with the highest-grade bonds may want to cash out through a sale of the mortgaged property, while investors in junk bonds who face an immediate loss may want to hold a property in case values rise. Mr. Kirby said property values had declined as much as 40 percent. The securitization system “didn’t contemplate that there would be such a rapid change in valuation, and that this would happen during a time when there wouldn’t be a functioning financial market,” said D. Michael Van Konynenburg, the president of Eastdil Secured, a national brokerage firm, and the head of its loan sale team. With so few properties changing hands, values are hard to determine. One benchmark is the recent sale, reportedly for $355 million, of the office portion of the 40-story Bertelsmann Building at 1540 Broadway, between 45th and 46th Streets in Midtown Manhattan, that had commanded $525 million when it was sold to Equity Office Properties in 2006. The next year, the developer Harry Macklowe bought it as part of a portfolio that he acquired for $7 billion. Last year, Mr. Macklowe surrendered the portfolio to his lender after he was unable to make his debt payments. In another transaction that received widespread attention, the 60-story John Hancock Tower in Boston was auctioned off this month in a foreclosure sale for $660.6 million, half of what the previous owner paid for it in 2006. The decline may seem steep, but Mr. Kirby said values are reverting to where they were before the commercial real estate bubble began in middecade. Mr. Kirby said he could not say how much the value of shopping malls has slipped because there have been no sizable transactions in more than a year. General Growth has said that even as its problems worsened, its malls were more than 90 percent occupied, and its net operating income last year of $2.59 billion was an increase of 4.5 percent over 2007. The company has said it plans to keep its portfolio intact during the bankruptcy proceeding. But Jim Sullivan, an analyst at Green Street Advisors, said occupancy and rents were going to suffer, even in the strongest malls. “This retail downturn is different from the ones we’ve seen in the past,” he said. “Even the successful retailers are suffering sales erosion. It impedes their ability to pay higher rent, and it makes them cautious about opening new stores and new concepts.”

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


Texas: Wife Pleads Guilty to Aiding in Killings

Abstract: A woman charged with helping her husband kill a district attorney, his wife and an assistant district attorney pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder on Tuesday. The woman, Kim Williams, 48, accepted a plea deal and will serve 40 years in prison, court officials said. Her husband, Eric Williams, was convicted and sentenced to death earlier for the murder of Cynthia McLelland. He is also charged with murdering District Attorney Mike McLelland, Cynthia’s husband, and Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse. Prosecutors said Mr. Williams wanted to get back at Mr. McLelland and Mr. Hasse for obtaining a theft conviction that cost him his job and law license.

Murders and Homicides
Kim Lene Williams
Eric Lyle Williams
Cynthia McLelland
Mike McLelland
Mark E Hasse
Texas


Grit Beneath the Glitter

Abstract: ADELINO DA COSTA peered above his red leather boxing gloves and locked eyes with his opponent. Their knees bent, their bodies at an angle, the two men dodged, ducked, jabbed and wove within a 20-foot-by-20-foot red carpeted ring raised above a polished concrete floor marked with yellow and orange stripes. Releasing his right elbow like a spring, Mr. Da Costa shot a fist forward, straight and swift. Gloves collided, producing a sound like a drum punctuating the music of Tabanka Djaz, a band from Mr. Da Costa’s native Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa. The music blasted through the subterranean boxing gym on Madison Avenue near 78th Street, just steps from where afternoon tea was being served in delicate bone china cups at the Carlyle Hotel. As an uppercut shot past his head and into thin air, Mr. Da Costa raised his arm to signal a halt to the sparring and embraced his opponent, a boxing student who had paid $145 an hour to hone his skills in this netherworld. As the student removed his face guard and shook his head with discouragement, Mr. Da Costa smiled. “Make mistakes,” he whispered, “but make them with confidence.” It was 6 p.m. on a recent Wednesday at Punch Fitness Center, the gym established a year ago by Mr. Da Costa, a former Portuguese national kickboxing champion who is 30 and now lives on the Upper West Side. Seven clients — lawyers, hedge fund managers and a model — were practicing fancy footwork; at other times during the day, the brightly striped gray floor would be filled with 4-year-olds, octogenarians, young mothers and tattooed professional fighters. The neophytes winced as the trainers instructed them to squat and stay put while their hands were wrapped in long cotton bands and then eased into thickly padded, mitten-shaped boxing gloves, preparing them to take aim at more than 20 punching bags of various kinds, four mean-faced mannequins and the trainers themselves. Aquilino Delgado, one of the gym’s 11 trainers, urged a woman in her 20s with glutes as firm and round as unripe cantaloupes to loosen up and move with the beat of the music. “Pow! Pow!” Mr. Delgado grinned and jabbed. “Salsa boxing!” “Oh,” she said, laughing. “That’s my favorite kind!”  It has taken a year, but the people above ground are slowly discovering what is going on one story beneath the street. Little did they realize as they shopped for $975 chinchilla ascots at Parker or $2,300 cocktail suits at Luca Luca, two high-end boutiques next to the gym’s entrance, that sweat was flying beneath their elegantly shod feet. Mr. Da Costa, who discovered his gift and passion for boxing as a child in Portugal and went on to twice become that country’s middleweight kickboxing champion, has a reputation and a following. In the world of professional boxers, word traveled fast that Punch was a place to come to train for a big match. But for the uninitiated, the only clues were two boxing gloves, one red, one yellow, above a recessed doorway at street level in a five-story office building. In the gym’s early days, Mr. Da Costa occasionally emerged to invite homeward-bound moguls to stop by for a visit. For the most part, they politely rejected his offer: Thanks, Rasta Man, another time. But eventually, with dreams of Sugar Ray dancing in their heads, a few dared to descend those stairs. Now barely a year old, the gym is a thriving business that recently doubled its space to 3,000 square feet and added 15 pieces of punching equipment, a massage room, space for group training and the new regulation ring for training professional mixed martial arts fighters. Yet despite its owner’s panache, Punch is not to everyone’s taste. “That chichi place?” said Lou DiBella, president of DiBella Entertainment, a leading boxing promoter. “You won’t find me there. I promote world champs. Punch isn’t my kind of gym. Rich kids don’t box. They play tennis. Poor kids fight.”  The city is home to many boxing gyms, some of them legendary, like the 17,000-square-foot Gleason’s, near the Brooklyn waterfront. In 1937, when Gleason’s opened in the South Bronx, boxing was a gritty sport and its practice was restricted to gyms in parts of the city where, as Bruce Silverglade, Gleason’s longtime owner, put it, “Nobody wanted to go.” Starting about a decade ago, both the sport and the neighborhoods where it is practiced became increasingly upscale. At Punch, which attracts about 50 clients a day, evenly split between men and women, there’s no scent of sweat, a gym staple that is noticeable here for its absence. (“Great ventilation,” one patron explained.) There is another difference, the lighting: Recessed illumination flatters, rather than casting the grim light of low fluorescence. It would be easy to make the mistake of thinking that what goes on in this clean, well-lighted place is less than deadly serious. The constant, watchful presence of Mr. Da Costa’s 5-foot-9, 160-pound sculptured and tattooed body, his head topped with dreadlocks, corrects that impression. “This is a sport that can be turned aggressively outward or used as a method for self-awareness,” he explained as a weary client took a break at the water fountain. To that end, he sometimes sounds more like a dharma teacher than a boxing coach. Know yourself. Stay focused. Be present. “You have to give the client confidence,” he said. “Once you’ve done that, then you can begin to change them. You change the inside first, then you work on technique.”  Alan Pollack, a 60-year-old trial lawyer who lives seven blocks from the gym, claims to have been changed. Mr. Pollack arrives promptly at 7, as he does three times a week, for his nightly sparring, and dons headgear, baggy knee-length boxing shorts and flat black leather regulation shoes that lace above the ankle. Boxing, Mr. Pollack says, has served him well. “I’m paid to fight for my clients,” he explained as he waited for Mr. Da Costa to show up for a sparring match. “And I’m mentally, physically stronger from boxing.” Mr. Pollack has been awarded a high honor: a nickname. It is a badge of courage in the world of boxing. Think of Hurricane Carter, Smokin’ Joe Frazier, Bonecrusher Smith. These names evoke the poetry of the streets, which is echoed in the names written boldly across the gloves of a few similarly honored clients, puffy trophies stored and hanging on the walls. A-Train. All Day. Mouthpiece. Bench. Mr. Pollack is Silver Fox, and the name suits him. He has white hair and a stealthy manner. Swift on his feet, he’s learned the art of the feint. He has absorbed one of Mr. Da Costa’s main rules: “For every movement, you fake three, so your opponent doesn’t see what’s coming.” This rule, Mr. Pollack says, is helpful in the courtroom, which, following the advice of his trainers, he won’t be abandoning for the ring any time soon. “Turns out I have to keep my day job,” he said with a laugh. “No matter how good I thought I was, they made sure to let me know I wasn’t that good.” Still, he added in his own defense, “I do have a good left-right combination.”  At 2 o’clock the next afternoon, the gym closed, as it does daily, so that the pros and occasional visiting prizefighter can train. Some of the world’s best boxers can be seen here; this day, Mr. Da Costa was preparing Marcelo Garcia for the South Korean national championship in mixed martial arts. Those sitting ringside studied the intensity of focus and precision of blows and shouted “Porrada!” — Portuguese slang for kick his behind. Another fighter slipped between the ropes to take his turn challenging Mr. Garcia’s endurance as Mr. Da Costa returned to a stool on the sidelines and traced the circuitous journey that had brought him to this underground arena. He moved with his family from Guinea-Bissau to Portugal when he was 9. Eight years ago, he arrived in New York. “I come from a dark place,” Mr. Da Costa said. To illustrate his point, he went to a computer and pulled up a YouTube video showing the unpaved streets of Marianas sa ta Caba, the Portuguese village where he was raised. On the screen were images of boys being beaten with baseball bats and people being pulled from their homes at gunpoint, their shanties razed and burned. “The most beautiful flower grows in a dark place,” he said quietly, his eyes on the computer screen. His voice was so soft, one had to lean in to hear the words. “Look at the lotus,” he said.  Mr. Da Costa has a special affinity for very young boxers, in part because he himself started honing his skills at an early age. “When you’re 5 or 6 years old,” he said, “you start looking for the person you’re meant to be.” He has an affectionate way with children, and he rigorously supervises the trainers who teach them. The children respond. That afternoon, as the gym reopened to the general population, the place took on an atmosphere more in keeping with a kindergarten than a champion’s training ground. Among those present were James Cacioppo Jr., a 4-year-old who lives in nearby Carnegie Hill and who had flung himself into his lesson by running across the room and leaping into the arms of Robert Rodriguez, a trainer, who embraced him with bulked-up, tattooed arms. Grabbing a ball, Mr. Rodriguez began a game of keep-away. James’s belly laughs flooded the space. “Gimme!” the child shouted as he leaped up to catch the ball that the trainer had tossed above his head and behind his back. The two laughed, dodged about, and ran around the room in what looked like random play. Not so, Mr. Da Costa said. There was a serious point to the apparent spontaneity. Keep-away provides training in the boxer’s art of pretending you’re going to do one thing and then doing another. It focuses the mind and sharpens hand-eye coordination. And it’s fun. “You can’t teach children in an adult way,” Mr. Da Costa said. “You let them learn in their own way. First you make sure they’re excited to be here. Then you move the kid from place to place, get him to jump around, get the kid laughing with pleasure and excitement. Kids can only learn with movement. Focus comes from movement.” A parent in pinstripes was listening from the sidelines. “Tell that to my kid’s fifth-grade teacher,” he muttered. Mr. Da Costa slipped under the ropes and into the ring to spar with James’s mother, Jennifer Cacioppo. Watching her son playing on the floor nearby, she mentioned that his teacher at school had asked everyone in the class to name something for which they were grateful: “He said ‘boxing.’ ”  It’s not unusual for sideline mothers to come to the sport as a result of observing their children’s delight, and the number of women at the gym has increased. “Women are better fighters because they go out 100 percent,” Mr. Da Costa said. “They don’t care about protecting themselves as much as men.” Nor do they show off. “Men try to prove themselves right away,” he said. “A woman will pace herself. When you’re training a man, you have to get them tired so they stop trying to prove how strong they are. Then you can begin to train them.” Perhaps, he suggested, women are good fighters because they are less fearful and therefore less violent than men. “Fear exists to protect us, but fear also stops a lot of people from being great,” Mr. Da Costa said. “They’re afraid of putting themselves out there. Boxing teaches you to understand fear and respect it. It’s when you don’t understand it that you become violent.”

Boxing
New York City
Exercise
Health Clubs


Lack of Information Released About Newtown Gunman Frustrates Lawmakers

Abstract: Two weeks after the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, Tim Kaine, then governor of Virginia, closed a loophole in the state’s gun laws that had allowed a mentally disturbed student to buy the guns used in the rampage, which left 33 dead. The speed with which action was taken was in some ways a testament to how much had become known about the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, in the days after the shooting. Among the pertinent details was the fact that a judge had ordered him to get mental health treatment. More than 100 days after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., only a sliver of what was known about Mr. Cho in the days after his killing spree has been learned about the Newtown gunman, Adam Lanza. Search warrants released Thursday for the home he shared with his mother, Nancy, his first victim, offered a stark view of the arsenal of weapons to which he had access, along with other disturbing details. But investigators have not shared any of Mr. Lanza’s writings from the journals they found at his home, information about his schooling, online activity or any other details about his mental health or state of mind. The lack of information has frustrated lawmakers and some relatives of the victims. “This person’s mental state of mind is key here,” said Mark Barden, whose son Daniel, 7, was killed at the school. “Why is it that we can’t talk about that? Mental illness needs to be addressed. Nobody’s embarrassed to say they’re seeing a doctor to make their heart healthier; yet they can’t say they’re seeing a doctor to make their mind healthier? There’s a stigma here. No one wants to admit their child needs mental health treatment. But what if Nancy Lanza had seen that and done something about that along the way? We need to talk about this.” After the shootings, Connecticut’s governor, Dannel P. Malloy, appointed a task force to recommend a broad range of state policy changes, including ones addressing mental health. But Stephen J. Sedensky III, the state’s attorney in charge of the inquiry, told the panel that they could not have access to Mr. Lanza’s mental health information because it was protected by law, even though he was dead. As lawmakers in Hartford prepare to introduce a gun control package, some Republicans have expressed frustration at what little information investigators have revealed about the case. The chief state’s attorney’s office, at the urging of lawmakers, released some more information Thursday, including the fact that Mr. Lanza had stormed the school armed with 10 30-round magazines for his assault rifle. A spokesman for the office said Friday that no more information was expected to be released until the investigation was complete. Mr. Sedensky said he did not expect that to be until summer. Democrats, including the governor, have said that even with so much still unclear, enough is known to pass comprehensive gun legislation, including broadening the state’s ban on assault weapons and outlawing the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines. But even some Democrats said more information should be made available. “We understand the State Police and chief state’s attorney’s office are being very careful here and trying to document everything in a thorough way,” said Senator Donald E. Williams Jr., a Democrat and the Senate president pro tempore. He added, however: “I do believe that as they compile information and as they determine that the information is not related to any ongoing criminal information, that the information should be released. It should be released in the interest of helping provide closure to the families, and, quite frankly, in helping policy makers understand fully the implications of access to weapons and the potential of harm in the communities.” It is not unusual for officials to withhold information during an investigation. The journals of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenagers responsible for the shootings at Columbine High School, were not released until years later, in part because of fear of copy cats. Much of what was known early on about Mr. Cho came from classmates, teachers and public records. But Mr. Lanza appears to have been isolated even by the standards of other gunmen in mass shootings. If he had close friends, none have spoken publicly. And even friends of his mother, at least those who have spoken, say they knew little about the family’s home life. Rebecca Kowalski, whose 7-year-old son, Chase, was killed at the school, said more details of Mr. Lanza’s mental health should be disclosed. “But at the same time,” she said, “I’d rather move on. As far as I’m concerned, no revelation is going to change the situation. No one can rewrite what happened. No one can bring our son back.”

Newtown CT
Adam Lanza
Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting


Obama, Noting Own Student Debt Burden, Expands Repayment Cap and Pushes Bill

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama signed an executive order on Monday intended to lessen the college loan burden on nearly five million younger Americans by capping repayments at 10 percent of the borrowers’ monthly income. Joined by indebted graduates in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Obama said the spiraling cost of higher education had put “too big a debt load on too many people.” “These rising costs have left middle-class families feeling trapped,” he said. “You’ve got middle-class families who can’t build up enough savings, don’t qualify for support, feel like nobody’s looking out for them.” Mr. Obama drew on his own financial history in promoting the measure. He told the audience that he and his wife, Michelle, paid off their law school loans just 10 years ago, after they had already begun saving for their daughters’ college educations. “This is why I feel so strongly about this,” the president said. “This is why I’m passionate about it.” Mr. Obama’s executive actions coincided with the introduction of a bill by Senate Democrats that would allow 25 million borrowers to refinance student loans at lower interest rates. The government would finance the measure by imposing a new tax on wealthy people. The president challenged Congress to pass the legislation, which would go further than his executive orders and which, he said, “pays for itself.” But with Republicans implacably opposed, Democrats appear unlikely to gather the votes in the Senate needed to pass it. Student Loan Calculator A guide to student loans at various universities, and what it takes after graduation to repay that debt. “Everybody here knows it’s a partisan political stunt,” Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the education committee, said in an interview. The bill, he said, would expand the federal debt and raise taxes while offering loan-holders a subsidy of $1 a day. Under the order, the administration will expand a 2010 law that capped monthly repayments, applying it to those who got loans before October 2007 or stopped borrowing by October 2011. The order will not go into effect until December 2015 to allow the Education Department to draft and institute new rules. In addition to the cap, Mr. Obama said, the government will renegotiate contracts with Sallie Mae and other loan providers to increase incentives for paying off loans. The Education Department will also work with tax preparation firms like H & R Block and Intuit to inform borrowers of repayment options and tax credits for college tuition. The White House said it did not know how much the measures would cost. Briefing reporters before the president spoke, the education secretary, Arne Duncan, said, “We’ll figure that out the back end, but we think this is something that’d be fantastic for the economy.” “This is not about pointing fingers and laying blame,” he said. “This is about mutual responsibility.” But Mr. Obama took a gleefully political tone, setting aside his prepared text to criticize Republicans for refusing to consider a tax increase for millionaires to finance a program that would ease the debt burden on graduates. “It would be scandalous if we allowed these kinds of tax loopholes for the very, very fortunate to survive while students are having trouble just getting started with their lives,” he said. After the announcement, Mr. Obama joined his chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, for an impromptu walk to a Starbucks near the White House. It was the latest in a series of spontaneous outings for a president who appears to be suffering from cabin fever. Emerging from the White House, he said with a smile, “The bear is loose.”

Student loan
Barack Obama
Executive Orders
College
US Politics
Senate
Congress


U.N. Seeks $460 Million in Flood Aid for Pakistan

Abstract: UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for donations of nearly a half billion dollars to aid flood victims in Pakistan as the magnitude of the disaster widened, with about one-fifth of the country submerged and the annual monsoon season still potent. “The scale of the disaster is huge; the needs of the people affected are huge,” said John Holmes, the humanitarian coordinator for the United Nations, as he announced the appeal for $460 million . Donors had already pledged $150 million before the appeal was announced. The money would help meet the immediate needs of an estimated 14 million people who have been affected in some way by the flooding, Mr. Holmes said, with 6 million needing humanitarian assistance like shelter, food, clean water and emergency health care. The United Nations, responding to the physical difficulty of navigating the flooded areas, has resorted to methods as varied as helicopters and donkeys to deliver aid, he said. The official death toll has remained at 1,200, but with 6,000 villages wiped off the map, the figure is likely to rise, said Abdullah Hussain Haroon, the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations. Given that nearly 58,000 square miles remain under water, he said, the government has basically abandoned trying to establish an accurate count of those who had been killed. “There are islands — the whole place — you cannot get from one area to another, there is no connection,” Mr. Haroon said at a news conference. “The phones are down, the roads are blown away. It’s like going back to primordial history, practically.” With more rain expected, he said, there are still many potential threats, ranging from the spread of cholera to fears that a damlike structure known as the Guddu Barrage on the Indus River may crack. The flooding has probably swallowed 15 percent to 25 percent of the annual cotton crop, and the soggy earth is likely to make planting winter wheat difficult in September, when seeding customarily takes place, Mr. Haroon said. Pakistan anticipates that the flooding will reduce gross domestic product by 1.5 percent this year, he said. The appeal for international aid covers just the immediate needs over the next few months and does not include longer term requirements like agricultural aid or replacing scores of bridges that were swept away.

Pakistan
Floods
Humanitarian Aid
United Nations


G.I. Deaths Are First for U.S. After Combat Mission’s End

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Two American soldiers were killed and nine were wounded on Tuesday when a firefight erupted inside an Iraqi Army base north of Baghdad, American and Iraqi officials said. They were the first American casualties since President Obama declared an official end to the United States combat mission in Iraq a week ago. The attack took place during a meeting between an American company commander, with his retinue of security guards, and Iraqi soldiers at a small base described as a commando compound near the city of Tuz Khurmato in Salahuddin Province. During the meeting an Iraqi soldier fired on the Americans and was himself shot and killed, the American military said in a statement. Two days earlier, American soldiers in Baghdad joined in repulsing a highly coordinated attack by insurgents on one of the main military commands in Baghdad , an event that underscored the ambiguities of the new phase of the American military role in Iraq . Both attacks involved American soldiers active in what is now their main mission: advising Iraq’s security forces. And both showed the inherent risks of doing that job in a country still ravaged by daily violence and protected by security forces of uncertain professionalism, training and discipline. Though the exact circumstances of Tuesday’s fight remain unknown, the meeting between the company commander and Iraqi forces at the base near Tuz Khurmato is typical of those that take place each day at army and police bases across Iraq. “This is a tragic and cowardly act,” the senior American commander in northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo of the Third Infantry Division, said in the statement, “which I firmly believe was an isolated incident and is certainly not reflective of the Iraqi security forces” in the province. The military did not identify the soldiers killed and wounded, or their unit, pending the notification of their next of kin. The military provided few other details, but said an investigation into the firefight had begun. A spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, Mohammed al-Askari, identified the Iraqi soldier as Soran Rhaman Falih Wali and the unit as the Fourth Division of the Iraqi Army. He also said an investigation would be conducted. Niazi Uklo, a member of the provincial council in Salahuddin, said in a telephone interview that the soldier, a Kurd, opened fire after a dispute broke out during the meeting on the base. “There was a struggle between an Iraqi Army solider and an American soldier,” Mr. Uklo said. “It escalated into a brawl and ended when the Iraqi soldier opened fire.” American military casualties in Iraq have dropped precipitously since the invasion in 2003, reflecting the withdrawal of tens of thousands of troops and the end of offensive combat operations, a process that began, effectively, many months before Mr. Obama’s own deadline for ending combat by Sept. 1. So far this year, 48 Americans have been killed here, compared with 149 in 2009 and 904 in 2007, the deadliest single year for American troops in Iraq, according to icasualties.org . Most of the deaths this year have involved accidents or suicides, but combat casualties still occur, and in recent weeks there has been an increase in attacks in Iraq generally and against American bases and the American Embassy in Baghdad specifically. Three American soldiers were killed in August, all by hostile fire in Basra, Baquba and Iskandariya, a small town south of Baghdad.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Forget President: The More Important FIFA Vote Is on Reforms

Abstract: FIFA will hold two important elections on Friday at its latest all-expenses-paid gathering in Zurich. Most of the attention will be on the second vote, to pick the organization’s new president . Fans, though, should pay closer attention to the first one. In that election, most likely before the federations break for what will undoubtedly be a delicious free lunch, the 207 eligible members of FIFA will vote on a package of proposed reforms that would modernize the organization and, in theory, set the foundation for a transparent, trustworthy global governing body of soccer. Be hopeful if you want. Hopeful because someone other than Sepp Blatter will be the FIFA president. Hopeful that the entire organization is on the cusp of monumental changes, from the inside out, and will alter the way it does business. Forgive me if I need some time before buying in. Still, Moya Dodd, a member of FIFA’s executive committee, is calling the reform issue the most important vote in FIFA’s history, much more critical than the vote for president, which, naturally, has been brighter and shinier and has commanded more attention because of the personalities involved. “The reforms will alter the entire institution and change the way people view FIFA, for the better, and that’s exactly what our sport needs right now,” Dodd told me. “The reforms must pass. It’s critical. It’s the only way we can start changing the culture.” Image Moya Dodd, a member of FIFA’s executive committee, says passing the proposed reforms is the “only way we can start changing the culture.” Credit Philipp Schmidli/Getty Images No argument there. Installing a new president — whether it’s one of the front-runners or someone else — won’t bring much change under the current system, a hothouse for corruption for decades, if it’s not coupled with institutional upheaval. In the past, FIFA and its leadership thrived in a culture of lined pockets, skimmed contracts and bribes. The assortment of indictments, arrests and guilty pleas of top soccer officials within the past year is evidence of that. The proposed reforms are exactly what the disheveled, discredited organization needs to right itself. FIFA’s interim leadership has come out publicly urging their approval. But can we trust FIFA’s member federations to do the right thing? We’ll see on Friday. And only then — maybe — can we begin to believe in FIFA again. We know where Dodd stands. She is a FIFA insider who thinks like an outsider and, in many ways, remains an outsider in the current FIFA men’s club. That status automatically gives her a stamp of credibility that officials long entrenched in the organization can never claim. Dodd, an Australian who is the chairwoman of FIFA’s task force for women’s soccer, has worked behind the scenes to ensure that the reforms call for including more women in decision-making roles in the organization and for allowing women to rise within the sport. “There are some studies that show that gender diversity in companies makes those companies less prone to fraud, and I believe that,” said Dodd, who wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times in November about the need to increase the number of women in FIFA. In that piece, Dodd noted that boardroom diversity advocates said that “once a 30 percent gender balance is reached, a culture shifts.” And if any boardroom needs a cultural shift, it’s this one. Who’s Running for FIFA President? Five candidates are on the ballot this week for the election to replace Sepp Blatter as FIFA president. Who will win the vote at the special FIFA Congress on Friday in Zurich? The current reform proposals, watered down from Dodd’s original suggestions, include having six women on a newly created 36-member FIFA council. That ruling council would replace the current 24-member executive committee, which long ago lost its usefulness and the people’s trust. The reforms also include term limits for the president, background checks on top officials, publication of leaders’ salaries, and oversight by independent audit and compliance committees with the power to raise red flags about wrongdoing. If you think that sounds as if FIFA is at last preparing to do business in the 21st century, you’re right. Better late than never. It will be up to the new president, however, to ensure that FIFA’s members understand the rules and live up to them. And that, not deciding who gets how much money and which seat at the table, will be the new leader’s toughest job. “The goal is to dissect the organization, spread the power around and create a situation where there is visibility of decision making,” Dodd said. “The goal is for the president to be a less all-powerful figure, but he has to lead us in the right direction, too. Of course, he’ll be doing it with everyone under more scrutiny. That will be a big difference.” Soon we will know if voters are willing to accept this new structure, or if they prefer the outdated structure of the past and the benefits it brings them. Is it possible to change that mentality? That’s what we will find out on Friday, and in the months and years ahead. But by approving the reforms — and then following through — FIFA can show that it at least recognizes what the rest of the world has figured out: The organization’s old way of doing business just won’t cut it anymore.


Rangel Reflects on His Life and Marriage at a Dance Class, Sitting Down

Abstract: In 1950s Harlem on a Sunday afternoon, Alma Carter arrived at the Savoy Ballroom in a mauve-colored strapless ball gown. “I wore a tiara with diamonds,” she said, quickly adding, “Not real diamonds.” Charles B. Rangel caught sight of her across the room, dancing with someone else. He wore a bit of jealousy. On Wednesday, she was dancing again. Her husband of 50 years was not. The couple, both 85, had been scheduled to plié, sauté and move from first to fifth position with a class of other older dancers at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. The occasion was National Senior Health and Fitness Day, an annual event to raise awareness for healthy living and exercise among older adults. More than 100,000 people were expected to participate in different activities across the country. About a dozen women took part in the class at the Y. But Representative Rangel, a Harlem Democrat now in his 23rd term in Congress, sat down in one of the few chairs available in the mirrored studio and watched his wife dance. She wore a cream-colored velour sweatsuit and diamond earrings. They were real. “Of course,” she said, adding that her husband had given them to her for their 25th anniversary. They will celebrate their 51st in July. Mr. Rangel said he was not dancing because he did not have a leotard or ballet slippers. “He doesn’t know anything about pointing toes,” his wife said. The Rangels said they have had their ups and downs over five decades. Mr. Rangel said they grew closer about three years ago when he fell ill with back trouble that left him debilitated. By last year, he was well and wanted to run for re-election. Ms. Rangel, who has described being a politician’s spouse as a lonely life, accepted her husband’s pledge that it would be his last campaign. He also promised her more quality time, which he has fulfilled so far with a trip to Paris and with moments like those on Wednesday. “Have a seat, Al,” Mr. Rangel said to his wife outside the studio where they sat for a brief joint interview. Ms. Rangel said she had never taken ballet though she has admired it through the years (she just finished reading an autobiography of the ballerina Misty Copeland), but stays active with yoga and jazz-movement dancing. “She does the Slide,” Mr. Rangel interjected. “And what are the new ones now? The new dances they do now?” “They’re not so new; the Electric Slide?” Ms. Rangel said, laughing. Mr. Rangel said he walks miles from the Capitol to office buildings while in Washington. Though he said that “everything good is bad for you,” he described himself as an expert smoothie maker. This year, he introduced the “Rangel Resolution,” an attempt to enlist others to join him in a commitment to healthier eating for 30 days to increase awareness that low-income communities need access to healthier food options. When Ms. Rangel danced at the Y on Wednesday, instructed by Kate Stephan, a professional dancer who has appeared on Broadway, Mr. Rangel complained that his wife was behind all of the other ballerinas. “Shh,” Ms. Rangel said, waving her arms and rolling her eyes. So her husband watched, but a 90-minute event was shortened to about 45 minutes. “I didn’t have breakfast; it’s time to go,” she told a reporter. “He promised me lunch.” “Papaya? Two hot dogs?” Mr. Rangel asked. “You can’t have that,” Ms. Rangel said, as if she had said it a thousand times.

Charles Rangel
Old age,elderly,senior citizens
Exercise,Fitness
Dance
Medicine and Health
Marriage
Alma Carter Rangel


49% in Poll Fault Obama on Policies Outside U.S.

Abstract: About half of Americans disapprove of the way President Obama is handling foreign policy, a new high as he confronts a diplomatic opening with Iran and efforts to remove chemical arms in Syria, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Forty-nine percent disapproved of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy efforts, up 10 points since early June, and 40 percent approved. The president’s negative rating on foreign policy has grown among Americans of all political stripes, with disapproval up 8 points among Democrats, 10 points among Republicans and 13 points among independents. The poll also found that 52 percent disapproved of the way Mr. Obama was handling the situation in Syria. On his handling of relations with Iran, 39 percent approved, while 44 percent disapproved. “I think he’s looking very weak, and he put us in a dangerous situation with Syria,” Arlene Woods, 57, an independent voter from Ellicott City, Md., said in a follow-up interview. “I have a son in the military. When it doesn’t involve our own safety or security on our soil, then I don’t think it’s justifiable to use military force.” Over all, Americans are dubious that relations with Iran will improve. Fewer than 1 in 4 think they will get better in the next few years, while a third think they will get worse, and 4 in 10 think they will stay about the same. In the poll, which was conducted after reports that Mr. Obama and the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, had exchanged letters, nearly 4 in 10 said they did not yet know enough to say how much of an effect the diplomatic efforts would have on the relations of the two countries. An additional 3 in 10 said the diplomatic efforts would affect relations a lot or some, while the same percentage said they would not have much of an effect. On Syria, 82 percent of Americans supported the agreement between the United States and Russia to have Syria turn over all of its chemical weapons. Nevertheless, most — including those who supported the deal — lacked confidence that the Syrian government would do so. Yet most Americans do not think that failure to comply is grounds for military action, underscoring the public’s deep resistance to involvement in the situation in Syria. The poll found that just 34 percent (including 46 percent of Democrats) support airstrikes against Syria if it does not turn over its chemical weapons, while 57 percent (including about 6 in 10 Republicans and independents) say the United States should not launch airstrikes against Syria at all. Five percent support airstrikes against Syria regardless of whether it turns over its chemical weapons. Indeed, 68 percent said the United States does not have a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria. And 64 percent said the Obama administration had not clearly explained what the United States’ goals were in Syria, though that was down from 79 percent earlier this month. “I’d let the winds blow as they may, in that this is a civil war,” said Jim Wassall, 61, an independent from New Bedford, Mass. “I don’t condone the use of the chemical weaponry or biological weapons, but this is a civil war.” Most Americans, the poll found, do not think that the killing of civilians by chemical or biological weapons requires a stronger response from the international community than killings by conventional weapons. More than two-thirds said the international community should respond to all civilian killings the same. The national poll was conducted Sept. 19-23 among 1,014 adults on landlines and cellphones, and it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Barack Obama
US Foreign Policy
Polls
Iran
Arab Spring
Syria
Biological and Chemical Warfare
Hassan Rouhani
US Military


Burned Out of a Bronx Apartment - Neediest Cases

Abstract: Last Aug. 29 was supposed to be a night of celebration. But when Chaka and Carina Gathers returned from the hospital with their newborn son Cason, their third child, they found their Bronx apartment building in flames. “She almost fainted,” Mr. Gathers, 40, said of his wife. “There was no running in to get nothing,” Ms. Gathers, 25, said. As the couple described it, the fire was the latest blow in a five-year battle that had been raging over the three-floor building in Van Nest, near Bronx Park. Sewage had been backing up in the bathroom for years; flooding from burst and backed-up pipes was common. The building itself, on Holland Avenue, had landmark status, and an adjacent one was worth $750,000 — leading the Gatherses to suspect that their landlord had allowed problems to accumulate in a bid to dislodge the small group of tenants. The couple moved into a basement apartment in 2005, around Thanksgiving. It was quite an accomplishment for two people who had met in a shelter. “There was not enough space at my mother’s house,” Ms. Gathers said. Her sister was also living there with her children, so Ms. Gathers relocated to HELP Bronx Crotona Park North , a short-term transitional housing facility for homeless families. She was assigned to the same floor as her future husband. They developed friends in common and started talking, “and after that, we wanted to spend time around each other,” Ms. Gathers said. Their first child, Jada, was born in 2004. After they moved to the building in Van Nest, the joy over having their own space faded when they saw that it lacked radiators and they discovered that raw sewage frequently bubbled up from the toilets and drains and caused flooding. Repeated calls to the landlord went unanswered, they said, and eventually they began to believe that she had abandoned the property. So the tenants, led by the Gatherses, started work on an adverse possession claim stating that the landlord had abandoned the property five years before. They banded together and took control of the building: instead of calling 311 with heat complaints, they fixed the problems themselves. Mr. Gathers became the acting superintendent, learning maintenance and demolition. “Slowly but surely I learned everything I needed and got H.P.D. in there,” he said, referring to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development . In 2007, the couple had a son, whom they named All, for “a lot of love,” Ms. Gathers said. She balanced child-rearing with the work of stripping and replacing the apartment’s doors and floors, paying for materials out of her own pocket. The landlord threatened to sue when she learned about the tenants’ activities, but she skipped a housing court date, and the last anyone heard, she was in Africa. Ms. Gathers spoke to the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal and was trying to get the deed signed over to the tenants. An appointment was scheduled for the day after she brought baby Cason home from the hospital. Then the fire came, gutting their urban experiment. It is being investigated as suspicious. “I cried,” Ms. Gather recalled. “I just came home from the hospital, I’m still weak, and my hormones....” Her husband added, “I’m just hurt that we put so much into it.” After the fire, “we just had the clothes on our back,” Mr. Gathers said. They were eventually placed in a transitional two-room Harlem apartment where they have mice, roaches and no privacy. Mr. Gathers is working for the Sanitation Department to qualify for public assistance; $555 in monthly food stamps keeps them fed. “We’re living on a shoestring budget,” Mr. Gathers said. They are moving up the waiting list for an apartment through the city’s Housing Authority, and should be placed in a couple of months. At that time, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, one of the seven charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, will apportion $500 from the fund to buy beds for the family. “God is good,” a thankful Ms. Gathers said. Another thing she is grateful for? “To have to go through the shelter system to find each other,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “It was wonderful.”

New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Catholic Charities
Philanthropy


Capturing Life in Jackson Heights for the Stage

Abstract: When Ari Laura Kreith moved to Jackson Heights, Queens, from California in 2005, it was not the 100 nationalities that are said to be represented in the neighborhood that captivated her. After all, California is a pretty diverse place, too. What made Jackson Heights unique, in Ms. Kreith’s view, was that it had none of the ethnic dividers she had encountered elsewhere, “no bubbles isolating one community from the next,” she said. “I had the feeling I was seamlessly dropping in and out of all these different cultures just by walking down the street,” said Ms. Kreith, who studied theater at Yale and whose first job after college was as an assistant to the playwright David Mamet. Her amazement turned into curiosity, which turned into excitement — an emotional jumble that Ms. Kreith said she had experienced before, whenever an idea popped into her head during her time running a theater group she started in Davis, Calif. Her idea finally came to fruition when she managed to do what she knows best: encapsulate Jackson Heights in a play. It took 11 playwrights, 25 scenes, 29 actors and 37 characters to pull off. The result is “167 Tongues” , a title that refers to the number of languages believed to be spoken in Queens and is a nod to Jackson Heights’s multiethnic fabric. The play, which opens on Friday at Public School 69, is a production of the Jackson Repertory Theater, which was created in 2008 to bring affordable professional productions to a pocket of Queens where cultural activities are rare. The play’s writers and cast are a microcosm of Jackson Heights, a neighborhood that many demographers believe is the most diverse in the country. Ms. Kreith recruited them in unusual places and in unlikely ways. She found Les Hunter at a local cafe after she peered over his shoulder at the play he was writing on his laptop. She met Lauren Currie Lewis, who plays a pregnant Ecuadorean teenager named Leti, through her other job as a consultant, hiring actors to play patients in role-playing exercises with medical students. Writing a play collectively requires organizational guidelines: an author develops a theme and doles out assignments to the writers. But this exercise unfolded differently. The playwrights went on a guided tour of Jackson Heights the first time they met and then convened around a big desk to draw a map of what they had just seen, complete with the streets, places and people they could remember. “It was sort of like, forget about accuracy and scale. Focus on whatever caught your attention,” said one of the writers, Anna Kushner, a Cuban-American who grew up in Philadelphia and has lived in Jackson Heights for five years. They sat in a circle on the floor of Ms. Kreith’s apartment on 80th Street, came up with a character, wrote a basic description of the character on an index card and passed the card to the person next to them, who had to create a pair of characters with whom the original one might interact. By then, many of the playwrights had spent time roaming around Jackson Heights on their own, eavesdropping on conversations, asking questions and observing. They were inspired by real people, like the men seen dancing the tango at a gay bar on Roosevelt Avenue, a bookseller who works two days a week from a sidewalk table at the corner of 37th Avenue and 76th Street, and a manicurist who doubles as a therapist to her customers. The bookseller drives a van that he parks on the street overnight, not far from his books, which he leaves on a table, shielded by thick plastic. Mr. Hunter, who is studying for a doctorate in English at Stony Brook University and who also lives in Jackson Heights, said he had never talked with the man, but imagined that he stayed awake in the van all night, guarding his possessions from thieves. He had heard that the bookseller was from the former Yugoslavia, but Mr. Hunter conceived of him as Russian. The part is played by Arje Shaw, the son of a Holocaust survivor who makes a living writing novels and plays that have run on and off Broadway. The manicurist was inspired by the woman who does Ms. Kushner’s nails and who, upon meeting one of Ms. Kushner’s friends who was dealing with relationship problems, dispensed such valuable advice that the friend has not since had a manicure from anybody else. No one knows anything about the men who were dancing the tango. One of the playwrights spotted them and another, Rehana Mirza , used them in one of her scenes. The characters in the play were changed just enough so that they would not be instantly recognizable, Ms. Kreith said. Some of them “rub against one another,” she added, their stories interlaced across scenes. For example, Leti, the pregnant teenager, has a Bangladeshi friend named Tasleema, who steals contraceptive pills from her mother’s pharmacy. She gives the pills to Leti, who hopes that by taking them all at once, she can mimic the effects of the morning-after pill. Spanish is used liberally throughout the play (there will be placards with English translations), and English is spoken with a variety of accents. The dramaturge, Angie Balsamo, doubles as the dialect coach, teaching actors how someone from Russia, Mexico or Tibet would pronounce the same English word. More than a collection of short plays, the scenes are interwoven narratives, or “a collage,” said one of the playwrights, Alvin Eng , the son of Chinese immigrants who settled in Flushing, Queens. “They’re all elements of the same portrait.” Ms. Lewis, who lives in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, said the play “is like all of New York City squeezed into a neighborhood, and then the whole neighborhood squeezed into characters and scenes.” The performances will be held in the cafeteria of the school, at 77-02 37th Avenue. Ms. Kreith, who is also the theater group’s artistic director, wanted it that way because it allowed seats to be arranged so that the audience surrounded the area where the actors perform. “It’s about making the people who are our inspiration not our backdrop,” she said, “but part of the action.”

Theater
Jackson Heights (NYC)
Ari Laura Kreith
Jackson Repertory Theater
167 Tongues (Play)


Egyptian President’s Supporters Rally

Abstract: Huge crowds of Islamist demonstrators packed a Cairo traffic circle and several surrounding streets on Friday in a show of support for President Mohamed Morsi as he approaches the anniversary of his inauguration as Egypt’s first freely elected leader. Many Egyptians are discontented with Mr. Morsi over his running of the country and the state of the economy, and his opponents are calling for mass protests on the anniversary, June 30, that they hope will drive him from power. Friday’s protesters, most of them from the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, marched under a banner saying “No to Violence” and accused the opposition of trying to subvert the democratic process. Egypt’s intense political polarization and violent language from activists on both sides have raised fears that the anniversary protests will unleash new unrest. Image President Mohamed Morsi, as he approaches the anniversary of his inauguration as Egypt’s first freely elected leader. Credit Michael Sohn/Associated Press

Mohamed Morsi
Cairo
Muslim Brotherhood Egypt
Egypt


Shrieking About Questionable Whistles in the N.C.A.A. Tournament

Abstract: COLUMBUS, Ohio — On Friday night at Nationwide Arena here, the most pivotal moment in a contest between Dayton and Providence to advance to the N.C.A.A. tournament’s round of 32 was not a 3-pointer feathered in at the last second. It was not a thunderous dunk that brought the fans to their feet. It was not a stirring defensive stand. Instead, it was a technical foul. Late in the game, Friars Coach Ed Cooley brought his team together for an on-court huddle during a timeout. Providence was trailing by 50-42 with 3 minutes 42 seconds to play, and Cooley was upset with his club after a backbreaking 6-1 run by the Flyers. Inside this enclave was a scene of frustration in which Cooley barked at his players, stared them down and finally flipped over a folding chair that he had brought with him from the bench. He did all of this without looking at, talking to or interacting with the game’s officials, who hovered outside the huddle. So when Providence was called for a technical foul, it was met with fierce criticism from Cooley and others, who deemed the call an overreaction. “You’re coaching your team; you’re trying to put some emotion into your team,” Cooley said after the game. “It was one of those things — it was more emotion, trying to fire my team up.” He added: “That to me was wrong, in my opinion, from my seat. I’m coaching my team.” The foul against Cooley was one of several instances in which controversial officiating seemed to influence games’ outcomes in the opening rounds of the tournament. It was also the defining moment in an unattractive and choppy game that reflected the state of a sport in which scoring and the pace of play are down. In a statement provided to the news media, the N.C.A.A. coordinator for officiating, John Adams, defended the call, citing officiating guidelines. In another statement, Peter Roby, a men’s basketball selection committee member in Columbus and Northeastern’s athletic director, added: “It was a violation of one of the rules regarding unsportsmanlike conduct. He threw the chair out of the huddle, which precipitated the call.” Image Coach Ed Cooley of Providence objecting to a technical foul called late in Friday’s loss to Dayton after he flipped over a chair during a timeout. Credit Jamie Sabau/Getty Images Still, the decision to assess a technical foul at a critical juncture in a game of such high stakes remains a contested matter. “I thought it was as bad of a moment in officiating as we’ve seen in the N.C.A.A. tournament in a long time,” the CBS sports analyst Doug Gottlieb said. He added: “He didn’t throw a chair, he wasn’t looking at the refs, he wasn’t intimidating anybody. He was just mad because his team was playing poorly. His best players couldn’t hit a shot. His point guard, who is an N.B.A.-caliber talent, wasn’t playing particularly well. They couldn’t figure out Dayton’s defense. And the chair tips over, and they give him a technical foul at the end of the game? Like, what are you doing?” Gottlieb, who was part of the network’s broadcast team in Columbus, said: “It was a really bad moment. It was just a bad moment. And look: We all have bad moments. I have bad moments, coaches have bad moments, players have bad moments.” At the beginning of the Providence-Dayton game, Kris Dunn, a sophomore guard for the Friars, was whistled for a questionable flagrant foul in the first minute after tossing an elbow, seemingly inadvertently. Gottlieb said the foul essentially changed “the whole tenor and tone to the game.” With its best player soon in foul trouble, Providence — which made 34 percent of its shots from the field and turned the ball over 16 times — unraveled. “Providence’s players just started — every time there was a foul, they threw up their arms, and it was like they thought the whole world was against them,” Gottlieb said. Earlier Friday in Columbus, West Virginia outlasted a feisty Buffalo squad in a game of 49 fouls and a late off-the-ball call that Bobby Hurley, the Bulls’ coach, described as “tough to swallow.” “I just can’t get into it other than — in this type of game, at that point in the game, in a possession that really wasn’t going anywhere — it was just surprising,” Hurley said. An N.C.A.A. Bracket for Risk-Takers For this bracket, the more unusual that your picks are, the more points you’ll receive — so long as those picks are correct. After Maryland’s 65-62 win over Valparaiso here a few hours later, Crusaders Coach Bryce Drew was asked to address what one reporter called a “pretty clear picture” of the sophomore guard Keith Carter being fouled on a last-second attempt to tie the score. “I think the game of basketball,” Drew said, “there’s a lot of ups and downs, a lot of things that go on.” On Thursday in Louisville, Ky., U.C.L.A. nipped Southern Methodist after a controversial goaltending call on a 3-pointer that gave the Bruins a 57-56 lead with less than 15 seconds to play. “I never saw a game end like that,” S.M.U. Coach Larry Brown told reporters after the contest. Brown was also critical of what he perceived as a lack of review over the call. “That’s pretty heartbreaking,” he said. “It’s not crying over spilled milk, but why would you have all these TV people and take five seconds and review a goaltending? It might have been goaltending. It probably was. But we’ve got all these cameras. It happened so fast.” In West Virginia’s 69-59 victory against Maryland on Sunday night here, Melo Trimble, the star freshman guard for the Terrapins, was knocked to the floor on a screen. There was no call, and Trimble left the game in the second half with a head injury. “The worst part about that one was there were two officials looking at the play, and they just missed it,” Gottlieb said. “They went over to the monitors to see if it was flagrant and apparently they walked over to Maryland’s bench and said they missed it.” An inalienable truth about basketball is that fouls are as woven into the fabric of the game as shooting and rebounding. Gottlieb, however, warned of “overzealous” officiating and inconsistencies in interpretations. And though he is one voice, his concern seems to be part of a larger chorus which has been critical of some of the officiating in this year’s postseason — a time that is supposed to be a celebration of a sport that some say is at a crossroads. “College basketball is super, super fast; it’s super physical,” Gottlieb said. “And I respect that it’s a hard game to officiate and certain games are harder to officiate than others because they’re more physical or the plays’ importance is heightened. I understand that. I sympathize with that.” He continued: “On the other hand, we hold coaches and players and, frankly, broadcasters accountable for how you perform in those heightened circumstances. You can’t overreact.”

College basketball
Referee
NCAA
NCAA Men's Basketball,March Madness


S.E.C.’s Citigroup Case Has Few Avenues for Justice

Abstract: Is anyone going to be held legally accountable for the financial crisis? When the Securities and Exchange Commission announced recently that it was settling fraud charges against Citigroup for a paltry (for Citigroup) $285 million, the only person actually named in the S.E.C.’s charges was Brian Stoker. Never heard of him? He’s a 40-year-old Harvard Business School graduate and, until 2008, was a midlevel director in Citigroup’s “CDO structuring group” (he denied the charges and didn’t reach any settlement agreement). Charles Prince, the since-departed Citigroup chief executive at the time of the alleged misdeeds, isn’t mentioned. Four other Citigroup executives, including at least two senior to Mr. Stoker, are described in the complaint as being involved in the dubious transactions yet remain unnamed and uncharged. This week Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court issued a blistering 15-page opinion rejecting the proposed settlement, characterizing the penalty as “pocket change” for Citigroup and the overall settlement as “a very good deal” for Citigroup and a “mild and modest cost of doing business.” Confronted with allegations that Citigroup in customary fashion neither admitted nor denied, Judge Rakoff said he lacked an adequate factual basis for evaluating the settlement and ordered the parties to trial. It looked like Citigroup and its wayward executives might finally get their due. Or so I thought until I read the submissions in the case and did some further reporting. The S.E.C. may have been lucky to get what it did. It’s a textbook example of why it’s hard to hold anyone legally accountable for the financial crisis. You can’t fault the agency for not trying — it spent four years digging into Citigroup’s mortgage derivatives operation. If anything, the S.E.C. might be criticized for being too aggressive, using its considerable power to extract a settlement in a case whose weaknesses, if it finally goes to trial, will probably become readily apparent. Let’s stipulate that the behavior of Citigroup and its executives is every bit as bad as the agency alleges. Though Citigroup neither admitted nor denied the allegations, in its court submissions it actually admits quite a lot, and the key facts aren’t in dispute. In February 2007, as the real estate bubble was growing increasingly overextended and the first signs of distress were surfacing in mortgage markets, Citigroup Global Markets helped put together a $1 billion package of mortgages that it marketed and sold to clients still hoping to cash in on the real estate boom. Then Citi itself took a short position on a portion of the mortgages, betting the security it created would decline in value. The Citi mortgage package was declared in default a mere nine months later, and according to the S.E.C., Citigroup’s clients lost over $700 million while Citi raked in a $160 million profit on its short position. For his efforts, Mr. Stoker took home a $1.05 million bonus and was further rewarded with a $2.25 million “guaranteed bonus” at the end of the year. But bad deals, even really bad deals like Citigroup’s, aren’t illegal. They’re not criminal. They’re not inherently fraudulent. If Citigroup’s clients, all of them sophisticated institutional investors, were foolish or careless enough to buy what Citigroup sold them, then arguably they deserved their losses. Their remedy, presumably, would be never to do business with Citigroup again. This poses a major obstacle for prosecutors and the agency’s enforcers. They have to prove that bank executives misrepresented the terms of the deal and misled investors. Fraud has an even higher standard of proof: the statement must be intentionally false about a material fact. The reason Mr. Stoker and no one else was charged is that he appears to be the only Citigroup executive who had any responsibility for the disclosure materials who also knew enough about the deal to ensure their accuracy. Stripped of its complexity, the case boils down to just two allegations: that Citigroup helped choose the mortgages in the security and withheld that information; and that Citigroup failed to disclose that it was taking a short position. So what did Citigroup actually say to potential clients? The offering circular describing the deal states: “the composition of the Eligible Collateral Debt Securities will be determined by the selections of the Manager” which was Credit Suisse. Citigroup suggested mortgages for the collateralized debt obligation , most of which were included (along with others identified by Credit Suisse), but maintains that Credit Suisse “determined” the assets in that it had no obligation to accept Citi’s recommendations and that Citi had no veto power over what Credit Suisse decided to include. Should the offering materials have disclosed that Citigroup suggested — and Credit Suisse accepted — many of the mortgages in the security? Absolutely. Citigroup’s clients surely would want to have known that the person betting against the security — and not some neutral third party — had also suggested the mortgages to be included. (Credit Suisse settled related S.E.C. charges with an even milder slap on the wrist than the proposed settlement with Citigroup.) But under the circumstances, was it inaccurate and misleading to say that Credit Suisse “determined” the assets? That’s a much tougher call. As for the short position, Citigroup did alert its clients, up to a point. The offering states that the bank “may be expected to have interests that are adverse” to buyers of the security and “may provide assets ...without any off-setting positions.” Citigroup maintains it was hoping to sell the short position to other clients, and although it ended up keeping much of it, the conditional “may” was accurate at the time of the offering. It’s indisputable that Citigroup did not, as a matter of policy, take short positions on mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligation it assembled. On the contrary, Citigroup was hugely long such securities, and ended up losing more than $30 billion on them — more than any other financial institution in the world. It’s telling that the S.E.C. didn’t charge Citigroup or Mr. Stoker with intentional fraud, or even intentionally misleading anyone. In defending the settlement before Judge Rakoff, the agency has now been placed in the awkward position of having to concede the weakness of its case, which it euphemistically describes under the rubric “litigation risks,” meaning it might lose at trial. As Robert Khuzami, the agency’s enforcement chief, told me last week, “this case has challenges, like all complex securities fraud cases. Citi will argue that Credit Suisse ‘selected’ the assets, and the suggestions made by Citi are not inconsistent with that representation. Citi will also argue that it disclosed that it was the initial short counterparty and said it might keep the position or sell it on. They will argue this was true. Our position is that it’s not good enough to say you ‘might’ do it or you ‘may’ do it because you knew you were going to do it. That’s a big difference for us.” As President Obama said at a press conference in October , “one of the biggest problems about the collapse of Lehman [Brothers] and the subsequent financial crisis and the whole subprime lending fiasco is that a lot of that stuff wasn’t necessarily illegal, it was just immoral or inappropriate or reckless.” No one seems to want to hear this or acknowledge it, which is understandable given the pain banks like Citigroup and its executives inflicted. That Citigroup might largely escape accountability because of a few turns of phrase in its offering materials seems to be missing the forest for the trees. But Americans abide by the rule of law, and if the law now seems inadequate to address the problems that have surfaced, then it’s up to Congress, not the courts or regulators, to fashion a remedy. This week Mary L. Schapiro, chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, formally asked Congress for stronger penalties to punish and deter securities law violations. As it is, the agency can do only so much. “The public condemns the entire structured mortgage business and sees it as evil, understandably,” Mr. Khuzami said. “It was risky and reckless and caused so many problems. They want to see top executives being charged, but C.E.O.’s generally did not know about this on a deal-by-deal basis. Poor risk management is not an actionable legal violation. It’s for corporate governance, for shareholder action, and for the rule-making side to deal with, but it’s not always an enforcement matter.”

Citigroup Inc
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Decisions and Verdicts
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Suits and Litigation
Rakoff Jed S
Securities and Exchange Commission


Healing Fire in Londonderry: The Temple Was Built to Burn

Abstract: LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland — The Rev. David Latimer thought it was a terrible idea. The streets of this Northern Irish city had burned in the Troubles. His Protestant church was firebombed by Catholics. Every summer, rival bonfires the size of small mountains still burn, and with them the flags and effigies of the other side. Burning a 75-foot-tall pagan temple in a Republican Catholic enclave on the loyalist Protestant side of town to “bring people together” seemed, well, mad. “How are you going to get my congregation to come to a Catholic area?” he asked the California artist who started erecting the temple this month. “How is fire going to have a productive outcome in a city where fire has always been about hating the other?” “It worked in other parts of the world,” said the artist, David Best, whose temples usually burn in the Nevada desert at the Burning Man festival . Mr. Latimer, a former British Army chaplain accustomed to checking for bombs under his car, was unimpressed. “This part of the world,” he said, “is not like other parts of the world.” Image The temple was set alight on March 21, after more than 60,000 people had placed messages inside, such as, “For a united Derry.” Credit Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times Londonderry, or Derry to Republicans, may seem an improbable place to take inspiration from the modern-day hippies who flock to a temple in the desert to leave messages and mementos for those they have lost, and then collectively seek catharsis by watching it all go up in flames. As the mayor, Brenda Stevenson, a Catholic, put it: “For us, bonfires are associated with history, violence and the Troubles.” From the Siege of Derry in 1688, when the Catholic troops of James II tried to storm the Protestant-controlled walled city, to Bloody Sunday in 1972, when British soldiers killed 14 Catholics in a local civil rights march, bonfires have been at the nexus of Northern Ireland ’s violent tangle of religion and politics. Every July, Protestants commemorating the victory of William of Orange over James II stack wooden pallets and rubber tires into towering structures and cloak them in gasoline-doused Irish tricolors. And every August, Catholics drape their own incendiary towers in the Union Jack. “Of course, we knew it would be controversial,” said Helen Marriage, founder of Artichoke, the British art events company that brought Mr. Best to Londonderry. “We wanted to turn the logic of bonfires on its head,” she said. “We wanted to bring people into the same physical space and share something that would normally divide them.” Mr. Best’s mostly American temple crew helped train 57 youths, from Protestant and Catholic communities, in 3D design and carpentry to assist with building it. In their late teens and early 20s, some of them came from a shelter, others had a history of drug abuse or petty crime and all were drifting. Londonderry has one of the youngest populations in Western Europe, and one of the highest jobless rates in Northern Ireland. Image The Rev. David Latimer, whose church had been firebombed, at first thought the artist David Best would not succeed. Credit Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times “These kids will never show up at 8 in the morning,” the social worker at the shelter had predicted. But they did. And for three weeks, this city, split down the middle by the River Foyle into a Protestant east bank and a Catholic west bank, watched nervously as an ornately carved wooden structure grew on a hill, until its spire towered far above those of the Protestant and Catholic cathedrals in the town below. Senior clergy on both sides warned against idolatry and Satanism (“The Burning Man is linked to orgies and things,” the Rev. Graeme Orr pronounced gravely last week). Then unseasonal blizzards hit the town, and it seemed that even the elements had conspired against the temple. Security, of course, was a concern. A bomb was defused on Feb. 17, not far from the site in a Protestant area. Should the temple be insured? Hardly against arson, since “arson is what we’re going for,” Ms. Marriage said, but perhaps “premature arson?” Should she trust the unloved Police Service of Northern Ireland, still a main target of attacks from dissident Republicans, to safeguard the site? One of the most common graffiti refrains across Catholic neighborhoods is “P.S.N.I. scum.” In the end, Ms. Marriage hired a private security company set up by former Irish Republican Army prisoners, whose staff includes loyalist ex-paramilitaries. “They’re the best security company we’ve ever worked with,” she said. Still, when the temple opened to the public last week, inviting people to “leave the past behind and look towards the future,” she worried that Protestants would not dare come. As it turned out, the very first person inside the temple was Jeanette Warke, the 71-year-old manager of a loyalist youth club, who had lost her home in the Troubles and whose son joined the British Army when he was 18. Kevin Strathern, a local architect who had helped build the temple, saw her wandering in, a “wee old lady” who soon burst into tears. “Would you like a hug?” he asked. “I most certainly would,” she said. Mr. Strathern’s father, William, a well-known Gaelic football player, was shot dead on his own doorstep in 1977. Mr. Strathern, 8 at the time, was upstairs in bed with a toothache. “And here I was,” said Mr. Strathern, now 46, “a Catholic whose father was killed by Protestants, purely because he was a Catholic, hugging a Protestant.” “We wouldn’t have hugged 40 years ago,” he added. “We might not have hugged 10 years ago.” Things are changing, he said. In 2011, a “peace bridge” was built across the river, giving Protestants and Catholics easy pedestrian access to one another’s neighborhoods for the first time. The Ebrington army barracks, where soldiers would have plotted their Bloody Sunday deployment, have been turned into a venue for music and culture. Since 2013, when Londonderry was Britain’s city of culture, members of both communities can be overheard referring to their city proudly as “Legenderry.” Over the past two years, the metal cages protecting windows along the dividing line from projectiles have gradually come off. There has even been talk of dismantling the 15-foot-tall fence that separates the two communities. The mayor, Ms. Stevenson, said that “Derry leads the way in terms of reconciliation.” By the end of last week more than 60,000 people in this city of 108,000 had come to the temple and left their messages. “For a united Derry,” pleaded one. “For the sake of our children,” read another. There were grainy photographs, a ponytail of human hair, a knitted baby hat and at least two vessels with ashes of loved ones. A postcard quoting the poet Seamus Heaney, raised nearby, wished for life “on the far side of revenge.” Image The artist David Best. Credit Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times Tony Doherty, who was asked by Mr. Best to help set the temple on fire, has spent most of his life hungering for revenge. His father was killed on Bloody Sunday, crawling for cover on all fours, unarmed. Mr. Doherty was 9. He later joined the I.R.A., and spent years in prison. After he was released, he began lobbying the British government for a new inquiry. It would take six years until one was granted and another 12 until Prime Minister David Cameron stood up in front of rolling television cameras and formally apologized in 2010. The soldier who shot his father was unrepentant when they came face to face in a court hearing. But if most Bloody Sunday families demand convictions to find closure, for Mr. Doherty “the score is settled.” More than 3,600 people were killed in the Troubles, and no clear accounting has taken place. Justice means different things to different people, Mr. Doherty said, and that, in a nutshell, is the problem 17 years after Northern Ireland made peace on paper with the Good Friday agreement. “I’m very conscious that I’m both a victim and a perpetrator,” he said. “I hope we will have a process where people like me can say what they did and hope for forgiveness.” Mr. Doherty has shunned the bonfires for years. But last Saturday, he lit the temple alongside Ms. Warke’s son Graham, the former British soldier, and many others. Catholics and Protestants, some 15,000 of them, came and jointly watched it burn. Also in the crowd was Mr. Latimer, his initial doubts allayed, happily quoting from the Gospels: “A light set on a hill cannot be hidden.”

Derry Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Art
David Best